University Times

Average salaries among the ranks of Pitt employees last year ranged from $221,056 for the 11 executives, administrators and managers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) to $14,022 for the 14 technical, skilled and service workers in the Office of Human Resources.

Those highs and lows are included in a salary report released last week by Pitt's Office of Institutional Research. The University administration reported the salary figures in accordance with Pennsylvania's Financial Disclosure Law.

The report reveals mean (average) and median (mid-range) salaries for major ranks of full-time, non-union faculty, staff and administrators in each Pitt responsibility unit as of Oct. 31, 1996.

"Salary," as defined by the report, includes all contract salary paid by the University, whether the funding source was Pitt hard money salary funds, a research grant awarded to Pitt, an endowment or some other source.

Salaries for faculty with 12-month contracts were converted to standard (nine-month) academic contracts.

The report attributes an employee's salary to the unit through which his or her employee record was processed. For example, the report lists 48 employees for the Office of the Chancellor, but that total includes Chancellor Mark Nordenberg and his staff as well as employees in other offices that report directly to Nordenberg but are not responsibility centers in their own right — Governmental Relations and Communications, to name two such offices.

The report is inconsistent in its classifications. For example, some schools categorize academic department chairpersons as "executive, administrative and managerial" personnel, while other schools classify chairpersons according to their faculty ranks.

On the other hand, school deans are consistently listed as "executive, administrative and managerial" employees.

To avoid revealing individuals' salaries, the report does not list salaries for ranks and job classes where the number of employees was three or fewer.

Staff/administration The report divides staff into four categories: executive, administrative and managerial; other professionals; secretarial and clerical; and technical, skilled and service.

It lists 11 units where executives, administrators and managers earned mean and median salaries exceeding $60,000. Besides the UPMC administration, those units included: The Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences (six executives, administrators and managers) — $127,455 average, $127,646 mid-range.

The Office of the Chancellor (12) — $95,839 average, $78,252 mid-range.

The Office of the Provost (47) — $89,527 average, $82,872 mid-range.

The Office of the General Counsel (six) — $80,778 average, $72,711 mid-range.

The School of Medicine (14) — $70,020 average, $63,795 mid-range.

The Office of Budget and Administration (15) — $69,896 average, $64,002 mid-range.

The Office of Human Resources (nine) — $66,007 average, $65,964 mid-range.

The Katz Graduate School of Business/College of Business Administration (six) — $62,964 average, $60,438 mid-range.

The Office of Institutional Advancement (16) — $62,862 average, $62,583 mid-range.

The Office of Student Affairs (12) — $62,304 average, $60,495 mid-range.

University-wide, the lowest-paid staff category was secretarial and clerical. The 1,076 employees in this category earned an average salary of $18,716, with a mid-range salary of $18,144.

Staff in five units earned mean and median salaries of less than $16,000: The Office of the Associate Vice Chancellor for Business (130 secretarial and clerical staff) — $15,463 average, $14,898 mid-range.

The Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences (14 secretarial and clerical staff) — $15,339 average, $13,476 mid-range.

The Greensburg campus (18 secretarial and clerical staff) — $15,300 average, $15,423 mid-range.

The Titusville campus (eight secretarial and clerical staff) — $15,151 average, $14,271 mid-range.

The Office of Human Resources (14 technical, skilled and service staff) — $14,022 average, $14,397 mid-range.

Faculty Professional and Health Sciences schools, especially those with relatively large proportions of senior professors, had the highest-paid faculties. The four regional campuses had the lowest paid faculties, on average.

Faculties at four schools earned average and mid-range salaries exceeding $60,000: Medicine employed 1,372 faculty members who earned average and mid-range salaries of $96,512 and $89,638, respectively.

That total included 273 full professors ($140,171 average, $125,565 mid-range), 344 associate professors ($98,940 average, $90,000 mid-range), 676 assistant professors ($81,907 average, $81,336 mid-range), 71 instructors ($42,812 average, $34,553 mid-range) and eight faculty in "other" ranks ($212,854 average, $241,972 mid-range).

In the medical school, "other faculty" include department chairpersons. University-wide, the "other faculty" category may also include lecturers, directors and associate deans.

In the Katz Graduate School of Business, 69 faculty members earned an average salary of $79,230, with a mid-range of $74,200.

The total included 33 full professors ($94,278 average, $88,370 mid-range), 17 associate professors ($68,867 average, $66,436 mid-range), 14 assistant professors ($57,897 average, $59,050 mid-range) and five others ($74,881 average, $65,168 mid-range).

The School of Law employed 46 faculty members who earned an average salary of $77,531, with a mid-range of $81,377.

The total included 24 full professors ($101,249 average, $103,273 mid-range), six associate professors ($76,016 average, $75,191 mid-range), six assistant professors ($54,265 average, $48,826 mid-range), four instructors ($34,197 average, $32,073 mid-range) and six others ($36,325 average, $33,555 mid-range).

The 37 faculty members in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs earned an average of $70,577, with $70,834 as the mid-range salary.

The total included 18 full professors ($81,966 average, $80,423 mid-range), 14 associate professors ($64,803 average, $65,375 mid-range) and five assistant professors ($45,741 average, $46,948 mid-range).

Two other units had exceptionally high mean and median salaries for faculty: the dean's division of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (where 13 full professors — including Mellon Professors — earned an average salary of $99,379, with $94,442 as the mid-range) and the Learning Research and Development Center (where four full professors earned a $97,331 average salary, with $96,241 as the mid-range).

Except for two small Pittsburgh campus academic units that employed only instructors as faculty, the regional campuses had the lowest average faculty salaries.

The Johnstown campus's 146 total faculty earned an average of $42,180, with $40,650 as the mid-range.

The total included 19 full professors ($56,933 average, $58,020 mid-range), 72 associate professors ($44,244 average, $44,665 mid-range), 27 assistant professors ($32,138 average, $32,000 mid-range), 18 instructors ($33,234 average, $32,000 mid-range) and 10 others ($42,509 average, $44,650 mid-range).

At Greensburg, 58 faculty earned a $39,564 average salary, with $38,877 as the mid-range.

That included eight full professors ($53,587 average, $53,505 mid-range), 26 associate professors ($42,426 average, $42,625 mid-range), 16 assistant professors ($33,599 average, $33,507 mid-range) and eight instructors ($28,167 average, $28,667 mid-range). Three other faculty members were listed in the "other" category.

Bradford employed 70 faculty earning average and mid-range salaries of $38,704 and $37,707, respectively.

That included nine full professors ($52,897 average, $52,166 mid-range), 19 associate professors ($43,652 average, $43,782 mid-range), 30 assistant professors ($34,829 average, $33,870 mid-range), eight instructors ($28,951 average, $28,160 mid-range) and four others ($31,833 average, $31,161 mid-range).

Titusville is the only Pitt academic unit that does not offer four-year degrees. It also does not employ any full professors. Predictably, it was the campus with the lowest average and mid-range faculty salaries: $33,146 and $33,910, respectively, among 22 faculty in the survey.

The total included nine associate professors ($36,581 average, $36,819 mid-range), eight assistant professors ($31,783 average, $32,466 mid-range) and five instructors ($29,146 average, $28,121 mid-range). Three other faculty members were listed in the "other" category.

— Bruce Steele