IHE: Mizzou Cuts Faculty Salaries by 25%

[Wahoo Redux]

U of Missouri Cuts Faculty Salaries by 25%

OMG.

Driven by productivity.  Only affects a couple of profs so far...

Still.  OMG.

No mention of cutting admin salaries.

[apl68]

So, it appears that the university is trying to maximize revenue from research grants by holding researchers' salaries hostage if they don't bring in enough grant money.  Seem like they risk driving away some of their best researchers, who can no doubt find another, friendlier research university to do their thing at.

If, as the first cases seem to demonstrate, the idea is to privilege bringing in research money, then that could create perverse incentives to skimp on teaching and service.

Barring some kind of egregious failure to do the job they were hired for, slashing somebody's pay in the absence of clear and present financial exigency is just plain unjust.

Administrators are presumably exempt from this because an administrator is by definition always administrating, and so obviously is earning the salary.  I guess you could start basing their pay on metrics that encourage them to hold even more meetings, require even more reports, etc. of their staff to show that they're producing more administration.  But do staff members really want that?

[marshwiggle]

Interesting.

Some 88 percent of faculty respondents said they supported asking Choi to rescind the new policy on criteria-based salary reductions for tenured professors specifically. (More than 1,000 professors, or about 47 percent of those contacted, voted in the poll.)

You'd think for an issue that big, there'd have been a bigger turnout.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

Is this even legal?
I would understand, if KPIs were used to determine eligibility for extra money (aka bonus), but cutting pre-agreed salary seems to be a breach of contract.
Unless, of course, an existence of "constant" and "variable" parts of remuneration was explicitly written into original contracts. Given that so far it has affected medicine-related faculty, this can well be the case.

[Hibush]

This will not help Missouri's retention.

Here is a snapshot of one underperforming professor whose salary was cut.

• A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the American Association for Anatomy, a William T. Kemper Fellow for Teaching Excellence and an MU Corps of Discovery Lecturer. In 2019, the only School of Medicine faculty member ever to be awarded the UM System's highest faculty honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award.
• Currently a principal investigator on three active grants from the National Science Foundation and co-investigator on four other grants.
• In 2020 published seven peer-reviewed journal articles and two edited volumes, made four presentations at professional meetings,
• Coordinated all anatomical education for the School of Medicine, taught medical students, supervised four graduate students, taught four graduate classes and mentored other graduate and undergraduate students in research.

Missouri has good faculty, they can find jobs at universities that understand the job market for this caliber of faculty.

[apl68]

This will not help Missouri's retention.

Here is a snapshot of one underperforming professor whose salary was cut.

• A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the American Association for Anatomy, a William T. Kemper Fellow for Teaching Excellence and an MU Corps of Discovery Lecturer. In 2019, the only School of Medicine faculty member ever to be awarded the UM System's highest faculty honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award.
• Currently a principal investigator on three active grants from the National Science Foundation and co-investigator on four other grants.
• In 2020 published seven peer-reviewed journal articles and two edited volumes, made four presentations at professional meetings,
• Coordinated all anatomical education for the School of Medicine, taught medical students, supervised four graduate students, taught four graduate classes and mentored other graduate and undergraduate students in research.

Missouri has good faculty, they can find jobs at universities that understand the job market for this caliber of faculty.

And this is somebody they consider an "under-performer" whose salary they feel justified in slashing?  That's just sorry!  Institutions have no business treating their people like that, even if those people have little choice about where they must work.  They're shooting themselves in the foot if they try that with people who have plenty of other options.

[mleok]

This will not help Missouri's retention.

Here is a snapshot of one underperforming professor whose salary was cut.

• A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the American Association for Anatomy, a William T. Kemper Fellow for Teaching Excellence and an MU Corps of Discovery Lecturer. In 2019, the only School of Medicine faculty member ever to be awarded the UM System's highest faculty honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award.
• Currently a principal investigator on three active grants from the National Science Foundation and co-investigator on four other grants.
• In 2020 published seven peer-reviewed journal articles and two edited volumes, made four presentations at professional meetings,
• Coordinated all anatomical education for the School of Medicine, taught medical students, supervised four graduate students, taught four graduate classes and mentored other graduate and undergraduate students in research.

Missouri has good faculty, they can find jobs at universities that understand the job market for this caliber of faculty.

And this is somebody they consider an "under-performer" whose salary they feel justified in slashing?  That's just sorry!  Institutions have no business treating their people like that, even if those people have little choice about where they must work.  They're shooting themselves in the foot if they try that with people who have plenty of other options.

In looking at her CV, my suspicion is that they're just focusing on the IDC generated by her grants. That's part of the reason why I always caution basic science faculty from accepting a primary appointment in a School of Medicine, since NIH R01s are the currency of the realm there, even if they are inappropriate for the kind of research that one does.

[artalot]

Admin wanted to slash our salaries by 10-15% at the onset of COVID, but backed off when we threatened to sue on the basis that it would undermine tenure. They cut our retirement instead, which is about the same...
The target wasn't specific individuals, just the college of Arts & Sciences. They hoped the tenured people would leave so they could collapse the college. That's why this is so weird. Mizzou is encouraging everyone to start looking for a new job.