raises?

[rabbitandfox23]

How much of an annual raise can one usually expect while on tenure track? At my Uni, there is an annual automatic raise for every faculty member, and on top of that a performance based raise.  Are you expecting raises this year, or will your pay stay as is due to the financial uncertainties caused by the virus?

[Cheerful]

Have you read the Furloughs thread here?

[rabbitandfox23]

Have you read the Furloughs thread here?

I guess I'm in the minority here, so far. No furloughs or pay reductions at my institution. The annual process for evaluating salary raises is progressing as usual. Well, maybe I'll get the bad news in my letter following these deliberations!

[Cheerful]

Some u's are waiting to see what funding they get from the feds in the next round and what enrollment revenue looks like before announcing salary cuts, furloughs, etc.

Hope you get a raise but I wouldn't count on it.  Good luck.

[downer]

Have you read the Furloughs thread here?

I guess I'm in the minority here, so far. No furloughs or pay reductions at my institution. The annual process for evaluating salary raises is progressing as usual. Well, maybe I'll get the bad news in my letter following these deliberations!

So if you are at an atypical institution, why are you asking for info about typical institutions? What use would that be for you?

[clean]

How much of an annual raise can one usually expect while on tenure track?

Zero.

1. Raises are based on merit, so no one should expect a raise for breathing. 
2. Raises are available for merit ONLY if there is sufficient money for such things.  There are often years at a time when no raises are provided at all except for raises that occur due to promotion.  Promotion from Assistant to Associate gets some amount, and promotion to full gets a slightly higher amount.

One of the reasons that there is Salary Inversion (where new hires earn more than faculty with greater employment history) is that raises do not at all keep up with not only the market,  much less the cost of living/inflation!

IF you are getting annual raises, then consider yourself fortunate and dont think that you will get any sympathy on this forum if you feel that your raise is insufficient, as anything is better than most of the rest of us get.

Good luck to you.

[apl68]

I can recall a newly-minted K-12 teacher here who cheerfully assured me that she would be getting more money each year from that point on.  She seems to have assumed the same about me as a librarian.

She reminded me of Charles Shulz's Peppermint Patty in her ability to make odd assumptions for no apparent reason.  She had regular violent collisions with reality.  Which tended to make her mad and to want to shoot the messenger.

[Golazo]

We have a process for merit raises which usually results in a nice letter saying that we don't have money to reward you this year.
Contractually, we get a 10% raise at each promotion (to associate and full). A colleague told me that he didn't get a raise between. Last year we were supposed to get a COLA, but this was later cancelled (pro-tip for admins--don't announce a raise and then take it back the next month)

[Ruralguy]

I've been at my school for 21 years.

We got college-wide raises  a couple of times before I got tenure, but then that more or less went away (for everyone) around the time of the Great Recession.

Since then, I think I got two system wide raises.

However, I also got  substantial bumps when I got tenure and then also when I hit full. They were both of order 10%.

In addition to that, we have partially endowed professorships (they are for terms, and come with a 10% ish salary bump). I have one of those now.

That all means that though my nominal raises were minimal, my salary bumps for tenure+full+endowed position  were significant.

O

[mleok]

We don't have our cost of living adjustment this year, but the merit increases are still happening (but this process is staggered, so assistant professors and associate professors are evaluated for merit increases once every two years, and full professors are evaluated once every three or four years).

[spork]

We were told that there would be no raises for the coming year and that employer matching contributions to retirement accounts were suspended indefinitely.

Occasional across the board raises (no merit system because it's "unfair") in the past were not enough to keep up with the rate of inflation. In inflation-adjusted terms, I earn less than my father did in the late 1960s as a manager in a department store with no college education.

[Puget]

Private R1. In a typical year, ~2% COLA plus some variable amount of merit raise on top of that, plus sometimes "equity adjustments" when they realize for example that they are in danger of an inversion, and fairly substantial bumps at promotion to associate and full.

This year, 0 to -5%. All raises (COLA and merit) are definitely frozen for the year as are retirement matches, and we may have to take salary cuts depending on how things shake out, but they are trying to avoid it, and make it progressive if they do, so lower wage employees don't take any cut, and those at the top of the pay scale take more-- president and his direct reports have already taken 10-20% cuts.  Nobody is happy with cuts of course, but they are trying to be both transparent and fair-- I really appreciate working someplace that shares my values and actually practices what it preaches most of the time.

[Aster]

How much of an annual raise can one usually expect while on tenure track? At my Uni, there is an annual automatic raise for every faculty member, and on top of that a performance based raise.  Are you expecting raises this year, or will your pay stay as is due to the financial uncertainties caused by the virus?

Um, no raises this year. at my institution. I honestly don't think anyone in Higher Ed will be getting raises this year. Many employees will be lucky to just keep their jobs. For the universities that won't bankrupt and shutter over the next year, I expect that most survivors will take years to claw themselves back to pre-COVID finances. That might delay raises for a lot longer.

Outside of current times, COLA-based raises are fairly common and frequent at public universities, and kinda random at private universities. I think a lot really depends on the specific finances of a given university rather than one's tenure status, or one's job performance.

If there ain't no money, it don't matter who you are or how hard you work.

[polly_mer]

If there ain't no money, it don't matter who you are or how hard you work.

Preach it!

[onthefringe]

Public R1 flagship.

While technically all raises here are based on merit, the university sets a mid point for raise percent, and chairs have to have the whole department raise hit that percent and have an explanation for any raise that is more than 0.5% away from the median raise. Extra funds are sometimes available for equity issues (salary inversion, comparisons to comparable institutions etc). Promotions come with 6% + at least the median raise.

Most years we get at 2%+/- 0.5% raise. Promotions generally come with 8-10%.

This year (for the first time since 2000) no raises at all except for promotions.