raises?

[rabbitandfox23]

Thanks, all, for your views. My U hasn't stated (yet) that there will be no raises this year, but I suspect something to that effect will be conveyed to me in the chair's annual salary adjustment letter... So much for the work that I put into the annual activity report!

[fizzycist]

At my public R1 average raise has been a little less than 1% per year, not counting retention and promotion raises. Mostly they come in the form of across-the-board raises approved by the state. Merit raises are rare and even then small.

Inversion is a real problem. Outside offers seem to be key to shaking up the system. They are pretty rare in my dept. but in neighboring units they are more common and it shows in their salaries across the board.

[polly_mer]

Inversion is a real problem. Outside offers seem to be key to shaking up the system. They are pretty rare in my dept. but in neighboring units they are more common and it shows in their salaries across the board.

One problem with outside offers is the institution can say, "Thank you for your service and enjoy the new job!"

Another problem can be getting a good outside offer in fields where the market is flooded and therefore few of the offers will be better than the current offer.  I remember one faculty member who ended up being in the bottom fifth in the comparison group across multiple institutions.  She had been on the national market every year for more than 10 years, but got nothing in such a crowded market as a tenured full professor, even when willing to start over at assistant professor.

Whereas in faculty positions that were hard to fill like nursing, even a 20% bump was sometimes inadequate to retain someone who didn't yet have a job in hand, but was unhappy in their current position.

[Ruralguy]

A related problem that leads to decreasing morale is that the person next to you could be doing the same job (or in some cases, much less than the same job if they do the bare minimum or less, and you burn rubber trying to make your mark)  and making much more money. Though we tend to not ask each other what our salaries are, word gets out if the Dean had to really had to punch up to match a candidate's requests.

[clean]

Though we tend to not ask each other what our salaries are,

No need to ask. Many employees of state institutions have their salaries published by newspapers. 
They do a Freedom of information request every few years and post the results in a searchable database.

[Ruralguy]

I would have to ask. I am not at a state school. AAUP does publish medians salaries by rank, but that would only tell someone if they were off from the median.  I'm not terribly interested in knowing a specific persons salary, though I would like to know if the highest paid assistant professor has a salary higher than most fulls, and, as has been the case before, not advising and not serving on committees ( a separate issue).

[sinenomine]

I would have to ask. I am not at a state school. AAUP does publish medians salaries by rank, but that would only tell someone if they were off from the median.  I'm not terribly interested in knowing a specific persons salary, though I would like to know if the highest paid assistant professor has a salary higher than most fulls, and, as has been the case before, not advising and not serving on committees ( a separate issue).

Are salary ranges listed on your institution's accreditation reports?

[Ruralguy]

We no longer publish lower and upper limits anywhere, as far as I can tell. Just medians. The Dean has admitted that it would lower morale and make him too busy fielding complaints if he published this.

[fizzycist]

A related problem that leads to decreasing morale is that the person next to you could be doing the same job (or in some cases, much less than the same job if they do the bare minimum or less, and you burn rubber trying to make your mark)  and making much more money. Though we tend to not ask each other what our salaries are, word gets out if the Dean had to really had to punch up to match a candidate's requests.

This is precisely why some neighboring units at my uni have higher salaries across the board. In those depts the following scenario has happened repeatedly: an assistant prof who brings in big research dollars gets an outside offer. Admin negotiates big raise for retention. They then go in and give all the lowest-paid Full Profs a bump to match.

Doesn't work as well at the assistant-prof hiring stage. The admins are pretty good about offering market rates to new hires but not spending money fixing inversion.

Maybe this is just a quick at my uni.

[rabbitandfox23]

Thanks, everyone. It's illuminating to see how raises work at your own universities. Where I teach, relatively big raises occur annually and consistently (merit and COL), and not principally at the promotion level. Annual raises happen at a quicker pace for junior scholars until one hits a certain salary threshold, at which point raises slow down.  I count my blessings that I still have a job, but I do worry that I'm not progressing through the salary ranks in my early career because of covid and salary friezes, at a time when I should be seeing my salary rise somewhat steeply.

[Ruralguy]

Well, the jury is in. You probably have it better than just about everyone who replied (and that was from a wide variety of types of school).

So, I'm not really sure what your concern is. Do you think you aren't getting enough merit increases? Do you think you are finally hitting the level for said increases just about now, and you are now afraid the school will have to hold back? Well, if its either of those, just about all of us face those issues too (assuming there is anything close to a merit increase).

[emprof]

That depends on whether you have a faculty union that negotiates a contract on your behalf. Those institutions tend to see at least regular cost of living raises every year or two.  My current institution is in a 'right to work' state (nice slogan for 'unions not welcome here') so we get a small bump of 2-3% every 2-5 years. Not even enough to cover inflation. The only way up is to win awards/promotions/outside offers. The administration know they're hemorrhaging faculty because of low salaries and made a lot of noise about it, but nobody who controls the purse strings cares enough to do something about it.

[bio-nonymous]

Raises? What's that? Ha, ha. We had a "financial crisis" pre-dating covid19, so we were getting no COL increase this year or next year either it looks like. Too bad our income gets worse every year because of inflation. I am happy to have a job though!

[eigen]

A related problem that leads to decreasing morale is that the person next to you could be doing the same job (or in some cases, much less than the same job if they do the bare minimum or less, and you burn rubber trying to make your mark)  and making much more money. Though we tend to not ask each other what our salaries are, word gets out if the Dean had to really had to punch up to match a candidate's requests.

Our university (LAC) has a very transparent step system for this reason. There's no negotiation, and I make a bit less relative to peer institutions and my colleagues in English make a bit more, but it helps a lot with bad blood and secrecy.

It also helps with stagnation in salary, since you can continue to move yourself up the salary scale at regular intervals until well past full professor.

[sockknitter]

I'm at a state institution. In good years, we get cost of living adjustments of 1 to 2.5%. There are no merit raises, and promotion comes with 8% and 10% bumps. I have only heard of one case in my college where someone received a counteroffer. Usually the dean wishes people good luck in their new job. Salary inversion is a big problem here but, since forming our own governing board, we can no longer access faculty and staff salary information online.

We are not receiving COLA for this year (again), and are required to teach at least an additional 3 credit hours without overload pay. Between those issues, the increased health insurance premiums, jumps in parking fees (which my university treats as a tax to every employee, regardless of whether or not you ever park your car on campus), and inflation, I am making less money than I did when I was hired.

I'm grateful to have a job right now, but am realizing that it is financially irresponsible of me to stay in academia for the rest of my career.