Salaries of humanities and social sciences professors at Ivy League universities

[Pomegranate]

Yes, Clean, I'm new here. I had the possibility of moving on to a job at an Ivy (and may still have), but I am already very well paid in comparison to my colleagues in my university. (quite above the university average despite a humanities job). So I wonder if it is even worth the whole hassle, if at the elite institution, they will pay me similar to what I get now (despite radically higher cost of living, higher workload, their average salaries across their university being way higher than my current institution, etc). So I wonder essentially if I got myself forever locked in my institution?

The only way to find out is to get an offer and see what salary you can negotiate. Knowing other people's salaries is of limited value given the ranges.

Yea, but when you get the offer it is too late; in order to negotiate well, one needs some good comparisons.

[Hibush]

The best comps may be found by looking in the salary database of public universities that are competing for the same faculty and are in similarly high CoL areas. For instance, https://calsalaries.com.

The easiest is to find the names of a few faculty who have comparable jobs and put their names in the search. I checked some of the Cal English faculty, and they show up.

If you just search on "Asst prof" you get all the physicians who have a clinical practice (and salary) as well as a clinical-faculty appointment at the Assistant rank. They make a lot of money.

[mamselle]

The salary's just the tip of the iceberg.

That's a pretty blunt tip! :-(

Indeed.

And the 120,000/yr figure just mentioned is barely 1/10th the cost of a small house in one of the places mentioned, so it barely gets you a roof and Frosted Flakes for your troubles.

M.

[emprof]

More food for thought:  the reported "salary" from my public university is not just the 9 month salary.  It also includes all additional income from the university - summer teaching,  overload teaching, workshop stipends, etc. Depending on my tolerance for additional work, my reported "salary" fluctuates by a much as $20k year to year.

[clean]

More food for thought:  the reported "salary" from my public university is not just the 9 month salary.  It also includes all additional income from the university - summer teaching,  overload teaching, workshop stipends, etc. Depending on my tolerance for additional work, my reported "salary" fluctuates by a much as $20k year to year.

this depends! 
Depending on where you are, only the 9 month number may be reported.  Sometimes it is the last salary.  So my institution complied with the salary requests by submitting only the summer contracts of those teaching summer. IF you didnt teach summer, then your 9 month salary was reported. AS the paper then only reported salaries over $50,K, then  many were excluded from the values.

At a prior institution, they would report the 9 month contract, but IF you were paid form other budget accounts, those values were not reported. 

Bean Counters are usually experts are classifying beans!!  You have to KNOW what they do to know what question to ask!

[mleok]

More food for thought:  the reported "salary" from my public university is not just the 9 month salary.  It also includes all additional income from the university - summer teaching,  overload teaching, workshop stipends, etc. Depending on my tolerance for additional work, my reported "salary" fluctuates by a much as $20k year to year.

this depends! 
Depending on where you are, only the 9 month number may be reported.  Sometimes it is the last salary.  So my institution complied with the salary requests by submitting only the summer contracts of those teaching summer. IF you didnt teach summer, then your 9 month salary was reported. AS the paper then only reported salaries over $50,K, then  many were excluded from the values.

At a prior institution, they would report the 9 month contract, but IF you were paid form other budget accounts, those values were not reported. 

Bean Counters are usually experts are classifying beans!!  You have to KNOW what they do to know what question to ask!

Yes, but sometimes they mess up, this year's release listed my base salary + summer salary as my base salary, and that was not true with some of my other colleagues. There's not always consistency from year to year, and this time there wasn't even consistency within the year.

[Ruralguy]

I know some folks involved in compiling the AAUP salary data and they only publish contracted regular salary, not all reported W2 income, which can be quite a bit more. However, for the typical school, that's not likely to shift the median by much or mean at all. Of course, ivies aren't typical!

[mleok]

I know some folks involved in compiling the AAUP salary data and they only publish contracted regular salary, not all reported W2 income, which can be quite a bit more. However, for the typical school, that's not likely to shift the median by much or mean at all. Of course, ivies aren't typical!

To further complicate matters, at public schools that publish salary information, oftentimes, if a professor has an endowed chair that is partially funded through non-state funds, then the base salary reported only reflects the state contribution.

[Ruralguy]

Well, I think some do their best to publish regularly contracted salary, but if the institution or state has odd reporting habits, then I guess these efforts will often be thwarted. I guess as others have said, use it as a rough snapshot, but making a complex decision on salary info alone can be a mistake.