For years, the salaries of University faculty have not compared with other schools throughout the country, and despite continuing efforts made by the administration and the University Senate Budget Committee, both administrators and faculty say professors are still underpaid.
One major concern is that the University of Oregon is losing its competitive edge because professors are leaving for a variety of reasons, such as better pay and research opportunities at other universities.
And the with the latest state budget proposal released, the University could lose millions of dollars, making the situation even more pressing.The Senate Budget Committee released the White Paper plan last January, with the goal of raising faculty compensation to 95 percent of parity to the schools in the Oregon University System’s peer group. But Nathan Tublitz, a biology professor and vice president of the University Senate, said it’s too early to tell whether improvements have been made.
He said a 3 percent increase is needed each year to reach the plan’s goal in three to seven years. Although the necessary increase has been met for 2000-01, Tublitz said the challenge of raising salaries is a long-term project.
“It’s only going to work if the increases occur annually,” he said. “It’s not clear if professors are leaving just for salaries, but clearly it’s a major factor.”
Lorraine Davis, vice provost for academic affairs, is optimistic about the White Paper plan, although she said salary is not the only reason professors leave. She said there used to be an average of 12 faculty resignations per year, but in the last few years, resignations have increased to about 18 each year.
“For the most part, I think we have a very loyal faculty, but sometimes other opportunities are so exciting that they feel they need to leave,” she said.
Some other factors that figure into a professor’s decision to leave have nothing to do with money, such as better research opportunities, Davis said.

Working without tenure
Others aren’t as optimistic about the future of professors’ salaries. Shaul Cohen, an assistant geography professor, is a member of the senate’s Ad Hoc Committee, which was created last fall to support non-tenured faculty and to study instructor compensation issues. Non-tenured faculty are not included in the White Paper plan.
“This community deals with a group that’s even more vulnerable to the budgeting challenge that the University faces,” Cohen said.
He said non-tenured faculty are underpaid at schools throughout the nation because they don’t have the same rights and opportunities that tenured faculty have.
“The reality of their job exceeds their obligations on paper,” Cohen said.
He said committee members are trying to formulate an accurate picture of their situation so they can figure out what steps to take to improve the problem. He said non-tenured faculty work in a different atmosphere with different advantages.
“It’s difficult for them to know what they’re entitled to and have a relationship with their employer, simply because of their non-tenured track status,” he said.

Loyalty has its price
Unlike Davis, Cohen is not as optimistic about the future of higher education in Oregon.
“Oregon has done a very poor job of investing in higher education,” he said. “The signs of optimism we were discussing last year are evaporating in the current budget talks in Salem.”
But Cohen said an equally large problem is the professors who choose to stay at the University, because they often make financial sacrifices by not leaving.
“For every faculty member who leaves for a better salary, there are several who don’t leave,” he said.
Cohen said many professors resist the urge to leave for greater opportunities because they are loyal to the University.
“People are actually making sacrifices to stay here and they do it willingly, but I think everyone wishes we didn’t have to wrestle with the budget,” he said.
Laura Alpert, an associate professor of sculpture, is one of those people. She has been a faculty member at the University since 1979, and said one major problem is salary compression. This occurs when newer faculty are offered higher salaries than faculty who have been on staff for several years, such as Alpert.
“It’s a problem with faculty members at the University of Oregon,” she said. “For a long time our salaries have [not] been competitive, and it’s harder for people here a long time to get proportional raises that are fair.”
Alpert said she knows of several former colleagues in the design department who left because they found they could earn double their salaries elsewhere.
She said in the 1980s, there were usually hundreds of applications submitted for positions in the University’s fine arts department, but now not nearly as many people apply for jobs in that department.
“We really need to make sure we can hire faculty equal to the historic quality of this school,” Alpert said.