Despite the University’s strong financial reserves, positive revenue streams and high research activity, its faculty members are frequently among the lowest paid of all Association of American Universities instructors.
According to Oregon University System audited financial statements, the University’s reserve assets topped $50 million in 2010 — equal to pre-recession holdings — yet the school’s faculty salaries still make up the rock bottom of the higher education heap. Compared to a group of eight other peer institutions, including the Universities of Washington and Virginia, average University faculty pay during the 2009-10 school year ranked ninth at $81,500 — almost $10,000 below the next-lowest school, Indiana University at Bloomington, which paid its teachers $90,800 on average.
The University fares even worse when compared with nationwide wage standards for post-secondary education. Compared to all AAU schools, University faculty salaries ranked dead last — 60th out of 60 — during the 2008-09 school year with an average compensation of $73,300, while the second-lowest wages came from the University of Missouri at an amount of $81,600. This number is the mean of average salaries from four different University faculty categories, including full-time professors ($99,800), associate professors ($72,400), assistant professors ($66,400) and instructors ($45,000).
More than ten years ago, this paradigm was no different. According to a report prepared by the American Association of University Professors, University faculty salaries ranked dead last again during 1995-1996, ranking 30th out of 30 at an average of $46,800. Comparatively, the University of Kansas came in 29th that year with an average compensation rate of $52,600.
Throughout her 19 years of teaching music on campus, Anne McLucas, professor emerita at the University’s School of Music and Dance, has seen talented faculty members pass over the University time and time again due to its dismal pay.
“We do very well in research. We do really miserably in salaries, and we regularly lose people over that,” McLucas said. “We lose some of our best people (because) we get outbid. People get tired of working for less than what they’re worth.”
A member of the organizing committee for the Eugene local of the American Federation of Teachers, McLucas has worked as both a low-level instructor and a self-described administrator as the music school dean from 1992 to 2002. As a member of the school’s “middle management,” the august professor often had to attract new faculty members to campus by advertising Eugene’s community feel, all the while knowing they could net much higher wages elsewhere.
“As a dean I had to sell that,” McLucas said. “I got people to take $30,000 cuts to come here because they wanted to raise their kids in a nice, friendly place. But there is a limit to which you cannot go.”
Additionally, the professor finds it particularly disturbing that all University employees are not seeing the same financial hardships equally. According to OUS data, upper-level administrative costs have risen 63 percent from 2006 to 2010, while instructional expenses have increased by only 22 percent.
“We are starving,” McLucas said. “We can’t pay our faculty any more salaries, yet we are growing class sizes, students are paying more tuition, and administration (members) have grown by 19.8 percent and faculty (members) only by 7.2 percent. There really is money, it is just a matter of priorities.”
University Office of Institutional Research data shows the student-to-faculty ratio on campus has increased from 16.24 in 2007 to 17.57 in 2008 to 18.24 in 2009. Since 2005, the student head count has increased by 10 percent, while the number of faculty members has decreased by 2 percent.
“Who is it that teaches the students? It’s not the administration,” McLucas said. “We educate the kids, which should be the most important thing. Given all of that, I think we are undervalued.”
The former dean also said this trend of underrating faculty work could become worse if University President Richard Lariviere’s now-shelved governance and finance restructuring plan known as the New Partnership is passed next year.
“I am a little suspicious that if we go off on our own without oversight, but with a hand-chosen board of overseers, (we) could be manipulated in such a way that the administration could do what it likes and run it pretty much as a business,” McLucas said. “If we are run as a business, then the faculty will lose out.”
Though she plans to retire at the end of next year, the music professor hopes her advocating for higher compensation will improve the lot of faculty members for years to come.
“I would love to see that as a legacy to the rest of the faculty, to the rest of my faculty,” McLucas said. “I would love to see them get their fair share.”
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