Professors across the country have been left with less and less buying power as their salaries fail to keep up with inflation rates, according to a survey released by the American Association of University Professors.
UCLA faculty has been experiencing a similar crunch. Despite increasing inflation rates, faculty members have not received any cost-of-living adjustments since 2007, according to the UC Office for Academic Personnel.
“Traditionally at the University of California, a yearly (cost-of-living adjustment) matched or exceeded inflation,” said Michael Goldstein, immediate past chair of the UCLA Academic Senate. “We have not had any (increases) in the past few years. … Salaries at the UC and at UCLA have not kept up with inflation.”
The UC attempted to increase faculty salaries by instituting a four-year plan in 2007 that was meant to bring salaries back to market competitiveness by 2012. That plan had to be dropped as the recession hit and the state budget decreased its allocations.
Goldstein said this comes in addition to a roughly 8 percent decrease in salary as the result of forced furloughs.
The AAUP’s annual survey found that full-time faculty received a salary increase of 1.2 percent, the lowest yearly increase in 50 years. Inflation, however, went up 2.7 percent in the last year, outstripping the salary increase.
The average salary for a professor in the United States, which is different from that of an associate or assistant professor, now stands at $109,843. The average salary of a UCLA professor is ahead at $148,000, but Goldstein said that number is still not competitive.
“Over the past decade, the position of UCLA faculty has consistently gotten worse and worse every year,” Goldstein said. “It is fair to say that faculty salaries at UCLA are at least 10 percent behind traditional comparison institutions and getting worse.”
Those comparison institutions, which UC administration considers comparable in reputation and quality to the UCs, include schools like Harvard, Stanford, University of Virginia and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
“Our analysis here is that the UCs lag somewhere about 11.2 percent behind the (comparison institutions),” said Janet Lockwood, associate director of the UC Office of Academic Personnel.
The danger lies in the fact that if UC salaries continue to fall behind comparison institutions, UC faculty members may begin to leave the university for better salaries at other schools, Goldstein said.
Most of the competing offers that come to UC faculty are from high-level private institutions, according to Lockwood. As private schools and even public schools in other states recover from the recession faster than California schools, the UC remains at risk of losing its professors.
“This is a golden opportunity for universities in other states to improve the quality of education in their state by taking faculty from those still struggling,” said David Teplow, president of UCLA’s chapter of the AAUP.
Though professors can pitch in to the salary discussions through recommendations made to the UC administration, the ultimate decision to increase salaries lies with the UC Board of Regents.
“There is discussion going on at all levels of the university being very concerned with the university’s need to maintain its market competitiveness,” Lockwood said.
Many different entities are involved in making salary decisions, including the budget office, which reviews how much money the UCs receive from the state, Lockwood said.
The salary question could be addressed now by a temporary reallocation of university resources, Teplow said.
“There is less money, so we want to make sure that money is available to support the most important thing: teaching. And the vehicle for teaching is faculty,” Teplow said.
Even with such reallocations, UC salary budget is inextricably tied to the state budget.
“It’s hard to tell what will happen,” Goldstein said. “The gubernatorial election may have an impact, the policies of the Obama Administration will have an impact, but the situation now doesn’t look good.”