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Working
Group on Policy choices for Allocating $2 Million to Address Compression
in Faculty Salaries
Report
October
18, 2005
On June 5,
2005, Interim Provost David Thorud charged the “Working Group on Policy
Choices for Allocating $2 Million to Address Compression in Faculty
Salaries” (hereafter referred to as “The Compression Working Group”)
with the task of identifying “a range of possible choices for allocating
and applying the $2 million to address compression.” The committee was
asked as well to “elaborate on the pros and cons of various approaches”
to provide materials for a vetting process.
The Working Group met regularly throughout the
summer to assess data and relevant issues to defining and analyzing
compression. In addition, the Working Group invited a sub-group of
department chairs who served as a group of consultants in thinking
through what compression looks like at the department level and how it
may vary by discipline, department culture, and the variations of
national markets.
The Compression Working Group was asked
specifically to examine several assumptions that have underlain
discussions about salary compression. Our report begins with the
committee’s comments on these assumptions:
1.
“The $2 million will not be adequate to fully address
institutional compression issues. Hence, additional increments of
compression funding will probably be needed over, say, the next 4-5
years.”
Comments: The Compression Working Group
concurs with this assumption and strongly urges the Provost to consider
making repeated investments to address the issue of faculty salary
compression. One of the committee’s goals was to try and identify a
target range of additional investment that would be needed to address
the compression problem in a substantive way, thereby enabling the
Provost to engage in longer-range planning about resources needed to
address compression. For a variety of reasons, this figure proved more
elusive than initially thought. Different methods of calculating
compression yielded different totals. These methods of calculation and
the long-range totals associated with them will be discussed further in
the report.
2.
“Compression is in the eye of the beholder and there are many
beholders. Hence, a working definition of compression will be needed as
a product of the Group's analysis.”
Comments: The Working Group addressed two
issues here: definition of compression and difference between
compression and inversion. One definition of compression, put forward
by Robert K. Toutkoushian, is that “The term salary compression
refers to an unusually small salary differential between faculty with
different levels of experience.”
As for the issue of inversion versus compression,
the Working Group agrees that, for the
purposes of this discussion, there is no meaningful difference between
salary compression and salary inversion; both reflect the same problem
and require the same attention. The lack of a meaningful difference is
apparent from a simple example of two meritorious full professors. One
is paid a dollar a year more than an assistant professor, the other a
dollar less. The first is a victim of salary compression, the second of
salary inversion. Their material situations are essentially identical.
3.
“After identifying compressed salaries, the remedy in terms of
additional salary allocation will be based on the merits of the academic
record of the individuals identified. For example, "years in grade"
would not be a sufficient reason in itself to award additional
compression dollars to a compressed salary.”
Comments: The Working Group concurs and
recommends that the Provost allocate these funds to address salary
compression of highly meritorious faculty.
4.
“The recently developed guidelines for "unit adjustments" may or
may not have a role to play in the allocation and application of
compression dollars.”
Comments: The Working Group concurs that, to
the extent that allocations are made by unit, these guidelines may be of
use to deans and chancellors as they consider possible differential
allocations.
5.
“The $2 million, in this case, is limited to faculty.”
Comments: The Working Group concurs but
also had some discussions as to the definition of “faculty.” Should,
for example, the compression funds be available to lecturers? Part-time
faculty? Librarians? Should they be limited to Associate and Full
Professors, who have presumably been at UW long enough to feel the
effects of a compressed salary system, or should they be available to
Assistant Professors as well? The Working Group recommends that
compression funds be limited to tenure-line faculty, with primary
emphasis being upon those in the Associate and Full ranks. The Working
Group recommends that individual deans and chancellors be given latitude
to consider exceptional appeals that may be brought forward regarding
full-time lecturers.
6.
“Whatever system is selected for allocation of these funds, the
administration will want an approval role regarding application
recommendations from the units identified for potential compression
funding. Further, a mechanism is probably needed for negotiated
arrangements between the administration and the involved units. Some
flexibility is needed to deal with unanticipated complications.
Bureaucratic rigidity would not be helpful.”
Comments: The Working Group concurs that,
because of the subtleties and nuances of individual compression cases,
flexibility be encouraged.
After extensive
discussion, the Working Group reached agreement upon the following:
1. In order to allocate the $2 million as equitably as possible across
campuses, schools and colleges, the Provost should be informed in this
first round of allocations by multiple forms of data. The data on peer
comparisons and deviations from reasonable salary growth for meritorious
faculty, which form part of this report, should help to guide the
development of such a distribution policy. We recognize that special
consideration will be required for units that have the market strength
to address some or all of their compression/inversion issues through
tuition increases, as well as for units whose problems need to be
addressed earlier, rather than later, in this multi-year process.
Regardless, the distribution policy should be as transparent as
possible.
2. In recognition of the complex and variable salary histories of
individual academic units and individual faculty, deans and chancellors
should be given considerable flexibility in allocating their funds,
recognizing that this
is a multi-year problem. The strategy in each campus, school or college
should be based on a broad collegial discussion and should be as
transparent as possible.
3. The charge letter to the Working Group made clear the Provost's
recognition that the elimination of inappropriate cases of salary
compression/inversion would take several years. Our Committee estimates
that $2 million per year for six or seven years will be required to
address the problem. We urge the President and Provost to make such an
ongoing investment a top budgetary priority.
4. Allocation of adjustments for compression should follow the policies
and guidelines put forward in the Faculty Code.
Explanation of salary data:
The Working Group reflected upon the multiple ways
in which compression could be identified in a unit and investigated
several ways of depicting salary distributions within units. The
Working Group recognized that compression was the result of two primary
factors: first, lack of resources to keep UW salaries as a whole
competitive with market rate salaries for like institutions, including
the variability of resources as they fluctuate from one year to the
next; and second, the fact that limited existing resources are often
targeted towards recruitment and retention, often leaving fewer
resources available by unit to address compression. Consequently, the
Working Group prefers to utilize data that reflect both of these
issues: peer salary levels and expected salary progression.
- Peer salary data: Because UW competes
on a national basis with peer institutions, the UW salary system
should be informed by an understanding of competitive salary
levels. Such an understanding implies that:
- Peer salary information provides a data
point (average or median) around which individual salaries
should cluster, within a reasonable range (ranges themselves
often vary by discipline and field). In other words, a peer
salary level for a particular rank and discipline does not imply
that all UW faculty in a similar discipline and rank should be
paid at that salary level. Collegial assessment should inform
the appropriate relationships of an individual’s salary to that
peer data.
- The most readily available peer data is
that of the HECB 24. Other peer data, such as the OFM 8 or
relevant peer data for UW Bothell and UW Tacoma, would be
informative as well.
- Expected salary progression: Guided by
recent policy decisions that a meritorious faculty member should
merit a minimum of a 2% increase in any given year, the Working
Group examined data that projected a faculty member’s salary over
the course of a career with an expected increase of 2% per year
relative to the current starting salary for incoming assistant
professors. An individual’s current salary level could then be
compared to this projected salary level.
- Such a salary progression chart assumes
that a faculty member meets the expectations associated with
such an annual increase, as outlined in the Faculty Code.
- Such a salary progression chart would
need, of course, to be placed in a context of collegial
assessment and is not intended to hold predictive value for all
faculty salaries.
While each of these data systems has its own
limitations, each is useful in providing information regarding UW salary
levels. Consequently, the Working Group recommends that a combination
of these data systems, along with other relevant information as to total
number and composition of faculty, be utilized in order to gather a
fuller picture of unit and individual salary levels.
Committee members:
Sandra Archibald
David Hodge
Arthur Nowell
Gary Quarfoth
Gail Stygall
Doug Wadden
Ross Heath, Co-Chair
Susan Jeffords, Co-Chair
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