Rise in professor salaries
reveal misplaced values

Academic salaries vary significantly, depending on rank and institution, but the overall increases narrowly beat inflation and were the highest since 2002, according to an annual survey released in April by the American Association of University Professors. Salaries of full professors rose 4.2 percent, slightly better than the increases for lower ranks.

The figures don't apply to part-time instructors, who now account for nearly half of college faculty. And the salary numbers are somewhat dragged down because older faculty are retiring and being replaced by younger people who earn less.

Looking only at faculty who stayed at the same institution from one year to the next, salary increases have consistently beaten inflation since 1982. This year, salaries for continuing faculty rose 5 percent overall.

The figures come at a time of relatively healthy financial outlooks for many colleges, with the tax revenues that support public universities strong and endowment investments thriving. But the AAUP made a point of noting the faculty salary increases pale in comparison to those enjoyed by college presidents and Division I football coaches, which the AAUP says shows misplaced priorities.

Adjusted for inflation, salaries of chief executives in higher education rose 35 percent between 1995-1996 and 2005-2006 while faculty salaries rose 5 percent.

The report also notes high-profile contracts for football coaches, such as the University of Alabama's Nick Saban, who recently signed an eight-year deal worth at least $32 million. That's about 10 times as much as Alabama's entire need-based financial aid budget in 2004-2005.

Of course, those increasing salaries amount to relatively little in a school's total budget, given that colleges have no more than one head football coach and one president, while they may have thousands of faculty.

But the AAUP says the gaps have reached alarming proportions. While salaries for full professors at NCAA Division I-A schools ranged from $63,030 (2,045,253 baht) at Marshall University to $136,374 at Duke, the compensation of head football coaches averaged more than $900,000 (29,206,239 baht). By that measure, the report said, "Division I-A head football coaches are, on average, 9.4 times more valuable than their full professor colleagues."

At the University of Oklahoma, the estimated $3.5 million in compensation for head football coach Bob Stoops - the highest of any college football coach - was 36 times that of the average full professor, and about 10 times the latest reported figure for Oklahoma's president. On average, Division I football coaches earned twice as much as their college's president.