CSU teacher pay below U.S. average
By Jason Kosareff
Daily Forty-Niner
Faculty on tenure track at the California
State University
campuses are earning approximately 12.5
percent less than the national average, according to California Postsecondary
Education Commission reports.
"Overworked and underpaid faculty are teaching
overcrowded classes," said Hamdi Bilici, president of the California Faculty
Association, the union representing CSU faculty.
"We've been playing catch up," said Keith
Polakoff, vice president of Academic Affairs. "In the last couple of years
we have closed the gap."
CPEC, an independent body that advises
the CSU, surveyed 20 universities across the nation earlier this year and
found that salaries of CSU tenure track professors fall short of the national
average by $9,336, or 12.5 percent.
Tenure track is the term used to describe
full-time faculty members, who after being hired by the university and
working through a probationary period, may become permanent employees of
the university.
A CSU survey comparing salaries of CSU
tenure track professors to those of all other California university professors
puts the gap at 10 percent.
When compared with salaries of California
public university professors, the survey indicated the gap was at 11 percent.
Both surveys reflect the 5.7 percent raise
present in the 1999-2000 CSU budget.
"The word 'raise' is really a misnomer
here," Bilici said.
"What is in dispute is the CPEC 20 [survey],"
said Gary Reichard, vice president of Academic Affairs.
The CPEC 20 survey "is not something that
was arrived at by scientific formula," Polakoff said. "It was a series
of judgment calls."
The purpose of this survey is to set a
reasonable target for CSU faculty salaries, Polakoff said.
However, what determines a reasonable salary
and what constitutes a competitive wage are not necessarily the same thing,
he said.
Next year's $3.2 billion CSU budget request
includes a six percent salary raise for faculty, according to the Chancellor's
Office. Of that six percent, four percent will constitute the raise given
to all CSU employees and two percent will be an additional salary increase
just for faculty, said CSU spokesman Ken Swisher.
The two percent raise amounts to $20 million
out of the CSU budget for 2000-2001, Swisher said.
These raises are "just a small down payment"
on what the faculty should be earning, Bilici said. "Faculty salaries have
strong ties to the quality of teaching."
Bilici said many professors will be retiring
over the next few years and the CSU campuses will not be able to hire the
best and the brightest professors as replacements without a competitive
salary to attract them.
All parties agree that CSU faculty made
sacrifices during the recession of the early part of this decade.
"During the early 1990s, the CSU went for
four years without a salary adjustment," Polakoff said.
"The average faculty member lost $50,000
over the decade," Bilici said. "That is about one year's salary."
The priority in the next round of negotiations
between the CFA and the CSU will be discussing excessive faculty workloads,
which, along with low salaries, are eroding the quality of education the
CSU system provides, Bilici said.
The CSU and the Missouri State systems
are the only two university systems in the country where professors teach
four courses per semester, according to Polakoff.
Usually, faculty at research-oriented universities
teach two courses per semester; liberal arts college professors normally
teach three courses per semester.
Bilici said he fears an assembly line-style
of education in the CSU system if the workload is not reduced. |
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