By STEVEN SPEARS
Managing Editor

(WARRENSBURG, Mo., digitalBURG) — The line between faculty pay scales at UCM is growing fainter while administrative pay outstrips pay increases, according to faculty senate reports.

The Faculty Senate Salary and Fringe Benefits Committee released two reports April 5 that showed evidence of salary compression between faculty over the last decade and a disparity in pay raises between administrative staff and faculty.

Ben Johnson, Faculty Senate salary and fringe benefits committee chair, said the committee looked at publicly available data on salary ranges for various faculty levels.

“Assistant professors have seen their salary range increase at a faster rate than associate or full professors not only in percentage terms, but also in absolute dollar terms since 2011,” Johnson said. “In a nutshell, professors who were promoted in 2016 were likely to receive less of a raise than professors who were promoted in 2011. The requirements for promotion, of course, remained the same.”

From 2011 to 2016, salaries for assistant professors have increased 8.4 percent while associate salaries increased 6.5 percent and salaries for full professors went up 3.6 percent, according to the report on salary compression. With these numbers in mind, the lower-limit salaries increased $4,216 for assistant professors, $3,892 for associate professors and $2,667 for full professors since 2011.

Johnson said pay for instructors is not normally included in conversations about salary compression, but the numbers were hard to ignore.

“It was impossible not to notice in looking over these numbers that the increase in the salary range for instructors has been especially woeful,” he said.

The minimum salary for full-time instructors increased $946, or 2.4 percent, since 2011, according to the salary compression report.

Johnson said the numbers are not quite as stark in the longer term. Since 2006, pay increased 16.2 percent for full professors, 19.5 percent for associates, 19.8 percent for assistants and 13.2 percent for instructors, according to the report.

“So it could be that the compression of this decade will reverse to some degree in coming years,” Johnson said.

UCM President Chuck Ambrose said the standard for pay raises has changed.

“I think even going back prior to the recession – especially in light of fixed costs and benefit cost rises – that the standard has basically just been, ‘Can we give a raise?’” Ambrose said. “It’s been an incremental raise basically to try and stay up with the cost of living. With inflation rates being as low as they have been… that standard is pretty low.”

Ambrose said in his 19 years as a college president he doesn’t think he’s given more than a 3 or 4 percent raise in a given year.

“But the fact that we’ve been able – with the exception of the first fiscal year budget I’ve presented – to give a raise every year has made somewhat of a difference,” he said. “We’ve given a $600 raise, which has been a 5 or 6 percent increase, to people under $30,000 every year… to try and lift our lowest salaried employees beyond the poverty rate.

“There is very little ability, other than significant reductions in staff… to deal with compression, much less market rates.”

In addition to salary compression, the committee found the rate of increase of administrative salaries to be outpacing salary increases for all other levels of faculty.

The committee looked at the salaries for 31 administrative positions since 2015 and found that 14 of the positions received pay raises at roughly the same rate as tenure-track faculty while 10 positions saw double-digit increases.

For example, while the salary for the vice provost of enrollment management has decreased 9.38 percent since 2015 and the director of KMOS saw a 1.28 percent increase in pay, the vice provost of extended studies received a nearly 40 percent pay increase in the same time period, according to the report on administrative versus faculty pay.

Since 2015, salaries increased 2.6 percent for full professors, 2.5 percent for associates and 3.2 percent for assistants, according to the report on administrative versus faculty pay. Instructor pay decreased 0.5 percent over that time.

Since the recession in 2008, the president’s pay has increased 50 percent, the provost’s 40.9 percent and the athletic director’s went up 61.9 percent, while faculty received no more than a 14 percent increase across the board, according to the report.

The report also looked at the budgets of administrative offices. Many of the budgets have increased since 2008 even as office staff decreased.

Ambrose said staff turnover often contributes to higher budgets.

“You never save money when you lose somebody,” Ambrose said. “You usually have to hire in at a higher rate just to hold even, which leaves everybody behind. It literally leaves everybody behind.”

With the university looking to cut costs due to recent state budget cuts, Ambrose said administrative departments will share the load.

“I think there will be a very disproportionate sharing of cuts to the administrative staff and support units,” he said. “It’s just the way that we’ve always made those decisions.”

Johnson said the salary compression study was just a thumbnail sketch of the situation and might require a closer look in the future.

“If the trend we spotted continues, I do think that a more in-depth study would be warranted,” he said.