UW-Madison may top the list in academics and athletics, but the university fails to compete with other universities regarding faculty salaries.

In the 2006-’07 American Association of University Professors salary survey, UW-Madison came in last in its peer group in average faculty salary. While a UW-Madison professor was listed as earning an average yearly salary of $103, 543, the average income of a professor at the University of Minnesota was $116, 596. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor was the highest Big Ten school on the list with an average professor making just over $130,000.

For Jon Pevehouse, who was one of the five professors who left the political science department after school last year for financial reasons, the decision to leave was based largely on issues of funding. According to Pevehouse, he felt the university had become a political football, which had started to affect the amount of funding for the university. Lack of funding was not only affecting his salary, said Pevehouse, but also affecting faculty recruitment.

“When I first got to UW we could compete,” Pevehouse said. “Now that is less true–at least in the social sciences.”

Adding to the lack of competitive salaries, UW-Madison is also the only Big Ten University that does not offer domestic partner benefits.

The state legislature took a step in the right direction this year in recognizing the problem by including a $10 million UW System faculty retention package in the state budget.

However, these extra funds still will not be enough to allow UW-Madison to compete on the same level it used to.

The Board of Regents put forward a proposal last year to increase the faculty pay plan 5.23 percent each year for the next four years. They have already passed a pay plan that will increase faculty salaries by 4 percent.

In order for the plan to be effective, the rest of the 5.23 percent needs to be adopted by the Joint Committee on Employee Relations According to UW System spokesman David Giroux, adoption of such a plan would put UW schools into the median for faculty salaries.

As Chancellor John Wiley said in a 2006 memo to the Joint Finance Committee, “Quality professors are the lifeblood of this institution, and they drive not only our student academic success, but our research prominence and state economic growth.”

UW-Madison needs to support its professors and this support needs to come in the form of benefits and dollars. If competitive standards are not met, UW-Madison will stop attracting the best and the brightest faculty, and if this happens, the university may also stop attracting the best and the brightest students.

JCOER must continue the Regents’ step toward raising faculty salaries to a competitive level and adopt the pay plan increase that totals 5.23 percent.