After a report found that faculty salaries at UW-Madison are significantly lower than those at peer institutions, members of the Faculty Senate said Monday they feared professors would leave the university for better-paying offers.
The report suggested UW-Madison use tuition increases and out-of-state admissions to increase revenue to the university.
A Faculty Senate committee drafted the Commission on Faculty Compensation and Economic Benefits Annual Report, which was created to provide information on current problems with faculty retention and offer recommendations to improve faculty benefits.
According to the report, UW-Madison faculty salaries are about 11 percent lower overall than those at competing institutions.
“An 11 percent differential is pretty large and it’s large enough that it makes good people look for other jobs,” said Brad Barham, chair of the Faculty Senate’s University Committee.
The report also found that an increasing number of faculty have been getting job offers from competing institutions, causing concern over the possibility of losing faculty, and an eventual decline in the university’s quality.
“People will say, ‘Well I got a Ph.D. and I’m a good professor and I do good research and I teach well and I’m going to take those skills to another place and make use of them where they understand the investment universities are offering to their people and their economy and their society,’” said Barham.
The report recommends the university consider increasing tuition to create a revenue source that can be used to improve faculty compensation.
Faculty Senator Noah Feinstein said he wanted to consider other options that focus more on building loyalty rather than using economic incentives to keep faculty members at UW.
In addition, the report proposes an increase in the number of out-of-state students admitted to UW, an attempt to further increase revenue.
Faculty Senator Sara Goldrick-Rab said the university needs to keep in mind that the pool of nonresident applicants is “not as deep” as that of resident applicants.
“We know that faculty would not want to see for example the average test scores or the average qualifications of students decline if we increase admission and in the case of nonresidents that is in fact what appears would happen,” said Goldrick-Rab.
Barham said it is important for students to know that the faculty understand tuition can only be a piece of the solution.
“We are really unhappy with a situation where the efforts to improve our salary almost always circle back to having to get students to pay more tuition because we don’t think our salary should ride on the back of student tuition,” said Barham. “Now that’s not to say student tuition isn’t always going to be a part of it, it is.”
