Compared with other research institutions across the country, UNM faculty members are compensated less, and although there is no immediate solution, the University intends to continue to study and correct pay gaps with respect to national averages.
According to an Office of the Provost report analyzing faculty compensation, 30 percent of UNM tenured and tenure-track faculty are paid “below the 25th percentile of the average of salaries at 76 other public research universities.”
Meanwhile, the report said over 55 percent of tenure and tenure-track faculty are paid below the 50th percentile or median, with 44 percent of tenure and tenure-track faculty compensated above the median.
So far UNM has spent over $600,000 trying to close some of these raw gaps, but President Bob Frank and officials from the Office of the Provost said it will take an additional $5 million to raise all salaries to meet or exceed the national median, which could prove difficult given the University’s current budget situation.
Frank said that, since the start of his tenure, UNM has invested nearly $7 million in faculty compensation, with most of the money going to specific areas where faculty compensation lagged behind the market.
“Despite this investment, we recognize that UNM is still significantly below our comparators, and are at risk of losing faculty to other institutions which may not be comparable to us,” Frank said. “It would require about $5 million in new money for Main Campus to close that gap, and the Health Sciences Center faces a similar challenge."
Although 30 percent of all Main Campus faculty members are paid below the 25th percentile of the national average, according to the Provost’s report, and some departments are worse off than others.
According to the report, nearly 70 percent of UNM Law School faculty, 62 percent of fine arts faculty, and half of the University’s engineering professors are paid below the 25th percentile.
Other departments are somewhat better off. 20 percent of professors in the College of Arts and Sciences, 21 percent of faculty in Anderson School of Management and 29 percent of faculty in the Education Department are below the 25th percentile, according to the report.
Carol Parker, UNM’s senior vice provost and author of the preliminary report cited above, said that the Provost’s Office is using the preliminary allocation of $600,000 to further study and inform further compensation projects at UNM.
“We used the data collected in the study to identify the individuals who received the most recent round of salary adjustments,” Parker said. “As a result of our new data, we saw that faculty salaries in the junior ranks start off essentially with parity, but that the salaries of women and minorities in the senior ranks need a close look.”
UNM administrators are also taking an in-depth look at discrepancies in pay among professors of different ethnic and gendered backgrounds.
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Mickayla Hodgman, a senior studying conservation biology, said she thinks it's “intuitive” to assume that better, more qualified and more experienced professors will expect a higher pay.
“Obviously it would be really awesome if professionals in New Mexico got paid more, or at least equally,” she said. “But in my experience, the problems in my education come from the bureaucratic hoops and departmental shortcomings.”
Both Parker and Frank acknowledged that uncompetitive compensation rates could affect faculty hiring and retention rates.
Parker said being able to give good compensation date to deans and chairs is an effective way to educate departments about competitive salary rates and aid in effective hiring.
"We now have much better data than we have ever had in the past, with respect to the factors that go into compensation. So now we have a much greater capacity to oversee, manage and propose compensation rates," Parker said. "This is very helpful at the time of negotiating an initial salary for a new hire, and it is important that we get those rates as competitive as possible."
One of the projects Parker is working on now involved creating informational "dashboards" to ensure departments have easy access to the data collected by the Provost's studies.
"With those dashboards, we will be able to give deans and chairs immediate access to the data we got in the study," Parker said. "That way they will be able to easily look at where their faculty fall relative to the national median, and to women and men of equal rank and equal years of service."
Parker said this will “help ensure that our compensation for faculty is as competitive and equitable as possible.”
Austin Tyra, a junior English and philosophy double-major, said he feels it's unfortunate that UNM faculty members are under-compensated for their work.
“I'm sure it's a very complicated issue interwoven with the financial troubles of UNM and the city of Albuquerque as a whole,” Tyra said. “But I still believe that we should prioritize the indemnity of our teachers across the board so they feel more respected and motivated in their positions.”
Jonathan Natvig is a news reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Natvig99.
