Although it arrrived too late to be included in the printed agenda for the
Faculty Meeting tommorrow, I have received a report by the Subcommittee for
Faculty Salaries which is a preliminary draft, but it warrants discussion
under "other business" or part of one of the reports already on our agenda.
As Faculty Secretary I bring it to your attention.

The report includes data and explanation of methodology, but I will
summarize some salient points:

The salary gap our administration has been hoping to close is actually much
larger than previously publicized, due to factors such as the location of
peer institutions (largely rural), non-inclusion of UNC data, inflation by
our many Chairs of Excellence and Professorships (they may be the only
faculty actually paid what they are worth), and some other technical factors.

The result is that the overall pay gap is 300% larger than acknowledged,
and I quote from the report: "..assistant professors having a large gap,
associate professors a huge gap, and full professors suffering from a
veritable chasm of a pay gap...[reflecting] compression created because new
hires must be paid a market salary." As a result, during the 2000-2001
academic year, the pay gap looks like this:

        Full Professor:       71.2 % of average salary

        Associate Professor       80.9 % pf average salary

        Assistant Professor           86.2 % of average

In another words, the greater years of service to the university results in
a bigger difference in compensation compared to peer group institutions
(never mind "flagship" institutions such as UTK). In as much as there never
seems to be enough to fund decent annual increases even equal to inflation,
the prospect is for further erosion in the ability of the university to
attract and keep quality faculty. Sooner or later our recognized
achievement in the face of economic adversity will be compromised.

Given the state funding crisis, there seems to be no light at the end of
this long tunnel, but it might be worthy of discussion and a public hearing
tommorrow.

Richard Rice,
Faculty Secretary