Fellow UTC Colleagues,

Remembering (a) Prof. Garrett's pointed questions of then-candidate Gov.
Phil Bredesen during a campaign appearance on our campus and (b) having
lost more than one quantitative arguments with Prof. Garrett, I'd
appreciate our campus leaders' (alias "high administration officials")
addressing the NUMBERS that Prof. Garrett presents.


--------Prior Email by Prof. Garrett--------------------

>Approved-By:  "John R. Garrett" <[log in to unmask]>
>Date:         Wed, 3 Sep 2003 15:56:38 -0400
>Reply-To:     "John R. Garrett" <[log in to unmask]>
>Sender:       UTC Staff E-Mail List <[log in to unmask]>
>From:         "John R. Garrett" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      [UTCSTAFF] UTC Salaries and Reality
>To:           [log in to unmask]
>
>Dear Fellow Faculty:
>
>Thank you for your truly excellent comments on UTC salaries and
>priorities.  You are absolutely correct.  You are severely underpaid and it
>is getting worse.  The faculty's Budget and Economic Status Committee has
>watched, measured and reported the negative salary trend for years.  The
>Faculty Senate has steadfastly refused to take action on the committee's
>reports or policy proposals.  The usual reason informally given for
>ignoring the committee's findings was that the administration did not care
>for the proposals ( Duh! ) and would be upset if the Faculty Senate
>supported them.  Not upsetting the administration has seemingly been the
>goal accorded the highest priority by a majority of the Faculty Senate for
>many, many years.  For an economist this response is bizarre.  The old
>colonial saying is "the squeaky wheel is the one that gets the grease," a
>rather elegant formulation of the problem of distributing scarce tallow
>among wagon wheels.  The research of thousands of economists indicates that
>institutions always function according to the colonial saying,  and that
>the strategy long followed by the faculty senate is doomed to failure.
>
>The last complete salary analysis by the Budget and Economic Status
>Committee was reported to the Faculty Senate in April of 2001.  It found
>that the average UTC full time faculty member was paid precisely 81% of
>CUPA average for rank and discipline  (78% if Chairs of Excellence are
>excluded).  At this time the University was reporting to the press that the
>average UTC faculty member was paid 97% of the CUPA average .  At the
>administration's request a meeting was held to reconcile the
>difference.  At this meeting high administration officials attempted to
>discredit the committee's methodology.  However, the Committee had planned
>for this ruse by using the identical data base and carefully documenting a
>rigorous calculation method.  After fifteen minutes of discussion the
>administration officials admitted that the Committee's calculations were
>flawless.  The administration representatives including Vice Chancellor
>Brown were then subjected to a friendly if focused interrogation.   They
>could not explain the method by which they produced their erroneous
>results.   Several sources of likely error were: i) they assumed that UTC
>faculty were an equal mix of instructors, assistant professors,
>associate  professors and full professors; ii) they included department
>head salaries;  iii) they included the salaries of  full time
>administrators who held  tenure in a department as faculty salaries;  iv)
>they included 12 month salaries in categories ii) and iii) above as nine
>month salaries;  v) athletic (coaching) salaries were included.   The
>administration representatives could not say whether they committed the
>above errors or not.  The only definite source of error that they admitted
>was a deliberate misstatement of results by using CUPA data that were
>always from the previous year, e.g. 2001 UTC salaries were compared with
>2000 national salaries.  This automatically overstates UTC salaries by
>5%.   When asked why they repeatedly committed a methodological error, they
>responded with a nonsense answer.  Upon further questioning the
>administration officials admitted that comparing salaries with incorrect
>years falsified their results, but they declined to change their
>methodology.  My conclusion was that the administration's goal was to
>engineer the results to deliberately overstate faculty salaries.
>
>Since the 2001 Budget and Economic Committee analysis (based on 2000 data)
>UTC salaries for full time teaching salaries have fallen further behind the
>national averages by an average (using  the administration's CUPA data) 2%
>per year.  That means the average full time teaching faculty is paid  about
>73% of the national average for rank and discipline.  Yet the
>administration still reports UTC faculty are in the high 90's.  I am
>outraged, but hardly surprised.
>
>
>
>John Reynolds Garrett
>UC Foundation Professor of Economics
>University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
>423.425.4080 (desk)
>423.425.4360 (secretary)
------------------------------------------
>

Maurice E. Edwards, Ph.D., Professor, Dept. #2653
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue,
Chattanooga, TN  37403-2598

Telephone: (423) 425-4341;  (423) 425-4299--Desk
FAX:  423-425-2285