I just read Harold Climer's response to Charles Lippy's email and I think
the raises he mentioned for  "fulltime faculty and staff" should be put in
perspective from a statistical point of view.

Since October 1994(the famous election year raise), the percentages below
represent the percentage raises of a fellow UTC tenured faculty member who
has kept his pay stubs  over the past 9 years (it excludes the $300 raise
for health insurance this past year and exceptional merit which have not
been given since who can remember). I daresay that it probably mirrors the
raises of the majority of the faculty over this period.

August 1996     2.12%
January 1998    2%
January 1999    2%
August  2000    3.5%
August  2001    2.5%
January 2002   2.5%
January 2003   2%

This computes to a compounded raise of 17.84181% over a period of 9 years.
That is,
(1.0212)(1.02)...(1.025)(1.02)=1.1784181

This total % raise computes to an average raise (compounded) of 1.84% per
year
in some of  the best of economic times in this country. That is,
(1 + r)^9=1.1784181 yields r = .0184 = 1.84%

This, of course, excludes the raises this past January bringing a select few
up to 80% of market value and creating a myriad of compression problems. For
instance, in our department, the average salary of assistant professors is
roughly the same as that of associates, many of whom have been teaching more
than 20 years, while all the salaries of full professors are now bunched
together.

I would hope that when Dr. Ernst does his comparison of administrative
raises with faculty that he uses a model such as the one above as a basis
for comparison. And I would hope that, to give a better overall picture, he
extends this study to this 9 year window rather than the past 5 years he
mentioned in last week's newspaper article.

Also, in this morning's paper it was stated that the average salary of a
full professor was $69K+. In our department two full professor salaries are
above this figure, those of the department head and the chair of excellence
(who came from PhD granting schools). Were outliers thrown out when the
average salary of a full professor was computed? If not, I do not think the
average salary is indicative of the salary compression that most faculty
have experienced in the past decade. Rather, it gives undue weight to the
salaries of endowed chairs and the newly formed SIM program. In statistics
it is understood that, for salary and price issues,  the median (the middle
measurement) rather than the mean is a better indicator of the central
tendency of the data. This is because the median reduces the effect of
outliers. Without a careful analysis of this issue the term "average" salary
is probably not meaningful.




----- Original Message -----
From: "Harold Climer" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2003 3:56 PM
Subject: Re: [UTCSTAFF] Salaries


> At 11:11 AM 8/29/03 -0400, Charles Lippy wrote:
> >My personal outrage at the way salary inequity is being perpetuated stems
> >as much from the demeaning remarks reported in the press this morning as
> >from administrators getting hired at inflated salaries or being given
> >raises approaching ten percent (in order to be competitive, we're told).
> >All of us deserve a competitive salary. But the statement attributed to a
> >top-level administrator that administrators work harder than faculty and
> >were being asked to do more in tough financial times (aren't we all?) was
> >hard to swallow. So, too, was the "let them eat cake" type of statement
> >reported when another, even more senior adminstrator was quoted as saying
> >that it was easier to fix a few salaries than 250. In good conscience I
had
> >to rescind my acceptance of an invitation to the Chancellor's home for
> >faculty on a school night at that. After all, I did not want to add to
the
> >perception that as a mere faculty member I had nothing to do on a weekend
> >but socialize. Perhaps the UTC administration has taken too many lessons
> >from Schumacher.
> >Chuck Lippy
> >LeRoy A. Martin Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies
>   I know I do not rate very highly here at UTC(monetarily speaking), just
> being an adjunct instructor in Physics, despite what our
>   contracts say each semester..It is true that our faculty are underpaid,
> but most the
> full time faculty and staff have had several raises since adjuncts had
one.
> It could be worse, full time people could be in the same boat as we are .
>