Tuition Funds to Target Salary Disparities

But handing out the money raised from the proposed one-year, $400 tuition increase would be no simple task -- the average faculty salary varies widely between schools at the University and between departments within the schools.

Salaries in Arts and Sciences lag an average of $14,000 behind average faculty salaries at five peer institutions, and University officials said much of the revenue from a tuition increase would go to fix this disparity.

Within Arts and Sciences, money would be distributed to departments that fall farthest behind the average departmental salaries at peer institutions.

The average annual faculty salary at UNC-CH is $100,900, according to data compiled by the American Association of University Professors. The figures do not include faculty salaries that are funded primarily through clinical revenues or research grants.

In Arts and Sciences, which provides most undergraduate courses, the average salary for full professors is $89,098 -- about $11,000 less than the Universitywide average, according to Lynn Williford, director of institutional research.

Provost Robert Shelton said salary levels tend to be lower in Arts and Sciences than in UNC-CH's professional schools because professional schools are often market-driven and don't rely solely on state dollars to fund salaries.

The average annual faculty salary is $126,938 in the Kenan-Flagler Business School and $117,251 in the School of Law, while the average annual salaries in the Department of Art and Department of Dramatic Art -- two of the Arts and Sciences departments with the lowest average salaries -- are both below $62,000 a year.

Faculty Council Chairwoman Sue Estroff said because most professional schools set their own tuition levels, funds from a tuition increase will probably not go to increase the salaries of professors who teach professional-level courses.

"Because professional schools can set their own tuition levels, it's a whole other story as far as salaries at those schools," Estroff said.

Shelton said most of the revenue will be given to Arts and Sciences. Shelton said the method of distributing tuition funds based on how far each department's average salary lags behind that of its peers was used to allocate funds from a $600 tuition increase passed in February 2000 by the UNC-system Board of Governors to raise faculty salaries.

"We didn't want to move everyone the same amount forward in dollars," Shelton said. "We wanted to move everyone the same distance in closing the gap."

Shelton said each department has its own salary funds distribution policy set by the department head, although UNC-CH administrators would encourage the money to be distributed to professors as a reward for merit.

He said the tuition increases implemented in the fall of 2000 and of 2001 reduced the gap between each department's average salary and its peer institutions' by one-third.

But the $14,000 salary gap that exists between Arts and Sciences faculty and at UNC-CH's peer institutions makes funding salaries an urgent need, said Dee Reid, communications director for the college.

"Forty faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences received offers from other major universities in the last year alone," Reid said.

"We need faculty salaries to be more competitive with our peer institutions."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.