Average salaries increase and outpace rate of inflation for the sixth time in seven years

College and university faculty earned an average pay raise of 3.7 percent for the 1999-2000 academic year, according to a report released by the American Association of University Professors two weeks ago.

The average salary for a full-time faculty member rose from $56,282 to $58,352, according to the report. Continuing faculty members, who work for the same institution from one year to the next, earned an average of 4.8 percent more.

The 3.7 percent increase surpassed the 1999 inflation rate of 2.7 percent. This is the sixth time in seven years faculty salaries outpaced the rate of inflation, according to the study.

GW professors earned an average of $93,400, and associate professors earned $69,100. Assistant professors received $53,400 and instructors earned $45,800. The figures surpass national averages by at least $8,000.

AAUP reported the statistics rounded to the nearest hundred and adjusted the salaries to a nine-month scale.

The report, entitled More Good News, So Why the Blues? cited two problems. First the pay gap between professors and other highly educated professionals continues to expand. Second, the difference between salaries at public and private institutions and between men and women is also increasing.

Ernest Benjamin, director of research for the AAUP, said faculty salaries are being heavily influenced by the increase in state financing.

It’s been only in the last two or three years that funding of public education has begun to build, Benjamin said in a story in The Chronicle of Higher Education. And 70 percent of faculty tend to work in the public sector of academe.

Male professors at a private doctoral university earned an average of $105,251, while their female counterparts earned $95,525. Male assistant professors at public doctoral universities earned an average of $50,791, while females earned $46,910.

The report was based on a survey of 1,761 institutions – 944 public, 383 private and 434 religious-affiliated.

-Sarah Lechner