A new Chronicle project examines faculty members’ pay and purchasing power.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | As The Chronicle’s resident reporters on workplace issues, the two of us hear a lot from readers about how little faculty members are paid and how hard it is to get by on a professor’s salary. A little while ago, we got together with some colleagues to ask whether faculty members can afford the American Dream. The approach we took to answer that question relied on both individual perspectives and nationwide data.
We sought perspectives from across the country about how professors make ends meet. The seven instructors who spoke with us shared intimate details about how much they make, owe, and spend, revealing the strain many who work in higher ed feel — and how that strain measures up against their devotion to their work and to their students.
Meanwhile, our colleague Jacquelyn Elias, a news applications developer, analyzed how far professors’ salaries go in different areas of the country, based on the cost of living in each county. The interactive tool she built allows any instructor to see how their salary, and their buying power, compares to their peers’ across the United States.
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| | | | | Megan teamed up with two more members of our data team, Brian O’Leary and Julia Piper, to mine the data behind the interactive tool. We discovered that assistant professors earn less than average at eight out of 10 colleges, after adjusting for the cost of living, and that even within the same university system, the cost of living can have a big impact on faculty spending power, among other key findings.
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| | | What Professors Actually Earn
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| | | | | As we continue to write about compensation and the academic workplace, here are a few of the questions we’re thinking about:
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| | | | | • | The pandemic changed how many people think about the role of work in their lives. How has the compact between higher ed and its workforce been altered, in good ways and bad?
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| | | | | • | How are faculty and staff members advocating for change in their workplaces?
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| | | | | • | What’s one thing readers should know about what it’s like to work in higher ed today?
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| | | | | Do you have thoughts on any of these questions? What else is on your mind? We’d love to hear from you, so please reach out. Email us at [email protected] and [email protected].
And our cost-of-living project isn’t over yet. We’d like to hear about how far your money goes; tell us about it by filling out this brief form so we can continue our reporting.
As always, thanks for reading.
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Megan Zahneis and Adrienne Lu
Senior Reporters, The Chronicle of Higher Education |
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