Newsletter Spring 1996
Robert E. Sloan, President TCAAUP
The table on the inside of this newsletter reports AAUP data on salary by rank for 1995-96 for major research universities. Complete information for a total of 2,230 colleges and universities is included in the April issue of Academe that comes to all members of AAUP.
The Twin Cities Chapter of the AAUP has reported this data for over a decade. We have argued that our salaries should be measured by our competition: the country's top ranked research universities. Writing in 1983 and using 1982 rankings of the National Research Council (NRC), David S. Webster identified the country's 30 top ranked research universities. (With a tie for the rank of 30, Webster actually identified 31 universities, but salary data for the CUNY Graduate Center was seldom available.) This year, the comparison is again with top ranked research universities. Based on work by Craig Swan using the most recent NRC rankings and described elsewhere in this newsletter, the table includes 34 universities as five schools tied for the rank of 30. Since 1983, five schools have passed Minnesota in rank, UC San Diego, Washington (Seattle), Texas, Duke, and Johns Hopkins. In addition 6 new schools made it into the top 30, Penn State, UC San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara, Arizona, Rochester, and Stony Brook. Three schools, CUNY, Rockefeller and Indiana, have slipped below 30 in these rankings.
Salaries for full professors at Minnesota now rank 30/34 at $12,900 below the mean. Salaries for associate professors rank 29/34 at $6,400 below the mean. There is a slight improvement in the ranking of salaries for assistant professors where Minnesota faces significant competitive pressures when hiring. Salaries for assistant professors rank 25/34 at $3,200 below the mean. Salaries at Minnesota continue to be mired at the bottom of those at top ranked research universities.
Comparing Minnesota to the 12 schools of the "Big Ten" plus Chicago, full professors rank 9/12 at $5,600 below the mean, associate professors rank 10/12 at $4,000 below the mean, and assistant professors rank 7/12 at $1,700 below the mean.
Our rank in reputation seems to be approaching our rank in salaries. This is a result that serves neither the faculty nor the state well. While there might be a short term budgetary savings to the state if faculty salaries are allowed to remain uncompetitive, the longer term loss if Minnesota ceases to be a major research university would be much greater. On average faculty members bring in non-state dollars for support of research, training and public service that total twice their University salary. It is estimated that this record of success on the part of the faculty supports over 10,000 jobs in Minnesota. Over 3,000 companies have been identified that were founded or are owned by University alumni and faculty. They employ over 100,000 Minnesotans. Agricultural products developed at the University of Minnesota accounted for 80% of Minnesota agricultural exports in 1990. University graduates account for 50% of Minnesota physicians, 80% of Minnesota dentists and 60% of Minnesota pharmacists and veterinarians.
The ability of the University faculty to sustain this record of achievement and contribution to the state economy is at risk. The slippage of the University as seen in the 1995 NRC rankings show just how much risk is involved. We are in danger of being penny wise and pound foolish.
At the legislature this winter there were important discussions of tenure at the University of Minnesota. Much of the discussion focused on the Academic Health Center at the University and legislators' perception of the need for changes that reflect the changing realities of health care competition.
While thoughtful legislators said that their only concern was to insure that the tenure code not be so rigid as to prohibit programmatic change, it was clear that many legislators did not fully understood the importance of a strong tenure code as an essential element in defense of academic freedom. Guarantees of academic freedom represent a social compact with colleges and universities
that as a society we will be stronger and better off in the long run by insuring the right and ability of scholars to engage in research and teaching free from external or internal threats and intimidation. Threats to academic freedom are not idle concerns or things that happened only in the distant past.
It took a great deal of effort to establish strong tenure codes to protect academic freedom in the face of significant political opposition. The AAUP was in the forefront of those efforts. Faculty, while open to considering reasoned changes, are naturally extremely sensitive to actions that have the potential to erode such hard won gains.
1995-1996 SALARIES OF THE TOP 34 RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
(RANKED IN ORDER OF QUALITY)
(Salaries and Compensation in $1000)
1982 1995 School Prof Assoc Asst Mean Mean
Rank Rank Prof Prof Salary Total
9 mos Comp
PUBLIC 1 1 UC Berkeley 86.5 57.1 48.9 71.9 91.6
2 2 Stanford 103.3 69.9 55.1 88.5 106.5
3 3 Harvard 107.0 58.8 54.9 85.4 105.0
6 3 Princeton 101.4 60.3 46.5 78.2 95.1
11 5 Cornell 82.2 59.4 48.3 65.7 82.6
7 6 Chicago 96.5 62.1 55.4 80.0 98.4
PUBLIC 8 7 Michigan 85.0 62.0 50.1 65.7 82.1
5 8 MIT 96.9 67.1 54.3 80.4 100.9
3 9 Yale 100.5 56.0 47.2 76.0 92.3
11 9 Columbia 93.0 61.0 49.1 73.8 98.2
PUBLIC 8 11 UCLA 84.5 56.8 48.4 68.1 86.9
PUBLIC 8 12 Wisconsin 70.4 52.5 46.4 61.3 77.4
(Madison)
14 12 Pennsylvania 96.5 64.2 55.6 80.8 102.8
PUBLIC 21 14 UC San Diego 82.3 55.0 46.3 67.3 85.8
PUBLIC 20 15 Washington 70.2 49.9 44.6 58.0 71.3
(Seattle)
15 16 Cal Tech 103.1 75.0 59.0 92.5 115.0
PUBLIC 16 16 Texas (Austin) 76.1 49.3 44.9 60.3 72.9
PUBLIC 13 18 Illinois (C-U) 75.2 53.4 46.6 62.9 72.1
25 19 Duke 91.7 62.6 50.1 75.2 93.1
30 19 Johns Hopkins 84.8 57.8 47.2 62.5 77.7
PUBLIC 16 21 Minnesota TC 73.0 51.5 45.5 61.7 78.7
18 22 Northwestern 92.0 64.5 54.7 77.1 93.4
PUBLIC 18 23 UNC (Chapel Hill) 75.9 54.1 45.7 61.5 73.5
21 24 NYU 96.8 63.7 54.4 74.0 98.0
25 24 Brown 80.0 54.4 46.7 66.6 83.6
PUBLIC 25 26 Purdue 75.7 51.2 44.5 59.3 75.8
PUBLIC 27 Penn State 77.6 53.5 43.6 55.2 68.9
PUBLIC 27 UC San Francisco 70.1 51.4 42.5 58.6 75.0
PUBLIC 29 UC Santa Barbara 81.0 52.7 45.1 63.7 81.3
PUBLIC 30 Arizona 70.9 49.5 43.9 58.6 70.2
PUBLIC 30 SUNY Stony Brook 80.5 56.2 43.0 62.1 78.5
PUBLIC 28 30 Virginia 81.4 54.4 44.2 63.7 78.4
30 Rochester 78.5 54.9 47.8 64.6 77.4
30 30 Carnegie Mellon 88.6 59.1 52.6 73.6 88.1
**********************************************************
******************
Average w/o MN 85.9 57.9 48.7 69.5 86.4
MN below mean 12.9 6.4 3.2 7.8 7.7
Minnesota Rank 30 29 25 26 21
Column for mean includes rank of instructor and is weighted by number of
individuals at each rank
Source: American Association of University Professors
1975-76 to 1995-96
75-76 79-80 83-84 87-88 91-92 95-96
Craig Swan
"Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States," an evaluation of the quality of 41 programs in the arts, sciences and engineering, was released in September 1995 by the National Research Council. A total of 3,634 programs at 274 institutions were included in the NRC report. This report updates the NRC's earlier report of 1982 and similar reports of the American Council on Education issued in 1966 and 1970.
The 1995 report is based on information collected between 1992 and 1993. Major changes from the 1982 report include the addition of a eight new fields in the humanities, physical sciences and engineering along with a taxonomic change in the biological sciences.
At Minnesota, 39 programs were included in the latest NRC rankings. In terms of quality of faculty, five programs ranked in the top ten nationally: Chemical Engineering, Geography, Psychology, Mechanical Engineering and Economics. Seven other programs ranked between 11th and 15th: German, Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, Political Science, Statistics, Mathematics, and Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. On average the ranking of the quality of graduate education for these programs was even stronger than their ranking for quality of faculty.
While the achievements of these programs are to be applauded along with the achievements of other programs that showed improvement, there is substantial room for concern when considering graduate programs at the University as a whole. The NRC report contains a bewildering array of information organized by disciplines. It contains little information that aggregates across institutions. With time to consider the report as a whole, there is clear evidence that the competition is getting tougher and that relative to that competition Minnesota, as an institution, has slipped.
What is the evidence about slippage for the institution as a whole? Writing in 1983, David Webster ranked graduate schools as of 1982 by aggregating the rankings of individual programs. Webster's analysis ranked Minnesota 16th, tied with Texas. A similar analysis applied to the most recent NRC rankings shows Minnesota ranked 21st. Webster also reviewed earlier studies and reports that in 1959 and 1966 Minnesota was ranked 12th while by 1970 Minnesota's rank had slipped to 16th.
There are a number of alternative ways of computing these rankings and alternatives do affect Minnesota's rank. As a generalization, Minnesota's rank tends to be a bit lower under alternatives that give greater weight to top ranked programs. For example, a simple count of the number of programs ranked within the top ten nationally gives Minnesota an overall rank of 23. (Complete results of my analysis are available on the World Wide Web at <www.econ.umn.edu/~cswan>. An executive summary of the NRC report and access to detailed statistics is available at <www.nap.edu/nap/online/researchdoc/summary.html>.)
Individuals will differ in their evaluation of how dramatic the change has been. Some may argue that a change from 16 to 21 isn't very big and others may be relieved that is was not greater. If we are to reverse the decline that has occurred, we must recognize what has happened and resolve to take steps to reverse the slippage that has occurred. Complacency will only make future declines easier to accept and ignores the decline that has taken over a longer period of time.
Mary Burgan, National AAUP General Secretary,
to speak on 'The Significance of Tenure'
Mary Burgan, General Secretary of AAUP and Professor of English, Indiana University, will speak on tenure to a special Twin Cities AAUP meeting on Friday, April 5 at noon in the Dale Shepard Room of the Campus Club. All faculty, whether members of AAUP or not, are invited to this meeting. Lunch is available at the Campus Club (they now take cash if you are not a member). Following lunch, the meeting will start with remarks by Mary Burgan followed by an opportunity for questions and discussions. Please notify Craig Swan if you will be attending <cswan@atlas.socsci.umn.edu>.
Professor Burgan has been a member of the Indiana faculty since 1964. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. At Indiana, she held various appointed and elected positions with the Bloomington and University Faculty Councils as well as serving as chair of the Department of English and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Her most recent book on Katherine Mansfield was published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 1994. In addition to her duties as AAUP General Secretary, Professor Burgan is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Council on Education.
Professor Burgan will also be conducting a special workshop for the Minnesota State AAUP Council on Saturday, April 6 at Macalester College, 10 am.
JOIN AAUP
The American Association of University Professors is a strong advocate for faculty concerns and the nation's leading organization in defense of academic freedom. The AAUP Red Book is the basic reference for policies on tenure and academic freedom. The ability of the AAUP to continue to be a strong defender of academic freedom depends upon the support of faculty across the country, including the University of Minnesota.
For 1996 dues are $115. Dues for new members with tenure are $58 for the first year. Dues for new members who do not hold tenure are $58 for up to seven years or until tenure. All members of AAUP receive Academe as part of their membership. All but $29 of dues, the amount imputed for Academe, are tax deductible as a charitable contribution.
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