An annual survey of faculty salaries being released today by the American Association of University Professors paints a dismal picture, suggesting that a historic low period for compensation increases continues. This trend may go on for a while, the report says, and it questions whether the numbers will ever go back to where they were before the Great Recession.
According to the survey, titled “A Very Slow Recovery,” average faculty salaries rose by 1.8 percent in 2011-12 at institutions that submitted data for this academic year and the last one. The increase, the survey points out, is less than the 3 percent rate of inflation in the same time period.
“When all of the salary data submitted in each year is adjusted to account for inflation, the overall average salary of a full-time faculty member in 2011-12 is less than 1 percent higher than it was five...
