Recently, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released this year’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, which includes results of their annual Faculty Compensation Survey. According to the report, the average salary increase for full-time continuing faculty at participating AAUP institutions was approximately 3 percent (from a subset of 1,018 U.S. institutions representing 378,865 full-time faculty members).
AACSB International conducted a similar analysis using our faculty data from the Staff Compensation and Demographics Survey (SCDS), formerly the Salary Survey, from the past two years (2017–18 and 2016–17). The SCDS collects not only salary information for full-time faculty and administrators but also additional information regarding part-time faculty and staff demographics. More information is available in an executive summary for our most recent SCDS (2017–18).
Institutions participating in AAUP’s survey report aggregate full-time faculty salary data split by academic rank and gender for nine- and/or 12-month contracts. AAUP collects related information, such as the number of faculty; total contracted salaries; and the number of tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track faculty. For full-time continuing faculty, institutions report the number of continuing faculty and the total salary outlays for the current and previous year by academic rank, from which the percentage increase in salary is calculated. A recent AAUP presentation on the survey provides further information, including an introduction, overview, and resources.
Unlike AAUP’s survey, participating AACSB member business schools within the SCDS report faculty salaries and demographics at the individual level. Schools are allowed to reference faculty with unique anonymous identifiers; however, these unique identifiers are an optional variable, so not all schools utilize them, which limits our ability to track individual continuing faculty across years.
The initial subset of SCDS data used for a comparative analysis consists of 12,246 continuing full-time faculty. These faculty represent 228 business schools from institutions that are (1) based within the United States and (2) also present in AAUP’s list of participants. Continuing full-time faculty in the context of the SCDS refers to individuals who had a matching unique identifier and further matching demographic characteristics to track on the personal level, even if they were promoted in academic rank between 2016–17 and 2017–18. However, no individual in the sample was promoted within this time frame. Characteristics used to match were discipline taught, gender, and contract length.
Following with AAUP’s methodology, schools whose faculty salaries experienced an average decrease of more than 1 percent or an average increase of more than 16 percent by academic rank with no satisfactory explanation were excluded from all subsequent calculations. Our final data set consisted of 11,675 individuals from 225 U.S. business schools. The following are some highlights from our analysis using SCDS data.
Highlights
- The average salaries for full-time continuing business school faculty (professors, associate professors, assistant professors, and instructors) increased by 2.6 percent over the previous year, without adjusting for inflation.
- Female professors and instructors saw an average salary increase equal to or greater than that of their male counterparts. Table 1 below shows the average salary increase percentage by gender for all academic ranks. Note again that these numbers represent only continuing faculty and that not all schools had continuing faculty in all ranks.
Table 1. Average Salary Increase Percentage for Continuing Faculty by Gender
Rank |
Percent Increase (Female) |
Percent Increase (Male) |
Professor |
2.47 |
2.34 |
Associate Professor |
2.26 |
2.26 |
Assistant Professor |
1.97 |
2.07 |
Instructor |
2.65 |
2.57 |
- The table below shows the percentage of business schools in the sample that pay men more than women at the same academic rank. Like AAUP’s methodology, parity in pay was calculated as the ratio between the average salary by rank for women divided by the average man’s salary. A ratio below 1 indicated the average woman’s salary was below the man’s average salary at that rank, and a ratio above 1 indicated the average woman’s salary was above the man’s average salary at that rank. The numbers below indicate the percentage of schools in the sample whose parity was below 1 for each academic rank. Note again that these numbers represent only continuing faculty and that not all schools had continuing faculty in all ranks.
Table 2. Percentage of Schools Where Average Salary Was Below Gender Parity by Academic Rank
Rank |
Percentage of Schools Below Parity |
N Schools |
Professor |
69 |
203 |
Associate Professor |
52 |
215 |
Assistant Professor |
51 |
212 |
Instructor |
66 |
169 |
- The average salary for professors was 162,000 USD. Associate and assistant professors earned, on average, 134,000 USD and 128,000 USD respectively. The average instructor salary was 78,400 USD. The figure below shows the 2017–18 distribution of average salaries by academic rank.
Figure 1. Distribution of Average Salaries by Academic Rank, 2017–18
Additional Resources
Custom reports that provide detailed breakouts by field/discipline, accreditation status, and institutional control (public vs. private) using the most recent SCDS data are available to all participating schools. Access is available via the AACSB DataDirect benchmarking tools.
For additional requests and questions, please contact us at [email protected].
Comments