AACSB Data and Research Blog

AACSB and AAUP Faculty Salary Comparative Analysis

By Joshua Barillas 

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].

Survey Says: New Changes Ahead for Salary Data Collection

By Colin Nelson

September 2017 will mark the opening of the 50th iteration of AACSB’s annual Salary Survey. On this 50th anniversary, in order to better serve our global membership’s needs for pertinent staffing and compensation data, AACSB will be enfolding the Salary Survey into a more holistic data collection instrument, which we will be renaming the Staff Compensation and Demographics Survey. This move will align the two previously independent but complementary data sets in the former version of the Salary Survey and the Business School Questionnaire (BSQ), allowing us to connect our members with more relevant, contextualized, and timely data on business school faculty and staffing, while also giving them better tools with which to benchmark against their peers.

A couple of months ago, we reached out to our membership for input on how we might design the new survey so that their data needs in this area could best be met. We received great feedback from over 100 member schools, representing 30 countries and territories from all over the world. This feedback validated some of the actions we were already planning, such as returning the survey section on faculty compensation practices to its original home:

Figure 1. Should the Compensation Practices Section Remain in the BSQ Finances Module, or Return to the Salary Survey?

In other cases, the survey results helped us realize where there were gaps in our data collection that we can now fill in a way that will benefit our members. For example, based on the requests of numerous respondents for the ability to track faculty cohorts, we will be adding a “Year Hired” column to the faculty sections of the Salary Survey form. With this addition, our members will be able to track faculty members’ longevity of service by a variety of factors, such as rank, disciplinary area, qualification type, etc.

Another similar change will occur in the way we track tenured/tenure-track faculty. Acknowledging that the concept of tenure is not applicable in all nations in which we have members (and not universally applicable even in nations where it does exist), we will be adding a “Not Applicable” option to the survey column in which respondents indicate whether a given faculty member is tenured/tenure-track or not. We will also be including questions regarding alternate faculty models, which we hope will garner further data on how schools across the world deal with faculty contracts.

Most significantly, starting this year we will be providing an option to allow schools to report and benchmark on the individual demographic data, separately from the salary data. It is very important to note here that the way in which AACSB collects and reports on salary data is in compliance with most national and international statutes regarding personal data privacy (e.g., the European Union’s newly adopted General Data Protection Regulation). All data pertaining to specific individuals are collected in anonymized form in a secure database. They are reported only in aggregate, in such a way that it is impossible to attribute a specific data point to a specific individual, or even to a specific reporting school. Nevertheless, we received feedback from a number of schools who that indicated that their parent universities have internal policies against sharing individual salary figures.

We took all these concerns into consideration, and as a result, the 2017–18 Staff Compensation and Demographics Survey will allow respondents to forego entering salary figures while retaining the ability to enter the remaining individual-level data points collected, such as the numbers of faculty by rank, disciplinary field, gender, qualification type, etc., all of which are data points collected only on the AACSB Staff Compensation and Demographics Survey. Naturally, only those participants who enter salary data will be able to benchmark on salary figures, but our hope is that the opt-out feature will allow more of our members to participate and gain benefit from the ability to benchmark on the other individual-level data points.

To conclude, thanks to our members’ input, we made these and other significant improvements to the survey and the benchmarking tools that draw on its data. We look forward to being able to serve their needs for data regarding business school staffing and compensation, in ways that better adapt to various international contexts. Be on the lookout in the early months of 2018 for postings of data gleaned from the results of our revised survey, as well as access to new and improved benchmarking tools!

Gender Equality and Pay Gap in Business Education: EMEA Region (Part I)

By Olga Sholderer

Many countries across the globe have made significant strides toward greater gender equality since the 1960s, the start of the feminist movement. Many forms of discrimination against women are now illegal in many developed countries, women are present in job markets that they did not have access to previously, the pay gap has shrunk, and women have increasing opportunities to take on leadership roles. Within academia, women’s presence has become more prominent among faculty and students and, as we have previously reported, there are higher growth rates for enrollment into online MBA programs among women.

Despite the progress, there is still a long way to go to ensure equal opportunities for men and women in both education and the workforce. While the enrollment rate for female students in business schools grows steadily (enrollment of female undergraduate students in business schools grew by 17 percent from 2010 to 2015 against 16 percent for male students, according to AACSB’s annual Business School Questionnaire), equal employment of women, and specifically in leadership positions at business schools, is still underwhelming. The Economist reports that overall in the private sector, “sixty per cent of firms surveyed by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a research body, had no women on their board.” The business education sector hardly differs from this situation, as female business school deans are still considered an exception. AACSB’s 2014 Dean Survey identified only 69 female deans against 285 male deans among its participants globally.  Similar dynamics take place in compensation practices of business schools. Data from AACSB’s Global Salary Survey demonstrate that there still is a significant difference between salaries for male and female professors.

Graph 1. Professors’ Median Salaries, EMEA

Source: AACSB Global Salary Survey. N=15 reporting schools. Salaries indicated for 12-month period.

Table 1. Number of Professors Reported in Global Salary Survey by Year and Gender

The charts above show that median salaries for female professors in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region are 16,800–47,450 USD lower than those for male professors. Interestingly, the average salaries for female professors drop significantly in the 2015–16 academic year, as reported by participating schools. Female professors are not well-represented in the sample (see Table 1) and, thus, the results may be biased.

A follow-up post will demonstrate the effect of tenured and tenure-track professors’ salaries in the EMEA region, and will share some measures business schools are taking to reach greater gender equality in business education.

DataDirect: Turning Data Into Strategic Solutions

By Olga Sholderer

DataDirect was launched in 2005, and since then AACSB International has expanded the variety of surveys offered and has gone global. This year’s Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) has collected responses from 799 business schools, 280 of those outside of the U.S. DataDirect grants access to data on business schools’ institutional characteristics, budgets, faculty, students, and salaries, among others, for schools that participate in the questionnaires. At our recent EMEA Annual Conference in Madrid, we dedicated a session to demonstrating how business schools can use these data for evidence-driven solutions and strategic decision-making in their institutions. Session facilitators Chris Wert, from ISC Paris, and Wilfred Mijnhardt, from Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), shared their experiences using data from AACSB International’s surveys for their schools’ needs.

Wert dedicated a part of the session to using DataDirect for accreditation questions, faculty salary negotiations, and finding new collaborations. Completing the BSQ is obligatory for accredited schools, and its results provide a wide range of data points on business school characteristics, which is necessary for benchmarking during the accreditation process, said Wert. With the help of the BSQ, schools are able to find and compare themselves with their peers. Salary Survey, on the other hand, is helpful during the new faculty recruitment process and allows benchmarking against other business schools’ faculty and administrator salaries for compensation negotiations. Wert mentioned his experience in working with collaborations data, too: “I use the Collaboration Survey, and it is a very good survey. I think it is very important for European schools, even more so than for the Northern American schools, because here the European schools are much more focused on Erasmus, on double degrees, etc. There is a fair amount of good data.”

Mijnhardt shared his experience as a policy director using BSQ data on doctoral programs across AACSB member schools. He used multiple data sources to create a complex dataset to address his areas of interest. Pulling information on PhD enrollments, degrees conferred, and absolute and relative sizes of doctoral programs across a number of European schools enabled RSM to better analyze the current positioning of its school against others. This data helped RSM not only better evaluate the work currently done by the school but also better market the school’s programs. A school is able to compare itself against others and identify its unique characteristics that can be used for promotion of the school among potential students, partners, and donors. Mijnhardt underlined “how valuable AACSB data are if you want to move towards a more analytic perspective and more evidence-based policy support in your school.”

Surveys offered through DataDirect open numerous opportunities for seeking new partnerships, benchmarking against other schools in the areas of students enrollment, faculty numbers, range of programs offered, and faculty and administrator salaries. Frances Bowen from Queen Mary University of London mentioned during the session, “We don’t have an MBA program. It is very interesting to look at the schools and to see MBA versus specialized master’s programs across the schools in the market. Data coupled with professional intuition and judgment can be very helpful here.”

To be able to enjoy all of the benefits of AACSB DataDirect for data-driven solutions at your business school, participate in our currently open surveys or request to have a past survey unlocked for you. To learn more about other ways you can use data from DataDirect, please see our Data Case Guide. To learn more about how to use the system, please refer to our online tutorials or contact us with any questions at [email protected].

Women as Full-Time Business School Faculty – Does World Region Make a Difference?

By Jessica Brown

In my last blog post, I examined a multi-year controlled set of full-time faculty gender data for 401 schools in the United States. This time, let’s narrow our focus to a snapshot of the most recent survey data and take a look at full-time faculty gender by world region for a set of 597 schools that participated in the 2015–16 Salary Survey. Two of the regional areas, Oceania and Africa, were excluded from this set due to insufficient data for the current survey year. For each of the other regions listed, the number of schools that provided valid data on gender is listed in the chart. Figure 1 provides an overview of the full-time faculty data discussed in more detail below.

Figure 1: Full-Time Faculty, Counts by Region and Percentages by Rank

 

Note: Comparison group of 597 schools from listed regions participating in the 2015–16 Salary Survey. Data for Africa and Oceania were excluded from this regional analysis due to insufficient data.

 

The professor rank has the smallest percentage of full-time female faculty members.

Based on seven schools reporting gender for 191 full-time professors in the Latin American and Caribbean region grouping, 28.3 percent were reported as female. While this is a small sample size for the region, it represents the highest percentage of professors reported as female for any region. While the percentages ranged from 12.9 percent female in the Asian region to 28.3 percent in the Latin American and Caribbean region, this means that, at most, less than one out of every three professors reported were women, and overall women made up only one out of every five professors reported on the most recent Salary Survey. Across all of the listed regions combined, women made up only 20.4 percent of all professors based on a total of 10,666 full-time professors reported.

Figure 2: Full-Time Professors, Gender Percentages by Region

Note: Comparison group of 597 schools from listed regions participating in the 2015–16 Salary Survey. Data for Africa and Oceania were excluded from this regional analysis due to insufficient data. Full-time professor total count was 10,666.

 

The associate professor rank shows stronger counts of female faculty than the professor rank.

While the professor rank still reflects a large percentage of male faculty members, there are definitely opportunities for that to change with the continued advancement of more female faculty—especially with more than 30 percent of full-time associate professors reported as female in all of the listed regions except for Asia and the Middle East. Even in those two regions, the jump in percentage of female professors to associate professors is impressive. At this rank, the highest percentage of female faculty was reported by the Europe and Near East region grouping, with 34.8 percent of associate professors reported as female. Female faculty made up approximately one out of every three to one out of every four associate professors in most of the regions listed.

Figure 3: Full-Time Associate Professors, Gender Percentages by Region

Note: Comparison group of 597 schools from listed regions participating in the 2015–16 Salary Survey. Data for Africa and Oceania were excluded from this regional analysis due to insufficient data. Full-time associate professor total count was 9,931.

 

The good news continues at the assistant professor rank.

At the assistant professor rank, two of the regions pass 40 percent female. In both Canada and the Europe and Near East region, more than two out of every five assistant professors were reported as female. In each region, women made up at least 25 percent of full-time faculty at this rank.

Figure 4: Full-Time Assistant Professors, Gender Percentages by Region

Note: Comparison group of 597 schools from listed regions participating in the 2015–16 Salary Survey. Data for Africa and Oceania were excluded from this regional analysis due to insufficient data. Full-time assistant professor total count was 9,407.

 

Female representation at the instructor rank is looking very positive.

Women are much more strongly represented at the instructor rank than at any of the other faculty ranks reported. For the 12 participating schools in Asia, 50 percent out of the 1,012 instructors were reported as female. All of the regions either surpassed or closely approached the 40 percent mark, indicating that classes taught by female instructors are likely common around the world. While there is no guarantee that instructors would move up in the other faculty ranks, the strong proportion of women represented here does help illustrate that women are active participants already working within business schools as a vital part of the schools’ faculties, helping to introduce and teach the next generations of business visionaries.

Figure 5. Full-Time Instructors, Gender Percentages by Region

 

Note: Comparison group of 597 schools from listed regions participating in the 2015–16 Salary Survey. Data for Africa and Oceania were excluded from this regional analysis due to insufficient data. Full-time instructor total count was 6,351.

 

Looking ahead to future faculty compositions by gender, the potential for continued growth is clear.

With such a promising set of pipeline numbers from the instructor through associate professor ranks, it will be interesting to see how the faculty composition continues to change in the future in each of these regions. While multi-year data are not yet available for all of the regions listed, this is a topic that we will revisit as the data set available continues to grow and offer more context for the important discussions about faculty and gender.

The Percentage of Women as Full-Time Faculty at U.S. Business Schools: Surging Ahead, Lagging Behind, or Stalling Out?

By Jessica Brown

Many different academic disciplines and professions face difficulties in addressing diversity within their workforces. The situation is definitely not unknown in business and management education fields, but, with all of the work aimed toward increasing diversity in higher education, it is a prime time to review some facets of diversity within the business school frame of reference.

Gender diversity among the faculty at a business school is perceived as one of the areas where schools can put into practice the important foundational work of being relevant, supportive, and welcoming in working with female students. This makes the question of female faculty important not just at a school administration level of inclusivity but in having a diverse faculty as a support system for a diverse student body, as well.

AACSB currently gathers gender data for full-time faculty through both its Salary Survey (per individual) and its Business School Questionnaire (in aggregate for the school). Collecting this information allows us to examine the full-time faculty makeup at participating AACSB member schools for any changes and trends relating to faculty gender.

In looking at the percentages for the United States from 2006–07 through 2015–16, you can see that there has been a slow but steady increase (from 26.9 percent to 31.2 percent) in full-time faculty reported as female when looking across all disciplines and faculty ranks combined (fig. 1). But does this tell us the whole story?

 Figure 1: Overall Percentage of Full-Time Faculty by Gender—United States

Note: Controlled set of 401 schools that provided full-time faculty genders on the Salary Survey in 2006–07, 2009–10, 2012–13, and 2015–16.

What Happens If We Analyze the Data by Faculty Rank Instead?

Interestingly, there is also growth in the percentage of full-time faculty reported as female in all faculty ranks except Instructor, where there has been a bit of a decrease (fig. 2). Other than at the Instructor rank, women have increased as a proportion of faculty within each academic rank.

The largest gains from this perspective are within the Associate Professor and Professor ranks, with 32.3 percent of all Associate Professors and 20.2 percent of all Professors being reported as female in 2015–16. These two ranks still have the smallest overall percentages of female faculty, but the steady increases are a good sign that these ranks are also trending toward a more balanced overall gender ratio over time.

 Figure 2: Percentage of Female Full-Time Faculty Within Each Faculty Rank—United States

Note: Controlled set of 401 schools that provided full-time faculty genders on the Salary Survey in 2006–07, 2009–10, 2012–13, and 2015–16.

What Happens When We Compare Full-Time Female Faculty to the Total Full-Time Faculty Reported?

We know that women made up 26.9 percent of full-time faculty in 2006–07, which increased to 31.2 percent in 2015–16, and we further know that percentages of women within each faculty rank other than Instructor have increased, but let’s look next at how those work out when we examine the faculty within each rank as a percentage across the total full-time faculty reported within this comparison group.

Taking this view helps to control for the differences in overall hiring at the different faculty ranks, so when looking at these percentages, use this to compare to the entire business school full-time faculty. As an example, Figure 3 below shows that 5.8 percent of female full-time faculty held the Instructor rank in 2006–07, but by 2015–16 the number had increased to 7.4 percent. This shows that while the proportion of Instructors reported as female has declined (fig. 2), the proportion of the total faculty count made up of Instructors reported as female has increased (fig. 3). Reviewing the underlying data to better contextualize how this happens shows that, while there has been an increase of 43.2 percent in the number of female Instructors since 2006–07, this growth has been outpaced by an increase of 58.4 percent in the number of male instructors in the same timeframe.

 Figure 3: Female Full-Time Faculty by Rank as a Percentage of Overall Full-Time Faculty—United States

Note: Controlled set of 401 schools that provided full-time faculty genders on the Salary Survey in 2006–07, 2009–10, 2012–13, and 2015–16.

So Where Does This Leave Us? Surging, Lagging, or Stalling?

Based on this data set—none of the above. It is clear that there has been significant growth in female faculty both as a percentage within ranks and as an overall percentage of full-time faculty, but the growth has been slow and steady so far. It is encouraging that female faculty are continuing to be a growing and important part of business schools, but we still have lots of progress yet to make and even more data to review to help us on our way.

The Rise of the Instructor – A Look at Growth in the Percent of Full-Time Faculty at the Instructor Rank

By Jessica Brown

A new year begins—and so do annual discussions of budget and faculty needs in preparation for another academic year for many schools around the world.

In a recent post, my colleague Colin Nelson took a look at the most recent five years of faculty data from the annual AACSB Business School Questionnaire to examine the common narrative of declining numbers of full-time faculty in comparison to part-time and adjunct faculty members. By examining the FTE (full-time equivalency) compared to the overall full-time faculty report for the last five years at 544 schools, Colin was able to illustrate that, while there has been a slight decline in the proportion of full-time faculty compared the FTE of part-time faculty, there does not seem to be an overall downward trend in the data from our Business School Questionnaire. So, if the difference doesn’t seem to stem from full-time vs. part-time faculty, what else might be contributing to the perception that schools are focusing less on their full-time faculty?

To take a look from a different perspective, we examined our most recent data from the annual AACSB Salary Survey. This survey only collects data for full-time faculty, but it breaks down those data by faculty rank, discipline, gender, tenure-track status, and qualification types. Could changes in faculty composition based on faculty rank be part of the perception of the evolving faculty at business schools? To begin answering that question, we created a controlled set of 439 schools that provided data for all of their full-time faculty for each of the past five years, representing a set of data for more than 25,000 full-time faculty members in 2011–12 to more than 27,000 in 2015–16.

Figure 1. Changes in Full-Time Faculty Composition: Percentage by Rank

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: AACSB Salary Survey, controlled set of 439 schools participating in all listed years.

Interestingly, the data reveal a definite trend toward Instructors as a larger proportion of the overall faculty at AACSB member schools. Over the last five years, Instructors have increased from 15.4 percent of the total faculty to 18.2 percent at a steady pace, but, during the same time period, the percentage of full-time faculty listed as Professors has declined by nearly the same amount (Professors down 2.4 percent; Instructors up 2.8 percent), with Associate Professor and Assistant Professor proportions holding relatively steady and closely converging in the most recent year.

One important thing to note is that the actual count of faculty per rank reveals that the change has been driven by a much larger increase in the number of faculty at the Instructor level than by large decreases at the other faculty ranks. In fact, the number of full-time faculty listed as Professors has only declined by 0.7 percent from 8,307 in 2011–12 to 8,248 in 2015–16, while the number of faculty reported as Instructors has soared by 27 percent from 3,977 in 2011–12 to 5,050 in 2015-16. Even with this impressive growth at the Instructor level, 81.8 percent of full-time faculty at business schools are still at the Professor, Associate Professor, or Assistant Professor ranks.

What does it all mean? The growth at the Instructor level is definitely good news for those looking to join business schools at that rank, but it doesn’t look like Instructors will be the most common type of business school faculty anytime soon. These are definitely trends to watch as business schools continue to evolve their faculty mix to find the right balance for providing the best possible environment for their students and colleagues to achieve their goals.

Business School Faculty: Focusing on Gender Reported for Full-Time Faculty

By Jessica Brown

With both International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month in March, it is a great time to take a look at some of the gender data AACSB International collects. Whether focusing on faculty, enrollments, degrees conferred, or administrative positions, AACSB collects and reports data each year that helps track changes in the gender compositions at member schools. While gender for full-time faculty members is just one of the many pieces of data AACSB collects as part of its annual Salary Survey, this robust data set gives the opportunity to look at the current representation of women currently working within business schools.

Data Snapshot by Faculty Rank

The most recent data released is from the 2014–15 Salary Survey and is based on 579 AACSB member schools that chose to provide data for approximately 35,000 full-time faculty members on an incumbent-level basis. Based on this data, 31.2 percent of all full-time faculty were reported as female, with the corresponding 68.8 percent reported as male. When looking by faculty rank, the highest percentage of faculty (39.7 percent) was at the instructor rank. As the faculty ranks increased, the relative percentage of female faculty decreased. Among professors, this snapshot showed that 20.1 percent of full-time faculty were reported as female.

2014–15 Salary Survey Snapshot—Percentage of Full-Time Faculty by Gender and Faculty Rank

 
Source: AACSB DataDirect, Salary Survey, 579 schools

Data Snapshot by Faculty Discipline

Faculty rank is not the only place where the percentage reported by gender varies. When looking based on the primary field or discipline reported for the faculty members, there are clearly some disciplines with a stronger female presence than others. For example, business communication (63.2 percent female) is the only discipline in which women made up more than 50 percent of the total faculty within a discipline. The next highest was HR management, with 44.4 percent. The disciplines with the lowest reported percentages of female faculty were real estate (16.8 percent), logistics (18.1 percent), and operations research (19.1 percent).

2014–15 Salary Survey Snapshot—Percentage of Full-Time Faculty by Gender and Field/Discipline

 
Source: AACSB DataDirect, Salary Survey, 579 schools

Five-Year Trend—Is the Faculty Composition by Gender Changing?

The tables above focus on the immediate data in a snapshot of 2014–15, but how would those percentages stack up in a controlled set of data looking across the last five years? To add additional context for the single-year snapshot of data, each of the faculty ranks is also included below with the percentage of full-time faculty reported by gender over the last five years. This data set is limited to only the 435 AACSB member schools that provided this data in all of the listed years to eliminate any influences on the data based on changes in annual survey participation status.

The overall faculty percentages for all ranks combined indicates that there has been a move toward a higher proportion of female faculty from 29.0 percent in 2010–11 to 31.0 percent for this set of schools. Over that time period, the percentage of professors reported as female increased from 17.4 percent in 2010–11 to 20.0 percent in 2014–15. This increase is also visible in the data for the associate professors, with a change from 28.9 percent to 32.1 percent. At the assistant professor and instructor levels, there were slight decreases, but these were not large enough to change the overall trend toward higher percentages of female faculty.

Five-Year Trend—Percentage of Full-Time Faculty by Gender per Faculty Rank (controlled data set, 435 schools)

 
Source: AACSB DataDirect, Salary Survey, controlled set of 435 schools reporting data in all listed years

 
Source: AACSB DataDirect, Salary Survey, controlled set of 435 schools reporting data in all listed years

 
Source: AACSB DataDirect, Salary Survey, controlled set of 435 schools reporting data in all listed years

 
Source: AACSB DataDirect, Salary Survey, controlled set of 435 schools reporting data in all listed years

 
Source: AACSB DataDirect, Salary Survey, controlled set of 435 schools reporting data in all listed years.

[This content is also available in eNEWSLINE, March 2015.] 

Female Leadership’s Impact on New Doctorate Hires

By Hanna McLeod

A recent Poets & Quants article brought attention to a “historic gathering” of 10 female deans of leading business schools, which resulted in the articulation of a mission for increasing the number of women within the business school ecosystem, particularly at the student, faculty, and dean levels. One area that the article brings attention to is the “leaky pipeline” of female faculty, in addition to fewer promotions, support, and tenure achievements in comparison to their male counterparts.

In the past, I have explored the influence of female leadership on female student enrollment at business schools, but the article linked to above made me wonder whether schools led by female deans hire more female than male new doctorate faculty. I used our most recent Deans Survey to identify a list of female deans at AACSB-accredited schools who also provided data in the 2014-15 Salary Survey, in order to compare respective schools’ new hire data for new doctorates. Below is what I found:

The data might not be as compelling as what some of us would expect to see; however, the proportion of female new doctorate hires is slightly higher among female-led schools in comparison to male-led schools, according to these data. I decided to plunge a bit deeper into the data: although the number of male new doctorate hires is 21 percent greater than female new doctorate hires within this set of schools, is the proportion of female to male new doctorate hires greater at female-led schools?

The data show that regardless of whether a school has a male or female dean, a greater proportion of schools hire more male new doctorates than female new doctorates. Nonetheless, a significantly larger proportion of female-led schools reported female new doctorate hires outnumbering their male counterparts, at 39.1 percent compared to 32.8 percent of male-led schools. Further, if we combine the data of schools reporting more female new doctorate hires together with those reporting equal representation, 52.1 percent of female-led schools reported doing so, compared to 50.7 percent of male-led schools. Again, we don’t see a very pronounced difference; but my colleague Colin shared the observation that perhaps it is a positive indicator that gender bias is not a significant factor in hiring the most qualified candidates, regardless of whether the dean is male or female. It’s worth further noting that although final hiring decisions are often made by the dean, the recommended finalists usually come from a committee composed of faculty and then passes through to a department chair.

AACSB Senior Vice President, Accreditation and Member Services, Christine Clements, who served as dean for 12 years at the College of Business and Economics and University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, prior to joining AACSB, shared some helpful insights regarding gender in hiring decisions. She shared with me that in many schools the level of talent of the candidate – regardless of gender, race, and ethnicity – serves as the critical factor for hiring. She adds, “the bigger issue for female faculty often is department cultures and how they are supported once they arrive.”

As the 2014-15 Deans Survey shows, nearly 20 percent of deans at AACSB member schools are female – a jump from 18 percent in 2011-12 survey results. As female representation in business school leadership continues to rise, perhaps we will be more likely to see similar impact across the business school ecosystem reflecting what that recent gathering of 10 female deans envisioned for the future of women in business schools.

What's New for New Doctorates in the US?

By Jessica Brown

How do the prospects look for new doctorates planning to teach at business schools in the U.S.? In addition to looking at salaries for full-time faculty and administrators, the 2014-2015 Salary Survey reports that will be released later this month break down the counts of new hires that are new doctorates and the salary ranges and averages reported for these new faculty by discipline. A quick look at the average salaries for new doctorates in most disciplines (Table 1) shows a decline from last year, but averages are still similar to or higher than salaries reported two years ago and fall within a reasonable range for all new hires by discipline and rank (Table 2).

Table 1. Average Salaries for New Doctorates by Discipline Groups 
(All U.S. participant schools in each year included.)

Field Discipline	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15
Accounting/Taxation	142.5	151.1	149.5
CIS/MIS	111.3	113.0	110.1
Economics/Managerial Economics	88.2	91.1	91.7
Finance/Banking/Real Estate/Insurance	135.2	152.8	149.6
Mgmt/Behavioral Science/International Business/Strategic Mgmt	109.1	114.1	110.9
Marketing	111.8	124.3	116.0
Production/Operations Management	121.9	115.3	108.5
Quantitative Methods/Operations Research/Statistics	98.7	122.4	115.2
Combine (All)	105.7	124.4	122.9

 

Table 2. Average Salaries for New Hires by Discipline Groups and Faculty Rank 
(All U.S. participant schools in each year included.)

Field Discipline	Professor	Associate Professor	Assistant Professor	Instructor
Accounting/Taxation	157.7	142.2	139.7	79.3
CIS/MIS	135.8	108.2	109.6	72.5
Economics/Managerial Economics	202	127.2	96.6	66.7
Finance/Banking/Real Estate/Insurance	231.2	185.6	149.9	88.5
Mgmt/Behavioral Science/International Business/Strategic Mgmt	188.5	130.4	113.3	73.3
Marketing	210.1	140.6	117.5	75.3
Production/Operations Management	151.2	127.4	116.1	80.1
Quantitative Methods/Operations Research/Statistics	-	-	117.5	75.7
Combined (All fields/disciplines, including fields/disciplines not listed above)	185	139	122.1	75.4

 

In 2014-15, 19.5 percent of new hires were classified as new doctorates. This percent has increased each year since 2012-13. If we look at all new hires, including new doctorates, the portion of full-time faculty classified as new hires increased from 8.1 in 2013-14 to 9.4 percent in 2014-15 and, on average, each school welcomed 4.9 new faculty members in the fall of 2014, up slightly from 4.5 in 2013.

 

Data Note:The Salary Survey Overview Reports and Benchmarking results are released in January of each year. For 2014-15, data from a total of 579 schools were received in time to be analyzed for the overview reports, with additional participating schools included as their data are finalized. The data represent individual full-time salaries and supporting information for 34,893 faculty and 6,586 administrative positions. Twenty-eight different currencies are represented in the survey responses. For more information about the Salary Survey data and reports, please email [email protected].

 

[This content is also available in eNEWSLINE, January 2015.]