5-1-09: Stanford: Report: Stanford No. 2 in full professor pay

The average salary for a Stanford associate professor is the highest in the country, and the average salary for a full professor is the second highest, behind only Harvard, according to the annual report on faculty salaries by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

For the 2008-2009 year, prior to the decision to freeze salaries, a full Stanford professor was slated to earn an average of $181,900. Only full professors at Harvard earned more–$192,600.

The average salary for a Stanford associate professor was $128,000; the California Institute of Technology was second with $126,200.

According to Provost John Etchemendy, these figures are the product of Stanford’s need to retain and attract a high-quality faculty.

“High salaries go hand in hand with having a top faculty,” Etchemendy wrote in an email to The Daily. “The higher quality your faculty, the more competition there is with other universities to attract and keep them, and this is what pushes salaries up.”

Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Faculty Senate Karen Cook expressed concern over the long-term effect of Stanford’s recent salary freeze on the University’s faculty in an email to The Daily.

“My sense of the faculty is that they are willing to take some pain in the short run in terms of frozen salaries to help out the schools and the University,” she said, “but that this is not a wise strategy in the longer term because we will begin to lose very talented faculty to competing institutions.”

In comparison to the AAUP’s data from 2007-2008, the average Stanford full professor salary increased by $8,200 or approximately 6.95 percent. The national average increase was 3.4 percent, according to AAUP calculations.

As expected, Stanford’s salaries in the two categories were significantly higher than the national average, $151,403 for full professors and $95,948 for associate professors.

In defending the salaries, Etchemendy cited the recent individual academic program rankings in U.S. News and World Report, in which all 17 of Stanford’s considered departments were in the top 10 for their field.

“These rankings are basically rankings of the academic strength of our faculty in those areas,” Etchemendy said. “That is why faculty salaries are high.”

The Provost added that the high cost of living in the Bay Area is not factored into these salary figures, while the University offers a faculty housing program “to help people afford houses in the area.”

Regarding the freezing of all faculty salaries, except for those faculty members receiving promotions, Etchemendy noted that, “many other universities, including our main peer institutions, have done the same thing.”

Harvard, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Brown have also announced freezes on faculty salaries. Yale and the University of Chicago have adopted less severe policies, but are still cutting costs.

Fifteen faculty members contacted by The Daily did not respond with comment.

http://www.stanforddaily.com/cgi-bin/?p=1030198