The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) recently released its annual faculty compensation survey report. The report, which is centered on the 2016-2017 academic years, details average salaries for both full and part-time professors, as well as other administrative faculty.
According to its website, the AAUP is a nonprofit organization composed of members throughout the United States; members, as well as chapters, can be found at various colleges and universities nationwide. We at St. Lawrence University have our very own AAUP chapter, the president of which is Melissane Schrems, an associate professor of history and coordinator of Native American studies.
The AAUP website states that their mission is to: “… Define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, advance the rights of academics, particularly as those rights pertain to academic freedom and shared governance, and promote the interests of higher education teaching and research.”
The recently released report highlights some interesting statistics about professors throughout the U.S. The average salary for full-time faculty increased by an average of 0.5 percent [with adjustment for inflation], with full-time professors earning an average salary of $102,402, while associate professors ranked lower with an average salary of $79,654.
In stark contrast, though, part-time faculty ranked fairly lower on the pay scale, with most part-time faculty earning an average of a little over $20,000 a year.
It is interesting to note that despite having an AAUP chapter on our campus, we do not appear on the list of colleges and universities from which the organization drew statistics for their report. In addition, the report does not look at wage gaps between professors of different genders.
In regard to how St. Lawrence stacks up against the competition salary-wise, we are doing fairly well. According to Start Class, an organization renowned for reporting salaries of university professors nationwide, the average salary of full-time SLU professors is $137,217, which is more than $30,000 above average.
The gender wage gap at St. Lawrence is remarkable as well, but not for entirely positive reasons. According to Start Class statistics, whereas male professors at SLU are earning $142,360 on average, female professors are earning $123,503, generating a difference of $18,857.
Joe Kellogg ’18 states, “As these results are notably preliminary, I would love to see a more in-depth review of the wage gap at St. Lawrence. If, upon further inspection, these results prove to be wholly true, I would love to see it addressed by the St. Lawrence University community.”
In addition to results found on Start Class, Glass Door, a similar organization, states that associate professors at St. Lawrence earn around $70,000 per year, depending on the department with which they are affiliated.
It is important to note that none of the aforementioned data on professor’s salaries was generated through the University, and may thus be prone to error. However, since the AAUP report did not include St. Lawrence in their statistics, the exact data on professor’s salaries remains unclear; the reason as to this has also not been explicitly stated in the report. As a university with an AAUP chapter, there doesn’t seem to be an easily recognizable reason for why St. Lawrence was left out of the mix.