As English professor Anna Nardo sat in her office on a Thursday morning, she lamented a problem plaguing faculty members – salary compression.
Salary compression is when starting salaries for new employees are too close to the wages of existing workers. In severe circumstances, starting salaries exceed what current employees earn.
“Say that a professor meets his or her research goals and receives positive reviews from all of his or her classes,” Nardo said. “Well, the dean might say to me, ‘You did a great job, but I don’t have the money to recognize the work you did.’ It is a real struggle.”
The University is nearing the end of fiscal year 2012, the fourth year in a row faculty members haven’t received a wide-scale pay raise, according to Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Jack Hamilton. Repeated denials for raises are compounded by the fact that new professors are being hired at an increasingly high market rate in order to continue hiring high-quality professors.
“I may have taught at the University for a while, but a new professor can come in and get hired for a few thousand more than I do,” Nardo continued. “It is just a bad situation because professors work so hard to do a good job and are rewarded with nothing.”
The problem of salary compression is evident when viewing the faculty salary database. In the 2010-2011 fiscal year, the University employed about 3,193 faculty, according to The Daily Reveille’s updated salary database. During the 2011-2012 fiscal year, the University’s faculty declined to about 3,110 people. The sum of all faculty salaries decreased from the 2010-2011 year to the 2011-2012 year. However, the average professor salary increased from $67,699 to $69,030, – a 2 percent change- according to the Reveille’s salary database.
Professors take the continual denial of raises into account when deciding to take a job at another university, according to Faculty Senate President Kevin Cope.
“The steady stream of bad news from the capital has worn out the goodwill of the faculty,” Cope said. “LSU administrators need to drop the idea that LSU is such a jolly place to work all the time. Faculty will continue to leave if they continue to receive more lucrative offers.”
One of the main factors that plays into salary compression is budget cuts. The University has incurred several mid-year cuts, which make it difficult to plan an entire year’s budget, said Vice Chancellor of the Office of Budget and Planning Bob Kuhn. But good economic times at the University are not a distant memory.
“The 2008-2009 year was one of the best ever for the University, but ever since then we have seen a steady decline in funds” Kuhn said. “The amount of mid-year cuts that LSU has had to endure is incredible. These continuous cuts make it hard to ensure faculty that they will receive raises.”
Dean of the School of the Coast and Environment Christopher D’Elia said he has first-hand experience with salary compression.
“The problem is more complicated than simply not receiving raises,” D’Elia remarked. “Because faculty make up a large portion of the budget, they are often easy to cut.”
Eric Monday, chief financial officer and vice chancellor of the University’s Finance and Administrative Services, said he is well aware of the problem. Monday also mentioned that fixing the budget in order to give raises is his foremost concern.
“As soon as we are able, we will immediately put in place some kind of raise,” Monday stressed. “Any kind of additional tuition we receive should be directed toward faculty raises.”
One place Monday said such additional fund could be found is in the LA GRAD Act 2.0, which allows the University to hike tuition costs by up to 10 percent per year if it agrees to meet certain performance goals.
 
____ Contact Joshua Bergeron at [email protected]