Prices of goods and services aren’t the only things the market is driving.The market is also controlling University professors’ salaries, said Bob Kuhn, associate vice chancellor of Budget and Planning. And the market often creates inconsistencies in pay, which is raised based on merit rather than time employed by the University.He said the demand for professors in a specific field determines a starting salary at a higher education institution.The Daily Reveille posted the salaries of all non-classified employees on its Web site Oct. 16, which sparked many comments and criticisms.For example, Kuhn said a new assistant accounting professor is likely to earn more than a full professor in humanities because the University can get them at a lower price.”Is that right? No,” he said. “It’s not based on their value to the students, but that’s the market.”To fund professor salaries, the University looks at two primary sources — the state and students.Students’ tuition and fees account for 35.8 percent of the unrestricted budget, and 57.9 percent is contributed from the state’s general fund. The remaining 6.2 percent is funded from other sources of revenue such as interagency transfers.Interagency transfers include revenues from the University Laboratory School and the Department of Social Services. The University’s unrestricted budget is a general “checking account” the institution uses to pay for day-to-day needs, which includes personnel salaries.The University also has a restricted budget, which can fund only a specific purpose, unlike the unrestricted budget, which can pay any expense the University incurs. For the 2008-2009 fiscal year, the University has $451,275,826 in the unrestricted budget and $365,252,835 in the restricted budget.Tommy Smith, budgeting director, said both the restricted and unrestricted funds go toward professors’ salaries.Kuhn said the University does not have a lot of flexibility in reducing costs. But when it is required, he said the University cuts personnel.”Higher education is very labor intensive,” Kuhn said. “Out of the $451 million [in the unrestricted budget], 78 percent of it are related to people, and that includes graduate assistants.”The University spent more than $320 million in salaries, wages and benefits from the 2007-2008 fiscal year unrestricted budget, according to Accounting Services’ Web site. The salaries included all personnel and are not exclusive to professors.”We take great pains to control the personnel cost on this campus,” Kuhn said. “It’s basically position by position.”Kuhn said when new professors are hired at the University, each department needs to “create a position,” which includes a title, rank and job description.”We do a salary analysis each spring,” he said. “Then we compare their salaries with other Universities and determine a [minimum, maximum and average].”Salaries of new professors are given on a case-by-case basis within the minimum and maximum. Smith said professors who are hired on a temporary basis, such as adjunct professors, are not included in the budgeted salaries because they are paid per semester.Instructors are salary-paid professors who are not eligible for tenure. Associate, assistant and full professors are ranks by name, but do not necessarily mean they are tenured or tenure-tracked.He said professors who work for other institutions in the LSU System, such as the LSU AgCenter or the Paul M. Hebert Law School, are not on the University’s permanent operating budget.”All we report is LSU-Baton Rouge’s campus,” Smith said.Some professors are getting paid significantly less than others, and Smith said it’s because some professors are “cross charged” or paid by two different institutions.”You might be only seeing 25 or 50 percent of a person’s salary,” Smith said. “It’s because they are also paid by another [System institution].”Kuhn said the University doesn’t guarantee faculty anything when it concerns a professor’s pay or raise.”You may get a salary increase, you may not,” he said. “Just because you’ve been here a long time, that doesn’t mean you need to be the highest paid.”A professor’s raise depends wholly on merit, Kuhn said.”To us, that is a way of motivating senior faculty,” he said. “If you’re not producing, you’re not doing research, you’re not doing the things you’re supposed to, you shouldn’t get a raise. You shouldn’t get one just because you’ve been here another year.”Kuhn said professors usually meet with their respective department heads at the end of each year for an evaluation to determine whether a pay raise is appropriate. Kuhn said a problem arises when professors aren’t getting two or three years worth of merit-based pay increases.”[When] those people aren’t getting any, the market is driving someone above that,” he said. “But that hasn’t happened in the last decade.”—-Contact J.J. Alcantara at [email protected]