Faculty and staff at the University’s flagship campus will see their salary increase for the second year running in the 2014-15 school year, LSU President F. King Alexander announced Friday.
Employees at LSU A&M, the Paul M. Hebert Law Center and the AgCenter will all see a 3 percent merit pay raise in the upcoming school year, Alexander said in an email memorandum.
The raise is the second in two years for University employees. Last year, all LSU System employees received a merit increase averaging 4 percent.
Fair compensation for faculty and staff has been a hot-button issue at the University over the last several years. Before last year’s raise, University employees had not seen their pay increase for nearly five years, and faculty leaders such as Kevin Cope, Faculty Senate president, said stagnant wages were to blame for the number of faculty and administrators leaving the University.
The slowdown of pay increases has largely been attributed to diminishing funding from the state, forcing the University to look for alternative sources. Robert Kuhn, associate vice chancellor for budget and planning at the time of the 2013-14 raise, said the funds needed to increase salaries had been “cobbled together” from tuition from increased enrollment, refinanced bonds and unused salaries from vacant positions, among other sources.
Kuhn said last August the administration was unsure of whether another raise was possible for the 2014-15 school year, following the difficult process of collecting funds for that year’s raise. In his memo to University employees, Alexander did not state the source of funding for the 2014-15 increase. Alexander was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.