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3/30/2007
How much are university professors worth?
As their public representative at UWFox I can tell you that the recent comparison with technical college teachers, in the study recently released by the Leg. Audit Bureau, is depressing to university professors, and in general has provoked their ire.
The public may be surprised to learn that UWFox professors who are hired with Ph.D.s (typically requiring at least four, and more typically six years of education AFTER their bachelor's degree) start with us at $42,000. The average salary at UWFox for 2006 was $49,613. Wow, what a contrast with technical college averages! (The average administrative salary at UWFox is $45,400. I'll save you the open records request -- my salary -- the highest on campus --is slightly more than $108,000.)
(Editor’s Note: According to the recently released study mentioned above, in 2004-05, full time WI Technical College System administrators earned an average $77,567. Full-time faculty earned an average of $74,598. JE)
Some of the comments about Fox Valley Technical College salaries, as shared by FoxPolitics.net, suggest supply and demand is at work, driving up tech colleges salaries. That's not completely true. It's much more complicated than that. But I'm not sure it would be right to say that the tech college salaries are too high. "Too high" is all relative.
Rather, it could be said the university salaries are "too low." There are two primary differences between the technical colleges and the UW as I see it -- the technical colleges are pretty much under local control (vs. state control of the universities) and the technical college teachers are unionized (UW faculty are not). State politicians have cut the UW budget dramatically over the last several biennia and insisted that UW (state employees) salaries be held down.
As an educator, I do have a problem with one factor allowing the technical college teachers salaries to go very high -- adding (in some cases many) additional classes. There comes a point when the attention to a class is diminished to the point where the quality of instruction has to be diminished. I guard against this as much as possible. I want the UWFox faculty to spend as much time on each of their four courses per semester as possible, and adding more to their workload is not the way to do that.
How much is any teacher worth? How much is any university professor worth? No one can really answer that because it's all in the mind of the beholder, but in general, higher education drives the economy, and it would seem investing in high quality instruction (how do we measure THAT?), be it at the technical college or the university, is worth the investment. Return on investment suggests that nationally a bachelor's, master's, or doctorate (Ph.D.) is worth more in earning power than an associate degree. But apparently not if you're a UW professor.
James W. (Jim) Perry, Ph.D. is the CEO/Campus Dean of the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley
COMMENTS
The basic problem here is one of accountability. The Tech College system is only accountable to their board and in some way to the taxpayer. Since discussions at the board level are not made public, the public has a hard time in connecting the dots. This expose' of salary differential is much like the information that came out in Grand Chute about supervisor salaries. The tech college tries to justify their salaries with the excuse that it takes that much to attract good talent. I don't buy that explanation anymore than I bought the explanation of the Grand Chute Administration that they did not know they were higher.
Now it is up to the taxpayer to keep the microscope on this issue. Without good information and the public caring about it nothing will get done. Let's hope that there is continue pressure to address this issue.
Mike Thomas (Fri Mar 30 12:39:52 2007)
Jim Perry is pretty much always right.
Mpeterson (Sun Apr 01 15:11:36 2007)
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