RALEIGH – The budget proposal adopted last week by the state House includes raises of 2% plus a $500 bonus for state employees, and raises for K-12 teachers that average 4.1%.1
A raise for University faculty is long overdue and welcome – they’ve had just one raise from the General Assembly in seven years.
But 2% is not enough.
The Board of Governors that oversees the University system asked legislators this year only for raises comparable to those of other state employees.
But if we expect our state’s public universities to hire and retain the best instructors for our children, we need to cast our sights beyond the state line.
North Carolina’s public universities aren’t competing with other state agencies for talent – they’re competing with institutions across the nation, and in some cases around the globe.
“Our chancellors have to be able to recruit and retain the very best in the country,” Harry Smith, chair of the Board of Governors’ Budget & Finance Committee, said in March. “The competition level has ramped up so much.”
In addition to teaching, University faculty attract more than $1.35 billion a year in research dollars.2
Yet a survey done this spring revealed that average faculty salaries at 11 of North Carolina’s 16 public universities now fall below the 50th percentile compared with their peer institutions.3
The 50th percentile isn’t a particularly ambitious goal, but at UNC Chapel Hill and NC State University, the system’s flagships, it would take 6% raises just to reach the median among comparable institutions.
As faculty salaries stagnated in recent years, our public universities found themselves subject to serious poaching. From 2012-14, 76% of UNC system faculty who received offers from competing institutions took those offers. Of 320 professors who left, 93 took $91 million in grant dollars with them.4
Similarly, at just $47,400, the average faculty salary at North Carolina’s community colleges ranks 11th out of 16 Southeastern states.5
As a state, if we hope to attract and keep the best teachers for our children at every level, we need to do better than 2% raises.
1 http://ncleg.net/Sessions/2015/Budget/2016/House_Committee_Report_2016-05-18.pdf, pp. F20, F4.
2https://www.northcarolina.edu/sites/default/files/documents/presidents_report_on_research_sponsored_programs_2015.pdf
3 http://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/index.php?mode=browse_premeeting&mid=5630&code=bog, Committee on Budget & Finance, Item 2, p. 26.
4UNC General Administration, “Faculty Retention Efforts, July 2012-June 2014.”
5 http://www.nccommunitycolleges.edu/sites/default/files/state-board/finance/fc_04_2016_budget_priorities.pdf
Scott says
So you say NC faculty should be paid more, where do you suppose this money should come from?
James says
Streamline University administration. Fund instruction and support staff that directly serve learning. There are a gaggle of vice-provosts and deanlets throughout the system pulling down bigger dollars than the faculty…and there are more of them. State employee benefits are a joke, and the absence of pay raises are causing a brain drain.
Peter Watson says
The “poaching” is not limited to our excellent faculty. University staff have been in the same boat for the past seven years. Technology personnel are particularly likely to get offers from the private sector that they cannot refuse.
I’ve seen a number of server administrators, programmers, technology managers, etc., leave our campus over the past few years. I’ve also seen technology positions go unfilled for months – even years in a couple of examples – because the wages aren’t competitive. Initiatives and projects have come to a halt because the technical expertise left, or couldn’t be hired.
Michael says
Too many of our college faculty are overpaid in the first place. Every weekend and holliday off. 2weeks for Christmas, spring break, fall break, summers off. Working 2 – 3 hours a day, sick leave, personal days, etc, etc. Give them a pay cut and beef up military and police pay.
Fentwin says
I know, we get weekends off, oh the humanity. Those summer months when we aren’t in the classroom, yeah, we don’t get paid. Work 2-3 hours a day? You either lie out of ignorance or maliciousness, I’ll assume the former. I’ll also assume you don’t actually know anyone who teaches. No worries,I understand that a parrot can only repeat what its told to say.
da says
It’s a shame that during all of the decades when democrats had a stranglehold on state politics teachers and state employees suffered miserably from lack of compensation to keep pace with living cost increases.
Martin W Doherty, Jr. says
having been a child of NC, Governors school in ’77, it’s sad to return from 18 yrs teaching in DC and find public education salaries SO undervalued today. May the voters find focus and throw out such humiliating governance.