Regents rebut university audit

Salary increases not enough to retain faculty, president says

? Faculty salaries at state universities may have outpaced inflation, but increases haven’t been enough to keep universities from being raided by their competitors, the president of the Kansas Board of Regents said Wednesday.

A state audit released Monday showed that since 1985, faculty salaries had increased at rates greater than that of inflation. But Reggie Robinson said the real data that matter are how faculty salaries compare with those at other universities across the country.

“That statement is accurate,” Robinson said of the audit report’s inflation data, “but it fails to paint either a relevant or complete picture regarding the condition of faculty salaries at our state universities.”

The state audit, released Monday, said the average salary for English, math, education and political science faculty increased 8 percent, or 16 percent more than the rate of inflation, while faculty in the business departments at universities saw an average salary increase of 41 percent more than inflation.

The report also showed faculty were teaching fewer classes, and that the regents weren’t following a policy designed to ensure the English-speaking proficiency of instructors.

Several legislators said Monday they found the results of the audit troubling.

But during the regents’ meeting Wednesday, Robinson said projects such as the Margin of Excellence in the 1980s and the 1999 higher education reorganization act were designed to increase faculty salaries at a rate greater than inflation.

“The state has purposely sought to achieve that result,” Robinson said.

Still, university data show the state’s faculty salaries are lagging behind those at peer institutions nationally. At KU, salaries are 86 percent of those at peer schools, down from 92 percent in 1985, KU officials have said.

Robinson listed several examples of KU faculty who either left or were considering leaving for higher salaries:

  • An associate professor of business with a salary of $108,924 left for a job at the University of Minnesota paying $125,000 plus a $3,000 startup package.
  • A KU librarian with a salary of $79,105 left for Harvard University and a salary of more than $100,000.
  • A professor of ecology and evolutionary biology with a salary of $72,052 went to Yale University for a salary of $120,000.

KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway said regents should continue pushing for faculty salary increases.

“Faculty salaries at (KU) are not as competitive as they should be,” he said. “We can’t ask faculty to constantly sacrifice opportunities where they would be able to be paid more and to provide their families with a quality of life that is better.”

Dick Bond, chairman of the Board of Regents, said regents needed to confront criticism brought on by the audit.

“If I could wish for anything of the Board of Regents,” Bond said, “it’s for us and those who follow to be much better advocates of higher education, to be active and sometimes obnoxious advocates of higher education, as opposed to playing defense to newspaper criticism, media criticism or political criticism. We must meet those critics head-on, with passion.”