By DONOVAN HARRELL
Average salaries for Pitt faculty groups have shown slight increases over the past year.
Pitt’s annual report “Average Salaries of Faculty a Peer Group Analysis” compares Pitt to the 34 other universities in the Association of American Universities.
All but one group saw average salary increases around 1 to 5 percent, depending on the group. Average salaries for the “instructor” category increased from $44,900 to $55,600, or 23.8 percent, from last year.
Robert Goga, director of Institutional Research, who delivered the first report to the University Senate Budget Policies Committee on Dec 14, said this increase can be attributed to visiting professors (associate, assistant, etc.) being added to the “instructor” category for this report.
The American Association of University Professors provided new instructions on which category to place visiting professors, Goga said, adding that prior instructions from the AAUP were “confusing.”
David DeJong, executive vice provost, told committee members that Pitt’s goal is to have salaries in each of these categories around the median.
Faculty members with a 12-month salary are converted to a standard academic year/nine-month basis by applying a factor of .818181 for the report. Medical school faculty were excluded.
The report also notes that tenure status of the faculty was not considered.
Professors
Pitt’s 480 full-time professors ranked 16th with an average salary of $153,000. Last year, Pitt’s then 470 full-time professors on the Pittsburgh campus ranked 18th with an average salary of $149,400.
Associate professors
The 413 associate professors ranked 23rd with an average salary of $101,100. Last year, 419 associate professors on the Pittsburgh campus ranked 19th, with an average salary of $99,900.
Assistant professors
The 510 assistant professors ranked 27th with an average salary of $85,600. Last year, Pitt’s 574 assistant professors ranked 29th, averaging $81,500.
Instructors
The 158 instructors ranked 17th out of 20 schools with an average salary of $55,600. Last year, Pitt ranked 19th out of 21 schools with its 82 full-time instructors making an average of $44,900.
Lecturers
The 230 lecturers ranked 28th out of 29 schools with an average salary of $53,400. Last year, Pitt also ranked 28th out of 29 schools with faculty at the lecturer rank. The average salaries were $51,600.
REGIONAL CAMPUSES
Pitt–Bradford, Pitt–Greensburg and Pitt–Johnstown were grouped together as one weighted average that was compared to a peer group of 95 different institutions with 109 campuses in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS.
Data for this report is based off 2016-2017 salary data, a year difference from the Pittsburgh campus data.
Faculty salaries were reported on a nine-month equivalent basis, calculated by multiplying the IPEDs average weighted monthly salary by nine.
Rankings are in deciles with the first decile representing the top 10 percent through decile 10 representing the bottom 10 percent.
Professors
The 28 professors at Pitt’s three regional campuses ranked at the top of the sixth decile with an average salary of $88,400. This is an increase from last year when they were ranked near the bottom of the sixth decile with average salaries of $83,700.
Associate professors
The 107 associate professors ranked at the bottom of the fifth decile with an average salary of $71,300. In the previous report, the campuses’ then-103 associate professors at the three campuses ranked ninth of 11 in the fifth decile, with an average of $70,400.
Assistant professors
The 101 assistant professors ranked 11th out of 12 schools in the sixth decile with an average salary of $57,900. In the previous report, Pitt’s then-102 assistant professors ranked more toward the middle of the sixth decile with an average salary of $57,400.
Instructors/lecturers
For this report, the regional campuses’ 55 instructors and lecturers were combined into a single category and grouped into deciles based on the average salaries. They ranked third out of nine in the seventh decile with an average salary of $47,700. Last year, Pitt’s then-50 instructors and lecturers made an average of $48,000 — the top of the seventh decile.
The full report can be accessed here.
Cost of living analysis
Amanda Brodish, senior data analyst, delivered the cost-of-living adjusted salary report, which used data from the AAU and the Council for Community and Economic Research’s ACCRA Cost of Living Index (Q1-2018).
The index comprises grocery items, housing, utilities, transportation, health care and other expenses, according to the report.
Pitt rose one rank from last year to 17th in the cost-of-living adjusted salary report — roughly the median of the AAU institutions. Instructors and lecturers were combined into one category for this report.
Regional campuses
For the regional campus analysis, Brodish said, she and others used the IPEDs data and Sperling’s BestPlaces, which helps account for cost of living estimates in suburban and rural areas.
Brodish told committee members the distribution looks “very similar” to previous distributions with Greensburg as the most expensive of the three regional campuses and Johnstown as the least expensive.
Bradford’s cost of living in this report was normalized to 100 and other cities’ salaries were presented as relative to Bradford, according to the report.
The full report can be accessed here.
Donovan Harrell is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at dharrell@pitt.edu or 412-383-9905.