Higher education professionals saw an increase in salaries over the past year, but as the state’s General Assembly prepares its budget, school officials aren’t optimistic the increases will continue.
The median base salaries for public university employees with professional-level expertise assigned to specified departments increased 2.4 percent nationwide during the 2013-14 academic year, according to a College and University Professional Association for Human Resources report released this week. Private university employees’ salaries increased 2 percent. In previous years, private university employees saw greater salary increases than their public counterparts.
“State economies and state legislatures impact public institutions’ ability to award salary increases to their employees,” CUPA-HR CEO Andy Brantley said in a news release Monday. “Many public colleges and universities have had limited to no opportunities to provide salary increases during the last 4-5 years.”
CUPA-HR officials said they’re pleased with the increase for public institution employees. But the change isn’t significant, said Dale Anderson, this university’s human resources director.
“The public sector has been behind for several years, and I think maybe there’s a little catch-up there,” Anderson said.
Last year’s budget and versions Last year’s budget and versions of this year’s budget included cost-of-living adjustments and merit increases for the University System of Maryland. The adjustments are “well-deserved,” said system lobbyist P.J. Hogan, because the system has frozen employee pay in recent years to find savings.
Gov. Martin O’Malley proposed a budget for fiscal year 2015 with a 2 percent cost-of-living adjustment and merit increases. But both legislative chambers have proposed cuts as much as $10 million to the university system.
“We’re hopeful that things are getting better, and they are getting better because we’ve gone through” years of pay freezes, Anderson said.
O’Malley’s proposed budget provides $24.1 million for this year’s cost-of-living increase and $38.5 million for merit increases.
Inflation grew 1.5 percent nationally over the past year, the report noted, meaning the growth of prices in the economy didn’t significantly erode the purchasing power of public university employees’ wages.
But when salaries don’t increase, Anderson said, it affects the morale of faculty members. The university has to hire new faculty at competitive rates determined by market forces, while current faculty are essentially locked in at the salaries at which they were hired years before.
This creates a “two-tiered” system, Anderson said. New hires can take advantage of increasing salaries because of changes in the market, he said, but veteran faculty members’ salaries aren’t adjusted.
“You have to hire at elevated rates, and as a result some people … are being hired at salaries that are at or very close to what some people that are already here are earning,” Anderson said. “They’re saying, ‘Gee, my salary hasn’t advanced, but the market has for everybody else, and what they’re paying for new faculty members is what I’m earning now or slightly more than what I’m earning now, and that doesn’t seem right.’”
