President-to-faculty pay ratio on the rise
Among the highest non-instructional wages are those paid to presidents, chief financial officers and key administrators.Department of Education data reveals the average president-to-faculty pay ratio has increased from 4.2 to 4.6 since 2020. That means presidents are paid 4.6 times the salary of a full-time doctoral faculty member on average.
And it isn’t just non-instructional wage growth that is outpacing that of faculty. It’s also their ranks.
“Institutions are creating more director and assistant director positions to oversee programs that were formerly under the purview of tenured faculty,” Colby said. “As colleges have grown, they’ve hired more contingent, or part-time, faculty who are not eligible for tenure. Then, the administration says, ‘We don’t have enough [full-time] faculty to fill out the committees. Therefore we’re going to create an assistant director position that will do work formerly done by faculty.’”
From 2013 to 2023, the University of Mississippi added 5,734 non-instructors, with the University of California-Los Angeles (5,423), Rutgers University (3,641) and Harvard University (2,936) also ranking among the top schools for adding full-time, nonclassroom positions.
