Here’s a small but significant example of how misreporting can confuse the public and impact public opinion about university contract negotiations.
A lot of those who teach on the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus were surprised by an October 7 news item broadcast by KGMB, which reported:
The average salaries for tenured professors at UH Manoa range from $115,000 a year to $147,000.
In the academic world, “Professor” refers to the highest academic rank, usually achieved only after decades of teaching and research, and promotions via a rigorous peer review process. To the public, however, “professor” is a term which generally refers to all instructional faculty.
The figures broadcast by KGMB appear relatively accurate for those at the acadmic rank of “Professor”, often referred to as “full Professor”, but are wildly misleading if applied to all UH faculty.
In 2003, the last year for which data are readily available, there were 569 faculty at the rank of Professor out of the 2,529 faculty on the Manoa campus, just 22.5 percent of all faculty and 38 percent of instructional faculty. Since that time, a number of lower ranking assistant professors have been hired. [See Table 1 of this 2003 UH report.]
According to an annual salary study by the American Association of University Professors, those at the highest rank of Professor at UH Manoa have an average salary of $116,800.
Associate Professors average $88,200; Assistant Professors, $74,400; and Instructors, $58,700.
In addition, “average” salary figures are skewed by significantly higher salary scales in certain parts of the university, including the law school, medical school, and certain sciences.
Jon Goldberg-Hiller, a professor of political science, set about tracking down the source of the misleading numbers. His series of emails have been circulating to all faculty and drawing a considerable response.
Goldberg-Hiller first emailed KGMB reporter Jim Mendoza.
In regards to your story on the teach-in yesterday: how did you get the figures for the pay of a tenured professor. I assure you that I have tenure and am paid far below your minimum posted on the news. Most of my colleagues, when given tenure, make about $70,000 per year. That’s 40% below your “minimum”. Figures like this only hurt us and deflect from the important story we are trying to tell about our commitment to education.
Mendoza replied that the numbers came from Greg Takayama, special assistant to the Manoa Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw.
Golberg-Hiller then contacted Takayama, who confirmed that he had provided Mendoza with the data. But Takayama said his office was not the source.
In response to a request for information from KGMB-9, I informed reporter Jim Mendoza that the average salary of a 9-month tenured (instructional) professor at UHM is $115, 073; and the average for an 11-month professor is $147,817. These figures were provided by the VCAA’s office.
In a later email, Takayama added:
I was asked the average salary for a UH Manoa professor – that is the information I obtained and provided, as best I could.
Goldberg-Hiller continued to press Takayama on the issue, noting that “the differences in salary are considerable as are the political implications of these various figures.”
Yesterday, Takayama emailed another set of salary figures to KGMB’s Mendoza.
In the interests of clarity and more accurate disclosure – I am providing additional information on the salary average and range of tenured UH Manoa professors (the ranks of tenured professors include both full and associate professors):
Salary range for 9-month associate professors is $67,632-133,731. Average is $87,381.
Salary range for 9-month full professors is $79,029-208,317. Average is $115,073.
I hope this helps correct and more fully explain the information I provided earlier.
And this has not put an end to the reverberations.
Cynthia Franklin, a Professor of English, posted the following comment to the Google Group, “Preserving Hawaii’s University” yesterday afternoon.
I don’t have Gregg Takayama’s email address but I hope you will let him know that this “correction” needs immediate correction.
I am a full professor who is nearly $10,000 beneath the lowest figure he cites and I doubt that I am alone (in fact I know I’m not).
The initial figures given to the media do urgently need correction, but the correction needs to be accurate and not just another inflation of the numbers that will serve political purposes. I can’t imagine the administration does not have access to these figures. Or, on the other hand, perhaps those of us who are off the charts here can hold the administration to their figures and petition for quite substantial raises.
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Ian, I know why you have so many unique visitors!
You seek and publish accuracy and clarification on issues for which the down-sized traditional media no longer have the resources.
Ian, The comment in the misleading reports on faculty pay, that the latest figures on pay available are from 2003, may be inaccurate. The University publishes yearly in response to a state law, the Uniform Information Practices Act, executive and faculty salaries. Hamilton Library Hawaiian Collection and Hamilton Library general reference collections both have reports dated 2008 which probably has 2007 salary data in it, but perhaps only 2006 data. Another copy of the report, though the specific date is not mentioned–and it comes out annually–is available in the Hawaiian Collection at UH Hilo. The call number for all three is LG961 .H392 U85. These are Library use only copies as they are in Reference Collections, but may be used by anyone and probably may be photocopied.
The Hawaii State Library also has copies of either this report or of a similar one. It is entitled Report to the 2007 Legislature: Annual report on salaries paid to executive and faculty employees. The call number in the state library system is H 378.12 Unir, and the volume is available in the Hawaii State Library Hawaiian and Pacific Reference; and in the Hilo Public Library, Hawaiian Reference.
The source in Hamilton Library separates faculty from executive. One can go through the alphabetical listing of all faculty by surname. In addition to the faculty person’s salary, the entry lists the college and perhaps the department where the individual teaches. I invite anyone to examine the salaries of Arts & Humanities; Languages, Linguistics, and Literature; Social Sciences, and Library faculties for comparison of their salaries to the figures given by the Chancellor’s Office at UH Manoa. Yes, one will find an occasional professor in the six figures ($100,000 or more); but one will find in most of these colleges that the top figures are definitely lower.
i feel like i’m rolling in poverty.
It’ll be hard to un-ring the bell on this one. See Lee Cataluna’s column today. Yes, there have been substantial raises, but as VCAA Kathy Cutshaw has admitted those increases merely corrected years below average pay.
UHPA is losing badly in the court of public opinion.
Still, one wonders, are teachers at a public university actually worthy of receiving any more salary than say, public elementary school teachers?
In fact, who do you suppose works harder for that public-subsidized salary?
Are you kidding, Darren? Please, please, please tell me that you’re just being facetious and that you aren’t really questioning why instructors and professors at a public university should be paid more than primary and secondary school teachers.
Define your terms. What exactly do you mean by “working harder”? I’d wager that any college instructor attempting to juggle teaching numerous classes while researching a paper in the hopes of publication with the possibility of having their position eliminated thanks to a slashed budget hanging over their heads on a daily basis would tell you that they work every bit as hard as any grade school teacher, if not harder.
The refusal of the state and by extension, its citizens, to invest the needed resources in education — and I’m talking from top to bottom, pre-k to graduate school — baffles me to no end. Yes, let’s cut their public-subsidized salary. Our tax dollars belong in our pocket, where we can use them to buy bigger televisions and bigger cheeseburgers. Tourism is our lifeblood anyway; let’s raise a generation of hotel staff and surfing instructors.
To say that group A doesn’t get paid what they deserve, so group B shouldn’t be either smacks of the worst aspects of the crab-bucket mentality. Public opinion is always so focused on depriving others of what they have instead of figuring out how to acquire more for themselves.
Sorry to be unable to provide comedic value for you, but I most certainly am questioning such discrepancy.
Regarding the challenges facing academicians, I’m not terribly sympathetic of pressures to publish or perish, nor the insufferable politics of higher education. You may define that as hard work; I’d term it more as inefficiency-induced institutional irritations.
It seems quite a stretch to lump professors’ 100k+ salaries into the rhetoric of, “the needed resources in education”. Perhaps the citizenry would be more prone to swallow such pleas if the “higher educators” would cut the Mother Theresa-bit and candidly state it as it is:
“Our administrators, football coaches, and yes, tenured professors, ought to pull in big fat pieces of the public fiscal pie — because we play a big fat part in the big fat economy..”
Come to think of it, that last term might sound a bit odd.
In our current fiscal state, publicly-funded professional cartels dismissing public opinion as misdirected in this matter would be laughable if less grave.
Awesome post. Keep it up.