Calculation of Faculty Salary Compression at UTK Louis Gross, Faculty Senate President January 19, 2006 Based upon the latest Senate Budget Committee report on UTK faculty salaries as compared to certain peer groups (for the 2004-2005 academic year) I calculated the magnitude of salary compression using average Full Professor salary as compared to average Assistant Professor Salary for UTK as a whole. This is simply the ratio of average Full Professor Salary to average Assistant Professor Salary. If UTK has similar ratios as our peer institutions, even though our average salaries might be different, there would be the same level of "salary compression". Results are for Average Full Professor Salary ----------------------------- Average Assistant Professor Salary UTK THEC Peer group Top 25 Public SUG Peers 1.5889 1.7196 1.7148 1.6927 The data used in this are posted at http://web.utk.edu/~senate/docs/2005-06/SalarySurvey2005-06.pdf Thus on average, for 2004-5, Full Professors at UTK were paid 58.8% higher than Assistant Professors, while at THEC, SUG and Top 25 Public institutions on average Full Professors were paid 69-72% higher than Assistant Professors. This provides strong evidence that salary compression is more severe at UTK than at these peer groups. If the Full Professor salaries at UTK in 2004-5 were a comparable multiple of Assistant Professor salaries here as those of the peer groups (70% higher rather than 58.8%), the total additional salary funding needed would have been $3,407,000, not counting the additional fringe benefits costs, for the 501 Full Professors at UTK.