 Welcome to the Future Trends Forum. I'm delighted to see you here today. We have a superb guest on just really important material and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. We've been looking at two things as long as the Future Trends Forum has been around that come together in the person of Glen Colby. One is we've been looking at faculty in colleges and universities. What their status is, how their roles are changing, how they're compensated, what academic freedom is, what we teach and how we teach. So that's one major theme. And the second theme is that we at the Forum have been trying to host as much cutting-edge data as possible and we've done that for data on free speech, we've done that for data on campus economics, we've done that for enrollment and more and more. But what we have here today is cutting-edge data on faculty compensation and faculty composition. So I'm really really pleased to welcome Glen Colby. He's a senior researcher at the American Association of University Professors, the famous AUP, the Association that among other things is our best guardian of freedom, academic freedom, and Glen is the author of a new report on faculty compensation. So if you look in the bottom left of your screen, you'll see a couple of different buttons. One of them will take you to the report and the other will take you to this awesome cool website that he helped develop which gives you ways to visualize the data. Now, let me just stop introducing and talking about him and let me actually bring him up on stage. Glen, it just occurred to me, you're in Maine right now, right? That is correct. And I was telling you about Colby College. I didn't just think to make the connection between the two names. I'm familiar with that in Colby Sawyer College in New Hampshire as well. True, true, true. I used to drive fast that quite a few times. So it's good to see you. Thank you for joining us today, Glen. Thanks for the opportunity and thanks for all of your work on the Future Trends Forum over the years. It's fantastic. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Now, Glen, I told you about our unusual tradition here. We find that most academics introduce themselves like they're doing an obituary of themselves. They talk about their past glories and past achievements. But what I'd like to do is to ask what you plan on working on for the next year. What are the big projects, the big topics, the big issues that are going to be top of line for you? Nice. Well, I mean, as we do every year, following our annual compensation survey, we will make revisions to the survey and the data collection processes and so forth. But in addition to that, this year, the AAP has partnered with the American Statistical Association to develop a new resource around doing salary equity studies at universities. And this comes from recognizing that currently the most used resource, the most important resource, is a book called Paychex. It was written by Lois Hagner who was unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago. And that book was commissioned by the AAP in 2002. And it's time for an update. So that's on the front burner for us this year, along with quite a bit of expertise from the ASA. Good. And the ASA stands for American Statistical Association. Thanks. Thanks. Well, that sounds good. This will be very, very useful. First of all, updating something that's nearly a generation old, but also faculty are going to be very interested in all these issues of equity. Sure. And, you know, institutional researchers and administrations around the country who are trying to work on issues of equity with their faculty. Well, that'll be very, very useful. Good luck with all of that. Thank you. It's a big project. As you know, writing a book is no small task. No, no, no. Well, good luck. Good luck. And please, let us know when it goes live. So that we can spread the word. Well, I have a couple of questions just to get rolling. And friends, if you're new to the forum, I usually torment our guests with a couple of bonehead questions at the start. But then the idea is to turn the floor over to you. So please, at any point, start clicking the raised hand button if you'd like to be face-to-face with us. Glenn is proof that you don't have to have a beard to be on stage. And again, the Q&A box is also always there for you. My first question is one of the long-running patterns of structural changes in American higher ed has been the adjunctification of professoriate. That is the proportion of faculty who are on tenure track has been gradually shrinking. And the number of faculty who are not has been increasing. And I mean, the large number for that is those who are adjuncts or in Canada sessionals, people who are hired to teach individual classes at will. Well, there's also growth of faculty who are full-time, but not on the tenure track who are sometimes called instructors or lecturers. And I'm wondering your most recent data, is that trend continuing or are there any changes in that? Yes. There's a steady growth over the last 20 years or so in non-tenure track full-time faculty in the U.S. And there are some nuances to that. So the best data we have on that comes from the Department of Education, from the National Center for Education Statistics, and, you know, they require all institutions that participate in Title IV financial aid to submit numbers of faculty by appointment type. So that, you know, tenure under tenure track, non-tenure track, or also part-time faculty. And so that's a, it's the best data we have available, but, you know, it doesn't explain what's actually happening underneath. So in some cases, the growth in full-time non-tenure track can be a good thing, believe it or not. It can be because in some cases, institutions have done the right thing and recognized part-time faculty members who are teaching the equivalent of a full-time growth as full-time employees and therefore eligible for benefits and fringe benefits and so forth. So, but overall, the pattern is not good. We're seeing just a steady decline in the proportion of tenure line faculty members over the last 50 years. Would you like if I could quickly show one of the data.aup.org charts on that? That would be great. There's a few places you could look for that, but absolutely. Okay, so friends, I don't usually do this, but because this webpage is so cool, I want to make a point of showing it. So if you haven't seen this already, this is, again, you can find a link to this from the bottom left-hand corner of your screen. And they just put this over here. And you should be able to see this chart of the academic workforce. Again, the data comes from iPeds. And you can see the dark blue line right here is the tenured workforce. And you can see that number has been declining with a recent pump up and then another drop down. The tenure track line has been declining pretty steadily. And then overwhelmingly, we have the part-time number, which is close to half of faculty right here. Now, this is again, this is a very interactive chart. There's a lot you can do with it. You can create different visualizations with it and tease it out this way. But I want to make sure you solve that just because I think this is a really, really useful website. And I'm afraid, Glenn, that now that I've shown that to them, everyone's going to stop listening to us. Well, it's fine if they look and want to ask questions about it or contact me later about it. It's interesting that you highlighted the little bump up in the proportion tenured over the last couple of years. And before we get excited about seeing an increase in the proportion of tenured, the sad part is the increase was because so many part-time contingent faculty members were laid off. So if we look at the actual numbers, it's a disaster. From fall 19 to fall 20, over 50,000 part-time faculty members lost their jobs and over 6,000 full-time contingent faculty members lost their jobs. So of course, the proportion with tenured bumps up. But for a very bad reason, I would suggest. That's important. But that's also the classic function of edgins. Since they're at will, they can be discarded much more easily. It is. And it's also evidence that the tenured system works because those with tenured were much less likely to depart. I mean, there were early retirement programs implemented and so forth. So there was some decline. But for the most part, the tenured system worked. For those who possess it, yes. For those who, yes, yes. So again, thank you for answering my question. You have an eerie grasp of the data. But my second question, this is the one I should have mostly led with, which is in terms of overall compensation. And by the way, thank you for framing this in terms of compensation rather than pay, because the non-monetary benefits are crucial. What's the big picture of how faculty compensation is going? Is it picking up after COVID? Is it stalled out or where? Well, so our survey focuses mostly on full-time faculty compensation. And so we stress that just about half of faculty in the U.S. are employed on a part-time basis. But regarding the full-time faculty compensation, salaries dropped for the third year in a row in real terms after adjusting for inflation. Last year was the worst year on record in terms of real salary change for faculty. This year was not quite as bad. And I'm looking at the specific numbers. Among the institutions that completed our survey, salaries decreased about 2.4 percent after adjusting for inflation. And that's after last year was considerably lower, a greater decrease than that. So yeah, so the pain continues three years in a row. We've seen decreases in real terms. So outside of higher education, is one of the causes the past year and a half of inflation spiking? Totally. There's always a lag because if inflation spikes in one particular year, faculty salaries are already set for that year. So the question is going into each fall, how do institutions adjust to account for the prior year's inflation? So given the inflation we've had this in 2022, we'll see what happens next fall because that's contracts are renegotiated and so forth. And internally, what are the big drivers of that steady reduction? Is it just simply cost savings or is there anything else going to go? Well, in the last couple of years, I mean, that's the story we get is that institutions are struggling to balance their books. Surprisingly, at least to me, over the last couple of years, states have managed to increase their levels of funding on average to public institutions, at least on a per student basis. It might be a kind of a decrease when you consider that how much enrollment, student enrollment has dropped. But with the help of the federal stimulus funds, and which are now coming to an end, it's helped limit the damage for those who still have a job. Some of the forum audience will know that I have a very grim model of high-red after 2012, usually called peak higher education. And I keep saying that we are stepping down the peak, down the wrong side, and this sounds like evidence for it. But this is not a place for me to advocate my views. It's a place for all of you to advocate yours. So first of all, Glenn, thank you for answering my two basic questions. Friends, this is the time for you to ask questions. And even before I say that, the questions have already started piling up, which is great. So let me bring up the first question here is from Valerie Wheat, who asks a very, very practical question. Valerie, this is great. I teach at a community and technical college, and I make well below the benchmark that this survey sets. How do you recommend that individual faculty use this data for advocacy for raises? Thank you, Valerie. Well, great question. And that's what our department is all about. First of all, we hope you can organize. That is an area that faculty can organize around in compensation. And it's the main reason we have conducted our survey since 1957 is to provide the information that lets faculty address disparities, but also institutions themselves who might need to go to their state legislators to allocate more funds and all. So we try to help everyone make the case that we need to pay faculty fairly and consistently, or else the institutions won't be able to attract and retain good faculty. I hope that gets at what you were asking. Well, I'm glad that you start off with talking about organizing, but also putting this in the context of the real changes. Thanks, but I'll add that my phone rings all the time, which I welcome from either faculty or just constituents, community members for institutions, asking what's available, what information, what research can help us. And I would encourage you, anyone to drop a line to us, you know, research at aup.org in case we know of something that might help you. Well, thank you. That's excellent. Thank you for sharing that address. And Valerie, I hope that's of help and I wish you luck in your struggle. Community colleges do more than anybody with less. And you guys deserve a lot more than that. Friends, if you're new to the forum, that's an example of the text question. So you can just type in one of those by going to the bottom of the screen, that white strip, that little question mark. Let me give you another example of that from our dear friend and serial author, Tom Hames. And Tom asks a typically powerful question that cuts right to the quick. What percentage of faculty choose voluntarily to leave academia in a given year? And how does it impact wage pressures? And does that vary by type of institution? Great question. And we have no idea. And here's and here's why the Department of Education used to run a program called the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty that got at those kind of issues, you know, turnover issues, you know, part-time faculty and working conditions, workload. But that program ended in 2004. And since 2004, we just, there's nothing available nationally to answer those kinds of questions about workload and turnover. We can try to make some inferences based on, you know, how many faculty members were employed at this rank in one year versus the next year and then subtract new hires and so forth. We can try to infer some, you know, just change in the numbers. But we have no idea why they left. Did they leave because they were offered a full professor job at another institution? Or did they go up for tenure and were denied? We don't know. And that's a rough one. Well, shoot, I appreciate the difficulty of that. The good news I'll say is that our office is hiring another, we've created a new position to study that, a new researcher position to study that type of issue with, to study issues around the academic workforce and their employment conditions and all. But, and so we're committed to trying to work on that. But at the moment, we haven't actually done that research yet. So, yeah, when you see publications on that issue, those kinds of issues, and you try to figure out, well, how did they do this? Typically, they're going back to the national study of post-secondary faculty data, and so it's 20, 30 years old. Well, first of all, thank you for your candor and humility in telling us what you haven't studied and what you do. Oh, I'm happy to, I could go on all day about things we don't know. That's true of anybody who is being honest. But, Tom, thank you for the great question. And I think we all know, or you may have seen, there are lots of anecdotes and individual personal stories about this topic. We have more questions coming in, which I'm really grateful for. But I want to bring up a video question, and this is from the excellent Jordan Davis, a former student of mine at Georgetown. And let's bring him up on stage. Let's say, here we go. Jordan, hello. Hey, what's going on, Brian? Hey, Glenn. Oh, it's great to see you. Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much, Glenn, for all that you've posited so far. Brian, it's great to be back in these conversations. I know it took some time away as work got busy, but as the semester's winding down, I'm able to rejoin. And so, yeah, the question that I have is, what? Because I work in faculty development. So I work at Georgetown. I work at our Center for Teaching and Learning. And one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is the correlation between faculty compensation and good teaching. And so, the argument that I feel like might be, might create change, create positive change, be able to see that those compensation numbers go up is making the argument that if faculty are paid more, they able to invest more fully in their teaching. And as a result, you have higher retention, higher graduation rates, you might have students that are more prepared to go into certain careers, etc. And so, my question is, when those types of arguments are presented to state senators and those who are trying to advocate for higher faculty compensation, what is the pushback? Is there any pushback? Are folks that are in charge of establishing the budget for faculty compensation, let's say for state universities, for example, is there not... What do you think are some of the barriers to understanding that argument that higher compensation leads to good teaching and good teaching leads to a bunch of other things that provide a return on investment? Nice. Thanks, Jordan. Well, I would argue that higher compensation by itself does not lead to... does not necessarily lead to good teaching in that there's just a whole slew of factors that improve the quality of student experiences. And, you know, for example, tenure, the presence of tenure is a factor in whether universities and colleges can attract and retain talented faculty members. And we're seeing this now as sort of a discontinuity study in certain states that are taking away tenure. And those institutions, the administrators at those institutions are reporting that applicants are withdrawing their applications because they don't want to go to a place that doesn't have tenure. And that's a separate issue from compensation. And, you know, compensation is one form of support for faculty, but beyond compensation, there's general support for doing their job, anything ranging from facilities and administrative support to having the opportunity for sabbatical. So when I hear of studies where people try to find correlations between, say, tenure line faculty and contingent or adjunct faculty and student outcomes, I get concerned because there's an implication that there's some quality about that's embedded in those faculty members that makes them more or less able to teach when, in fact, it might be that they don't have the supports beyond compensation. I mean, absolutely if we don't pay faculty members a competitive wage with appropriate benefits, fringe benefits, we're going to lose those faculty members to industry and so forth. But I would be really skeptical of a study that simply looked at correlations between faculty salaries and even benefits and some kind of student outcomes as a proxy for quality of instruction. It seems pretty far removed, but it's important work and we need to make that case. So I would just urge folks who are looking at those kind of issues to consider the whole package of support for faculty to do their work, including workload issues. I hope that wasn't rambling too much, but I don't know, what do you think of that? Is that in line with what you're thinking, Jordan? No, absolutely. It's something to think about and really that question came from the fact that those who are applying for associate, let's say, if you're starting at assistant faculty at a lot of universities, this assistant and then associate and then try to get tenure from there, those who apply for those assistant professor positions, their main motivation might not be teaching. Whereas if you have adjunct faculty who know that what they're going to be doing is teaching, I mean, the motivations are a little bit different. And so that's kind of where that distinction came from for me as far as like, if we invest more in the adjunct faculty who are intentionally applying to these positions to teach because research isn't really a part of that equation for most of the adjunct faculty who are teaching courses as an adjunct that you might be able to try to make that argument. But it's definitely something to think about. It's definitely multi-layered and you gave me a lot of different perspectives to look at it from. And so I appreciate the answer for sure. Great. And anecdotally, what we're seeing is more and more university, typically large universities are restructuring their faculty titles and jobs so that non-tenure track faculty members have access to a ranking system and opportunities for promotion, maybe assistant teaching professor or professor of practice, things like that. So that's a factor to consider as well. And we're going to be studying that over the next couple of years. Nice. Well, I'll be looking out for it. Yeah, thank you too. Thank you for the great question. Good to see you. Good to see you. And so, friends, you can tell that we're pretty friendly when it comes to video questions. So if you'd like to make sure your mic and camera are working, you can join us on stage and follow with Jordan. And of course, you can also type in questions into the Q&A box. The chat has had Glenn a whole bunch of different points and ideas come by. But we have one more question from the Q&A box world, and I'd like to erase that because it is typically a really, really practical strategic question. This is from Charles Finley at North Eastern who says, thinking about supplying demand and relationship to pay. If there's a surplus of qualified teacher PhDs, will institutions be willing to pay faculty more? That's fascinating. It ties in with another area of our work around equity, where we've just consistently seen that women faculty are paid less than the men counterparts at all ranks. And the reason I thought of this is that since around 2006, I believe, women have received more PhDs each year than men. And so you could say, well, so there's, I don't know if the word surplus would be appropriate there, but if there are more women than men, it sort of seems like you could make the case. Well, I'm thinking this through. I wonder if it's related. I may have painted myself into a corner here. I mean, I'm thinking through like, why is it that women are continuing to be paid less? And maybe that's because there are more women available for the kinds of fields that are more, that have more women in them. That could be, I don't know, I'm just thinking aloud and I apologize for that. Well, it's okay. I'll flash it back on the screen, Glenn. But I have a way to helicopter you out of that corner too. So let me just put that on the screen again. This is supply and demand. I mean, so if there's a surplus of qualified teacher PhDs, will institutions be willing to pay faculty more? Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I see why we would think that if there's a surplus. Then they wouldn't be able, then they wouldn't be, and he may have just, you know, hit his hit. Yeah, I mean, that's the main function. Yeah, and I'm just trying to be transparent with my thinking. And it's like, maybe that's worth exploring with the gender pay gap that exists. You know, maybe it's because there are more women. But I almost regret going down that path. But you know, I'll think about it. And I welcome any thoughts on that. Well, in the chat, Pamela Taylor links to a New York Times article, which I don't have time to scan right now. But Pamela, thank you for sharing that. And I'll share that with you afterwards, Glenn, if so you get a chance to take a look at it. Thank you. But I think people in the chat have said more. Oh, Pam, summarize, the pay drops of women become more prominent in the field. That's what she's referring to. Within a field? Yeah. So the field becomes less valuable looking. Yeah, I mean, the open question is are some fields paid less than others because they are inherently of less value? Or is it is it because they're more dominated by women in the fields? It's like, what is the cause there? And it's an open question. Because that's what people use to justify the pay gaps. As they say, well, it's because there are gaps because women are dominant in certain fields. And I would suggest it's flipped the other way around. Maybe those fields are paid less because they are dominated by women. In the chat come a couple other arguments. John Hollenbeck from Medicine just says surplus of PhDs plus a lack of concern over instructional quality equals race to the bottom salary it was. And then Daniel Saunders offers a more strictly Marxist take on this saying reserve armies of underemployment labor often work to drive salaries down. Yes, and that ties in with my overall feeling of the proletarianism of the faculty in the US where faculty are driven to sort of adopt the standards of people who did not have access to tenure and so forth. So tenure was conceived as a right, not just some kind of merit badge where you get it and you it's just it's a right of all. But as faculty start thinking of it as sort of a something you attain and it's almost like that's their achievement as opposed to a right for all, then it becomes a vicious cycle where institutions hire more and more non-tenure track faculty members and then they start taking away the shared governance responsibilities of faculty members to have their say in the curriculum and program development and so forth. So I agree it's a problem. Well, thank you and I just want to add one more line from Melanie in the chat says there's a lot of work in this by Claudia Golden at Harvard and I second that that's really serious research and Melanie also recommends looking into some she capitalizes this labor economics. So and then Pamela Taylor if you haven't seen this in the chat by the way friends she sent a gift link for the New York Times article so you don't have to subscribe in order to see that. Thank you Pamela and thank you Melanie. We have we have more questions coming in Glenn this is just great coming from all directions and here is one from Gene Slattery at Penn West University and this is this is a question that follows that kind of supply and demand argument. If there are fewer faculty then we have better salaries. I'm not I'm not sure I'm not sure I could respond to that but I have the cases I see where we have fewer faculty members the workload increases and so that's a problem because I see people who I see faculty members who have to make up for departed contingent faculty members and suddenly they're teaching three lecture halls of 200 students and that's just not it's not right whether their fact whether their salary increases or not it's it's not right. I mean well that that does that does bring up a question keep in the chat Brent Presley asks has workload remained consistent? Right so all I have to go on there is anecdotal evidence that I collect from AAEP chapters with whom I work and and you know stories I hear and that's that's been the consistent story is that as the contingent faculty members are laid off the workload you know just over the last couple years those who remain are just overworked and putting out one fire after another and the concern is then they don't have the time to serve on committees uh and do do the kind of work to take to to run the college and so administration takes over those roles too and it becomes that's the sort of proletarianization I was talking about where cycle uh where administrations might use that as an excuse to mess with shared governance and that's that's well you're making this darker but but this is also all again backed by by your research so we appreciate this and thank you for the questions that led us into this into this dark moment um we have a couple of more questions coming in here um and that are really good um and and this is I was expecting this question earlier but I'm glad to see it now um this is from Steve at Calumet who says why do you think we see administrative salaries going up significantly more than the rate of faculty salaries over recent years um that's a that's a difficult one uh you know we work to document that and once again in this year's annual report um we studied what's happened since the pandemic began with administrator salaries particularly presidents and CFOs chief academic officers so um and what we saw was you know the trend continues over the last three years throughout the pandemic president's salaries increased quite a bit more than faculty salaries as usual um you know why uh you know we speculated the first year of the pandemic we we we our department and talking with the institutions we we observed that in the first year presidential salaries did not increase and we speculated that it was because that would look really really bad you know I think that even the presidents and the boards recognize that this is not the time to increase presidential salaries five or ten percent but they've since made up for that so the last this last year and the year before presidential salaries made up for the freeze that happened the first year of the pandemic I can't say why though I'll be honest well thank you thank you for struggling with that transplant transparently and it's a it's a good question and this is a major major campus fault line a couple of questions further we have one from our dear friend Don Chalice um and uh Don couldn't make it but he uh wanted me to ask this for you has anyone examined the amount of solidarity among faculty and staff at colleges and universities I've seen some studies about individual institutions but you know as far as nationwide solidarity um I'm not familiar with any any research on that nationally um you know coincidentally uh I'm part of a working group with an AEP that will be examining that issue in terms of racial justice this year because that that's one of the the two major initiatives of the AEP right now one's around racial justice the others are AFT affiliation American education if teachers so with regard to racial justice we're starting to to try to we're starting to look into that and whether there's a shared understanding of um you know issues of racial justice on campuses but I haven't I haven't seen any national work but I could be wrong okay well uh Don as always thank you for the good question and uh and well Glenn it may you may just have described a major research opportunity for people to follow through it yeah and uh you know I would suggest that it starts by trying to uh determine whether uh faculty have an administration have a shared understanding of the issues whether and then and then if there's solidarity around their shared understanding because I don't think you're going to get solidarity if if there's there's not shared understanding to begin with good point well I I hope this research does does take a step in that direction uh we had some interesting views uh Glenn in the chat about the the gap between or the differences between faculty and administrative salaries uh John Hollenbeck says most of administrators are faculty who decided to quit teaching um they are rarely from outside the academy um Pamela Taylor responds some but not all administrative jobs can take their talents elsewhere and get better salaries lower level administrative positions however all for not highly paid well both of which are quite true well I don't know about the as far as administrators being former faculty or teachers I might my understanding is at the at at the executive level you know presidents and C CFOs and all do not come out of out of the academic ranks and there's there's sort of a corporate mentality that's developed across at least four-year institutions where you know the tendency is to try to bring in a president who will treat the the university uh like a corporation I'm speaking of very general terms and I try not to do that so uh I'm just suggesting that yeah I don't necessarily accept that assertion that that administrators come out of faculty ranks very good I would question that very good well thank you thank you we have another question who comes in and I think I think you will appreciate this the way that the speaker identifies herself this is Margot Weiss who signs up as Wesleyan University a a up so sure I had to say that and Margot says can you speak to the pros and cons of a up combining positions within rank in the salary data e.g associate professor and associate lecturer now combined our admin is using this to discredit the data um we do not combine associate uh professor and associate lecturer I mean that's that's I'll be honest I'm I don't encounter that title associate lecturer very often um but we do combine say you know associate professor with associate teaching professor and that that I think that kind of example might be in line with your question and you know from an a a up policy policy perspective um all faculty members all full-time faculty members should have the opportunity for tenure whether they're doing research or not tenure is not about research per se it's you know it applies to teaching faculty as well um the our our faculty compensation survey lists out faculty titles and how they ought to be reported to our survey and in a different way than iPads iPads simply asks institutions to report as determined by the institution but our survey actually delineates all the titles and says well if somebody is a assistant teaching professor report them as assistant professor because we would argue any any kind of assistant any kind of full-time faculty members should have opportunity for tenure they're they're all kind of interrelated I don't know I don't know if that was getting at the question I hope so and feel free to drop me a line if you want to follow up anything margo that's a really great precise question with the data um and if you want to uh if you want to follow please you know please email glenn I'm happy to make him do more work um but uh um but seriously that's a that's a very good question um glenn thank you for being willing to to wrestle with it um we're we're coming close to the end of the hour and I want to bring up two questions um while we have time one is I really appreciate that you break out the data um and the categories of data in terms of among other things medical benefits um and I've heard this from CFOs and CBOs those chief financial officers and chief business officers but rarely from other people um that this is very very important for college university costs overall uh it looks like according to your data that the average expenditure um has shot way up over the past few years that is universities and colleges are spending a lot more on medical benefits um but also that the percentage covered um has been dropping a bit can can you speak to that a bit unfold that data for us sure well first of all most part-time faculty members don't have access to that at all right and that's half half the faculty in the US um but you know most um most um full time do um there's a great study that robert took to touche and I hope I'm saying Robert's name correctly from University of Georgia uh published a couple months ago in the TIAA Institute um um on on their website showing the patterns of benefits uh you know fringe benefit expenditures over the last 40 or 50 years and I highly recommend taking a look at robert robert's study on that with the TIAA Institute um and so that that being said I think that's the definitive source right now uh on like what is the trend um I have sitting in front of me the last five or six years of data um and um I don't know if that's I don't know if I could do a good job characterizing that um uh off the top of my head but um what's so is it sort of like why is the question why are expenditures shooting up or just I just wanted to make sure first of all that I was reading this correctly but also um um that uh this seems to be uh increasingly significant um item on university budgets yeah and I'll say the last our annual report that um just a quick point of clarification the the information that you posted at the bottom left um it uh points at our preliminary survey results but the actual annual report will be released in June um the annual report is going to show among many other topics what has happened with fringe benefits over the last uh three years with with the pandemic and in the case of uh medical insurance contributions there was actually a drop in expenditures per faculty member at the start of the pandemic and it has recovered among public institutions not so much among privates and same thing happens with retirement contributions so there's gonna be details about that um there were some clear differences in how public and private institutions handled fringe benefits during the pandemic um and oh that's very interesting it it's one of the more interesting findings from this year's annual report that I'm sorry I can't share that with you yet but that's in June it's going to press right now so well thank you for giving us the the advanced peak that's that's one of the things I love about hosting researchers in the forum it's a chance to see where you're headed next unfortunately I have to wrap things up we've had an hour of great conversation Glenn and and you've been you've been very generous with your thinking with your data what's the best way to keep up with you and your research our uh aaup.org website has um some tabs across the top for our programs and under the program menu is research and that would be not only faculty compensation research but research on academic freedom tenure and shared governance um and we encourage you to check it out and drop us a line very good very good um well thank you thank you so much um this has been a real treat and you're doing vital vital work for uh for everybody in and around higher education uh good luck and keep it coming thanks you too you too my pleasure my pleasure but don't go away yet friends um I have to uh we have to let Glenn go back to his main location but also I just want to let you know where things are headed in the next few weeks and indeed months if you want to keep talking about these issues which are so powerful everything from women being paid less in higher education to medical benefits to the overall composition of the professoriate please keep talking about this uh you can find me on twitter bright alexander you can find me in mastodon there's my login and just use the hashtag ftte wherever you go um if you want to look ahead uh we have well sorry if you want to look back into the past we have a whole series of sessions which touch on today's topics just go to tinyurl.com slash ftf archive if you want to look forward we have sessions coming up um on a whole variety of topics from open education to assessment to teaching with or without ai to economics just go to forum that future of education that u has to learn more uh thank you all for your excellent questions and comments today um that has really helped us make this into a very very rich and useful session uh shadows to people like john hollandbeck to um pamela taylor and to uh tom hams as well as lisa durr for giving us so many good questions uh in around the chat and just about everywhere uh in the meantime i hope everybody has a good and safe may um i hope this summer gives you some opportunities to uh work in a productive way maybe some productive downtime as well please take care be well everybody we'll see you next week online bye bye all right greetings everyone we'll be starting this week's future transform in just about two minutes maybe a minute and a half uh just a quick sound check if you can let me know in the chat if you can hear me all right i'd appreciate it uh and otherwise we'll be starting in just about a minute and a half all right we'll start in just about a minute give everybody a chance to come in and get comfy make sure everybody has a average of their choice very good well and let me begin let me welcome everybody welcome to the future transform i'm delighted to see you here today we have a superb guest on a just really important material and i'm really looking forward to our conversation but before we do that let me introduce the program let me explain what it is what we hope to accomplish and uh then we'll start this week's conversation so to begin with the future transform is a conversation-based venue what we do here is we collaboratively discuss and explore the future of higher education many of us put our heads together in order to figure out where colleges and universities might be headed and we do this without presentations this slide shared this is just for the intro the main event is entirely conversational question and answer thoughts shared pushbacks and celebration that's what we do and we includes myself i'm the forums creator cat herder and chief curator i'm brian alexander and with me is our redoubtable technology monger um here westerner domeski is here to help you wrangle any of your media problems or questions so they are there for you if you have any issues with sound or video or anything else we've been doing this by the way now in our eighth year now if you want to go back and look at those previous years we have a huge archive right now with something like 360 videos so you can take a look back at them just go to tinyurl.com ftfrchive and you can see a whole range of topics and in fact if you'd like to see them through topics we have on our forum web page an index a kind of table of contents if you will of all of our recordings so you go through there an alphabetical order and page down to find the topics that you'd like now we can um i'll just do this one more time than i should probably stop um as a personal note my newest book is on sale right now you can get it from reputable and disreputable booksellers alike just go to universitiesonfire.com this is the first monograph on climate change and higher education in the future and it's already getting some really good reviews and some really good responses and the reason i'm putting here is not just to encourage you to buy it but also to share this discount code so if you just go to the johns hopkins university uh page catalog page linked from that site just type in htwn and you'll get a nice chunk of change off of your book isn't that good now speaking of uh change looking ahead we have a whole series of topics coming up uh we have a great one on open education another one on assessment and humanities a session with with an author of a new book on great college teaching several sessions on how to teach with and around ai and a session on campus economics and still more coming up if you'd like to see those just go to campus excuse me just go to forum that future of education dot us now we can only do this work with help us from generous supporters and i'd like to thank them before we proceed nizernet in new york state helps that call that states colleges and universities get on very fast broadband and helps them do wonderful professional development we're grateful to them for their work and for their support and we're also grateful to shindig because as you can see we're using the technology right now so if you're new to shindig or if you haven't been here for a while let me just explain how it works but the screen is divided into two parts the top part where i am where these slides are is called the stage we call it that because everybody can see and hear everything that goes on stage this is where our guest is going to be in just a minute and this is where you can be too now bottom half of the screen is where everybody lives that's the participants form the audience space and you can see just been mousing over it you can see other people if you want to learn more about them just mouse over each one and you'll get this more information if you might have a private conversation with anybody just double click on them and they might join you and your two icons will click together like lego's you have your own private audio visual conversation but if you'd like to join the overall conversation how do you do that look in the very bottom of the screen you'll see a white band running along with a few different buttons on the left most edge is a button number 34 right now if you press that two boxes pop up and one's a chat box into which people chat and that's your traditional chat box people have been commenting and if you haven't had a chance to or you just say who you are and where you're from today i'll say i'm brian in menacis northeastern virginia when people use that to share thoughts and early questions now i'll back on that white strip our two other buttons one of them is a raised hand and one of them is a question mark the question mark is a q and a box prompt so just press that button type in your question the time is right i'll flash it on the screen for our guests and everybody to read and i'll read out loud so everyone can hear it if you want to join us on stage uh you just press the raised hand button when the time is right i'll press one of my buttons and you'll be up here face to face with our guests so those are all ways you can contribute and we're grateful to shindig for making them all available now we have other people who support us and i want to thank them as well we have all our supporters on patreon this is the crowdfunding site where people collaboratively contribute here as little as a dollar a month to keep lights on and the machine's running and here these folks contribute ten dollars or more a month people like david scoby kori s kareen mature you can be grateful first of all to them for their support and you can join them just go to patreon.com slash brian alexander okay now all of that was throat clearing all of that was the introduction all of that was just setting the stage for this week's conversation now we've been looking at two things as long as the future transform has been around that come together in the person of glen colby one is we've been looking at faculty in colleges and universities what their status is how their roles are changing how they're compensated what academic freedom is what we teach and how we teach so that's one major theme and the second theme is that we at the forum have been trying to host as much cutting-edge data as possible and we've done that for data on free speech we've done that for data on campus economics we've done that for enrollment and more and more but what we have here today is cutting-edge data on faculty compensation and faculty composition so i'm really really pleased to welcome glen colby he's a senior researcher at the american association of university professors the famous a up association that among other things is our best guardian of freedom academic freedom and glenn is the author of a new report on faculty compensation so if you look in the bottom left of your screen you'll see a couple of different buttons one of them will take you to the report and the other will take you to this awesome cool website that he updeveloped which gives you ways to visualize the data now let me just stop introducing and talking about him and let me actually bring him up on stage glenn it just occurred to me you're in main right now right that is correct and i was telling you about about colby college i didn't just think to make the connection between the two names i'm familiar with that in colby soyer college in new hampshire as well true true true i used to drive fast that quite a few times so it's good to see you thank you for joining us today glenn thanks for the opportunity and thanks for all of your work on the future trends forum over the years it's fantastic thank you so much it's my pleasure now glenn you i told you about our our unusual tradition here we find that most academics introduce themselves like they're doing an obituary of themselves they they talk about their past glories and past achievements but what i'd like to do is to ask what you plan on working on for the next year what are the big projects the big topics the big issues that are going to be top of line for you nice well i mean as as we do every year following our annual compensation survey we we will make revisions to the survey and the data collection processes and so forth but in addition to that this year the aap has partnered with the american statistical association to develop a um a new resource around um doing salary equity studies at universities and this comes from uh you know recognizing that um you know currently the the most um used resource the most important resource is a book called paychecks it was uh written by lois agnir who was unfortunately passed away a couple years ago um and that book was commissioned by the aap in 2002 and um it's time for an update so that's that's that's on the front burner for for us this year along with um quite a bit of expertise from the asa will be good and the asa stands for american statistical association thanks thanks well that sounds good this will be very very useful first of all updating something that's nearly a generation old but also faculty are gonna be very interested in on these issues of equity sure and you know institutional researchers and administrations around the country who are trying to work on issues of equity with their faculty well that'll be very very useful good luck with all of that thank you it's a it's a big project as you know writing a book is it's no small task well good luck good luck and and please let us know when it goes live um so that we can we can spread the word uh well i i have a couple of questions just to get rolling and friends if you're new to the forum i usually torment our guests with a couple of bonehead questions at the start um but then the idea is to turn the floor over to you um so please um at any point start clicking the raised hand button if you'd like to be face to face with us uh glenn is proof that you don't have to have a beard to be on stage and again the q and a box is also always there for you my first question is you know one of the long-running patterns of structural changes in american higher ed has been the adjunctification of professoriate that is the proportion of faculty who are on a tenure track has been gradually shrinking and the number of faculty who are not has been increasing and i mean the large number for that is and those who are adjuncts who are in canada sessionals people who are hired to teach individual classes so i will well there's also growth of faculty who are full-time but not on the tenure track who are sometimes called instructors or lecturers and i'm wondering your most recent data is that trend continuing or are there any changes in that the yes um there's a steady growth over the last 20 years or so in non tenure track full-time faculty in the u.s and you know there there are some nuances to that so the the best data we have on that comes from the department of education from the national center for education statistics and you know they require all institutions that participate in title four financial aid to submit numbers of faculty by appointment type so that you know tenure under tenure track non tenure track or also part-time faculty and so that's it's a it's the best data we have available but you know that it doesn't explain what's actually happening underneath so in some cases the the growth in full-time non tenure track can be a good thing believe it or not it can be because in some cases institutions have done the right thing and recognized part-time faculty members who are teaching the equivalent of a full-time quote as full-time employees and therefore eligible for benefits you know fringe benefits and so forth so um but overall the pattern is not good we're seeing just a steady decline in the proportion of tenure line faculty members over the last 50 years would you would you like if I could if I could quickly show one of the data.aup.org charts on that that would that would be great there's there's a few places you could look for that but absolutely okay so friends I don't usually do this but because this webpage is so cool I want to make a point of showing it so if you haven't seen this already this is again you can find a link to this from the bottom left hand corner of your screen and they just put this over here and you should be able to see this this chart of the academic workforce again the data comes from iPads and you can see the dark blue line right here is the tenured workforce and you can see that number has been declining with a recent pump up and then another drop down the tenure track line has been declining pretty steadily and then overwhelmingly we have the part-time number which is close to half of faculty right here now this is this is again this is a very interactive chart there's a lot you can do with it you can you can create different visualizations with it and and you know tease it out this way but I want to make sure you solve that just because I think this is a really really useful website and I'm afraid Glenn but now that I've shown that to them everyone's going to stop listening to us well it's fine if they look and want to ask questions about it or contact me later about it it's interesting that you highlighted the little bump up in the proportion tenured over the last couple of years and before we get excited about seeing an increase in the proportion of tenured the sad part is the the increase was because so many part-time contingent faculty members were laid off so if we look at the actual numbers it's a disaster you know from fall 19 to fall 20 you know over 50 000 part-time faculty members lost their jobs and over 6000 full-time contingent faculty members lost their jobs so so of course the proportion with tenure bumps up but for a very bad reason that's important so that's but that's also the classic function of edgins whoever since they're at will they can be they can be discarded much more easily then it is and it's also evidence that the tenure system works because they're protected tenure were much less likely to depart I mean there were early retirement programs implemented and so forth so there so there was some decline but for the most part the tenure system worked for those who possess it yes that's for those who yes yes so again thank you for answering my question that's uh you have you have an eerie grasp of the data but my second question this is the one I should have basically have led with which is in terms of overall compensation and by the way thank you for framing this in terms of compensation rather than pay because the non-monetary benefits are crucial what's the big picture of how faculty compensation is going is it picking up after COVID is it stalled out or where um well for so our survey focuses mostly on full-time faculty compensation and so you know we stress that just about half of faculty in the U.S. are employed on a part-time basis right but regarding the full-time faculty compensation salaries dropped for the third year in a row in real terms that is you know after adjusting for inflation you know last year was the worst year on record in terms of real salary change for faculty this year was not quite as bad and I'm looking at the specific numbers you know among the institutions that completed our survey salaries decreased about 2.4 percent after adjusting for inflation wow yeah and that's after you know last year was considerably lower yeah yeah greater decreased than that so yeah so the the pain continues three three years in a row we've seen decreases in real terms so outside of higher education is one of the causes the past year and a half of inflation spiking totally it's and you know there's always a lag because if inflation spikes in one particular year well faculty salaries are already set for that year so the question is you know each going into each fall how do institutions adjust to account for the prior year's inflation so you know given the the inflation we've had this you know in 2022 we'll see what happens next fall because that's what contracts are renegotiated and so forth and internally what are the big drivers of that of that steady reduction is it just simply cost savings or is there anything else going on well in the last couple years it's I mean that's the story we get is that institutions are struggling to balance their books surprisingly at least to me over the last couple years states have managed to to increase their levels of funding on average to public institutions at least on a per student basis right uh it might actually it might be a kind of a decrease when you consider that how how much enrollment student enrollment has has dropped but you know with the help of the federal stimulus funds and which are now coming to an end right it's it's helped limit the damage for those who still have a job that's that's that's that some of Quinn some of the foreign audience will know that I'm I I have a very grim model of higher ed after 2012 usually called peak higher education and I keep saying that we are stepping down the peak down the wrong side and this sounds like evidence for it but this is this is not a place for me to advocate my views it's a place for all of you to advocate yours so um first of all glenn thank you for answering my two uh basic questions uh friends this is the time for you to ask questions and even before I say that the questions very start piling up uh which is great uh so let me uh bring up the first question here is from Valerie wheat who asks a very very practical question Valerie this is great uh I teach you to community and technical college and I make well below the benchmark that this survey sets how do you recommend the individual faculty use this data for advocacy for raises thank you Valerie well good great question and uh that's that's what our department is all about you know first of all we hope you can organize um that is is an area that faculty can organize around you know compensation and it's a it's the main reason we have conducted our survey since 1957 is to provide the information that lets uh faculty address disparities but also institutions uh themselves who might need to go to their state legislator legislators to to allocate more funds and all so we try to help everyone make the case that that we need to pay faculty fairly and consistently uh or else the institutions won't be able to um won't be able to attract and retain good faculty I yeah I I hope that gets at the what you were asking it um well I'm glad that you're that you start off with talking about organizing but also the you know putting this in the in the context the real changes thanks but I'll add that my phone rings all the time which I welcome uh from uh either faculty or you just uh you know constituents uh community members for institutions asking what's available what information what what research can help us and I would encourage you anyone to drop a line to us you know research at aap.org in case we know of something that might help help you well thank you that's excellent thank you for sharing that address and Valerie I hope that's of help and I wish you luck in in your struggle community colleges do more than anybody with less and and you guys deserve a lot more than that friends that's a if you're new to the forum that's an example of the text question so you can just type in one of those by going to the bottom of the screen that white strip that little question mark um let me give you another example of that from our dear friend uh and serial author uh Tom Haymes and Tom asks a typically uh powerful question that cuts right to the quick uh what percentage of faculty choose voluntarily to leave academia in a given year and how does it impact wage pressures and does that vary by type of institution great question and we have no idea and here and here's and here's why the um department of education uh used to run a program called the national study of post-secondary faculty that got at those kind of issues you know turnover issues uh you know part-time faculty and and the working conditions workload but that program ended in 2004 and since 2004 we just there's nothing available nationally uh to answer those kinds of questions about workload and turnover we can try to make some inferences uh based on you know how many faculty members were employed at this rank in one year versus the next year and then subtract new hires and so forth we can try to infer some you know just change in the numbers but uh we have no idea why they left did they leave because they were offered a full professor job at another institution right or did or did they go up for tenure and were denied we we don't know and and that's um that's a rough one well shoot I appreciate the the difficulty of that the good news I'll say is that our office is hiring another we've created a new position to study that a new researcher position to study that type of issue with us to study issues around the academic workforce and their employment conditions and all but um and so we're committed to trying to work on that but at the moment we haven't actually done that research yet so yeah when you see publications on that issue those kinds of issues and use you try to figure out well how did they do this typically they they're going back to the national study of post-secondary faculty data and so it's well he's 20 30 years old well first of all thank you for your for your candor and humility uh and telling us you know what you what you haven't studied and and what you do um I'm happy to I could go on all day about things we don't know that's that's true that's true of anybody who is who's being honest um but uh Tom thank you for the great question and I think we all know or you may have seen there are lots of uh uh uh anecdotes and individual personal stories about about this topic uh we have more questions coming in um which I'm I'm really grateful for but I want to um uh bring up a video question and this is from the excellent Jordan Davis a former student of mine in Georgetown and let's bring him up on stage let's say there we go Jordan hello hey what's going on Brian hey Glenn it's great to see you yeah yeah thank you so much Glenn for all that you've posited so far Brian it's great to be back in these conversations I know I took some some time away as work got busy but as the semester is winding down I'm able to rejoin and so um yeah the question that I have is what because I work in uh faculty development so I work at Georgetown I work at our Center for Teaching and Learning and one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is the correlation between um faculty compensation and good teaching and so the argument that I feel like might be might create change create positive change be able to see that those compensation numbers go up is making the argument that if faculty are paid more they able to invest more fully in their teaching and as a result you have higher attention higher graduation rates you know you have you might have students that are more prepared to go into certain careers etc and so my question is when those types of arguments are presented to state senators and those who are trying to advocate for like higher faculty compensation what is what is the pushback like what is there is there any pushback like what like our folks that are in charge of establishing the the budget for faculty compensation let's say like for state universities for example like is there not what what what do you think are some of the barriers to understanding that that argument that higher you know compensation leads to good teaching and good teaching leads to a bunch of other things that you know provide a return on investment nice thanks Jordan um well I I I would argue that higher compensation by itself does not lead to does not necessarily lead to good teaching um and that you know there's a there's just a whole slew of factors that improve the quality of student experiences um and you know for example tenure the presence of tenure um is as a factor in whether universities and colleges can attract and retain talented faculty members and we're seeing this now as sort of a discontinuity discontinuity study in certain states that are taking away tenure and those institutions the administrators at those institutions are reporting that that applicants are withdrawing their their applications because they don't want to go to a place that doesn't have tenure and that's a separate issue from compensation and and you know compensation is is one form of support for faculty but beyond compensation there's you know general support for doing their job anything ranging from you know facilities and you know administrative support to um having the opportunity for sabbatical so when I hear of studies where people try to find correlations between say uh tenure line faculty and contingent or adjunct faculty and student outcomes I I get concerned because there's an implication that there's some some quality about that's embedded in those faculty members that makes them more or less able to teach when in fact it might be that they don't have the supports beyond compensation I mean that absolutely if we don't pay faculty members a competitive wage with appropriate benefits fringe benefits we're going to lose those faculty members to industry and so forth but um I would be really skeptical of a study that simply looked at correlations between faculty salaries and even benefits and some kind of student outcomes as a proxy for quality of instruction you know it's it's it seems pretty far removed but it's it's important work and and we need to make that case so um you know I would just urge folks who are looking at those kind of issues to consider the whole package of support for faculty to do their work including workload issues and I hope that wasn't I wasn't rambling too much but I don't know what do you think of that does that is that in line with what you're thinking Jordan no absolutely no it's something to think about and and really that question came from the fact that you know those who are applying for associate let's say if you're I guess you're starting at assistant faculty at a lot of universities this assistant and then associate and then you know you try to get tenure from there um those who apply for those assistant you know professor positions their main vote their main motivation might not be teaching whereas if you have adjunct faculty who know that what they're going to be doing is teaching I mean the motivations are a little bit different and so that's kind of where that distinction came from for me as far as like if we invest more in the adjunct faculty who are intentionally applying to these positions to teach because research isn't really a part of that equation for most of the adjunct faculty are teaching courses as an adjunct um that you might be able to to try to make that argument but it's definitely something to think about it's definitely multi-layered and you know you gave me a lot of different perspectives to look at it from and so yeah I appreciate the answer for sure great and anecdotally what we're seeing is more and more university typically large universities are restructuring their their faculty titles and jobs so that uh non-tenure track faculty members have access to a ranking system and opportunities for promotion maybe assistant teaching professor or professor of practice things like that so that's a factor is to consider as well and we're going to be studying that over the next couple years nice we're looking out for it yeah thank you too thank you for the great question good to see you good to see you and so friends you can tell that we're pretty friendly when it comes to video questions so if you'd like to make sure your mic and camera are working you can join us on stage and follow with Jordan and of course you can also type in questions into the q&a box the chat has had Glenn a whole bunch of different points and ideas come by but we have one more question from the from the q&a box world and I'd like to erase that because it is typically a really really practical strategic question this is in Charles Finley at Northeastern who says thinking about supplying demand and relationship to pay if there's a surplus of qualified teacher phd's no institutions are willing to pay faculty more that's that's fascinating it ties in with another area of our work around equity where we've just consistently seen that women faculty are paid less than their the men counterparts at all ranks and wow the the reason I thought of this is that since around 2006 I believe women have received more phd's each year than men and so you could say well so there's I don't know if the word surplus would be appropriate there but if there are more women than men it sort of seems it seems like you could make the case well I'm thinking this I'm thinking this through I wonder wonder if it's related I may have may have painted myself in the into a corner here I mean I'm thinking through like why is it that women are continue to be paid less um and maybe maybe maybe that's uh because there is a there are more women available for the kinds of fields that are that uh that are more um that have more women in them that could be I don't know I'm just thinking aloud and I apologize for that if I if I remind me what the question was exactly well it's okay I'll flash it back on the screen Glenn but I I have a way to helicopter you out of that corner too um so let me let me just put that on the screen on the screen again this is a supply and demand I mean so if there's a surplus of qualified teacher phd's will institutions be willing to pay faculty more yeah I'm not sure I I'm I'm not sure I see why we would think that if there's a surplus then they wouldn't be able then they wouldn't be and he may have just you know hit his hit yeah I mean that's the main function yeah and I was trying to be transparent with my thinking and it's like uh maybe that's worth exploring with the uh the gender pay gap is that exists you know maybe it's because there are more women but I'm I'm I almost regret going down that that path but you know I'll think about it and I welcome any thoughts um on that well in the uh in the chat Pamela Taylor links to a New York Times article um which I don't have time to scan right now but Pamela thank you for for sharing that and I'll share that with you afterwards uh Glenn if uh so you get to take a look at it thank you but in I think people in the chat have have said more um oh Pam uh summarized the pay drops of women become more prominent in the field oh that's what she's referring to within a field yeah so the whole rip so the field becomes uh getting becomes less valuable looking yeah I mean the open question is are some fields paid less than others um because they are inherently of less value or is it is it because uh they're more uh dominated by women in the fields it's like what is the cause there and it's an open question because that's what people use to justify the pay gaps as they say well it's because uh there are gaps because women are uh dominant in certain fields and you know I would suggest it's flipped the other way around maybe those fields are paid less because uh because they are dominated by women it's um it's yeah in the chat come a couple other arguments um uh John Hollenbeck from medicine just says surplus of PhDs plus a lack of concern over structural quality equals race to the bottom salary it was um and then uh Daniel Saunders uh offers a more strictly Marxist take on this saying reserve armies of underemployment labor often work to drive salaries down yes and that ties in my with my overall feeling of the proletarianism of the faculty in the U.S. where um you know faculty are driven to sort of adopt the the standards of people who did not have access to tenure and so forth so you know tenure was conceived as a right not a not just some kind of merit badge where you get it and you it's just it's it's a right of all but as as faculty start thinking of it as uh sort of a something you attain and and that's almost like uh that's their achievement as opposed to a right for all then it becomes a vicious cycle where um institutions hire more and more non-tenure track faculty members and then they start uh um taking away the uh the shared governance responsibilities of faculty members to to uh have their say in the curriculum in program development and so forth so i i agree i agree it's a problem uh just um well thank you and i just want to add one more line from uh uh melanie in the chat says there's a lot of work in this by claudia golden at harvard and i second that uh that's really serious research um and uh melanie also recommends looking into some she capitalizes this labor economics um so uh and then uh pamela taylor if you haven't seen this in the chat by the way friends she uh sent a gift link for the new york times article so you don't have to subscribe in order to see that thank you pamela and thank you melanie we have we have more questions coming in glenn this is just great coming from all directions uh and here is one from uh gene slattery at pennwest university and this is this is a question that follows that kind of supply and demand uh argument if there are fewer faculty then might we have better salaries i'm not i'm not sure i'm not sure i could respond to respond to that uh but uh i i have the cases i see where we have fewer faculty members the workload increases and um so uh that's a problem because i i see i see people who i see faculty members who have to make up for departed contingent faculty members and suddenly they're teaching three lecture halls of 200 students and um that's just not it's not right whether they're fat whether their salary increases or not it's it's not right i mean well that that does that just bring up a question keep in the chat uh brent pressley asks has workload remained consistent right so um all i have to go on there is anecdotal uh evidence that i collect from aap chapters with whom i work and um and you know stories i hear um and and that that's that's been the the consistent story is that as the contingent faculty members are laid off the workload you know just um over the last couple years those who remain are just overworked and putting out one fire after another and the the concern is then they don't have the time to serve on committees uh and do do the kind of work to take to to run the college and so administration takes over those roles too and it becomes that's the sort of proletarian proletarianization i was talking about where uh where administrations might use that as an excuse to mess with shared governance and that's that's well you're making the starker but but this is also all again backed by by your research so we appreciate this and thank you for the questions that led us into this into this dark moment we have a couple of more questions coming in here that are really good and and this is i was expecting this question earlier but i'm glad to see it now this is from steve at cali meant it says why do you think we see administrative salaries going up significantly more than the rate of faculty salaries over recent years that's a that's a difficult one you know we work to document that and once again in this year's annual report um we studied what's happened since the pandemic began with administrator salaries you've brought particularly presidents and cfo chief academic officers so um and what we saw was you know the trend continues over the last three years throughout the pandemic the president's salaries increased quite a bit more than faculty salaries as usual you know why uh you know we speculated the first year of the pandemic we we we our department and talking with the institutions we we observed that in the first year presidential salaries did not increase and we speculated that it was because that would look really really bad you know i think that even the presidents and the boards recognize that this is not the time to increase presidential salaries five or ten percent but they've since made up for that so the last this last year and the year before presidential salaries made up for the freeze that happened the first year of the pandemic i can't say why though i'll be honest i well thank you thank you for struggling with that transplant transparently um and it's uh it's a good question and this is a major major campus fault line um a couple of questions further we have one from um our dear friend don shawless um and uh don couldn't make it but he uh wanted me to ask this for you has anyone examined the amount of solidarity among faculty and staff at colleges and universities i've seen some studies about individual institutions but you know as far as nationwide solidarity um i'm not familiar with any any research on that nationally um you know coincidentally uh i'm part of a working group within the aep uh that will be examining that issue in terms of racial justice this year because that that's one of the the two major initiatives of the aep right now one's around racial justice the other is our aft affiliation america if teachers so with regard to racial justice we're starting to to try to we're starting to look into that and whether there's a shared understanding of um you know issues of racial justice on campuses but i haven't i haven't seen any national work but i could be wrong okay well uh don as always thank you for the good question and uh and well glennon you may just have described a major research opportunity um for people to follow through it yeah and uh you know i would suggest that it starts by trying to uh determine whether uh faculty have an administration have a shared understanding of the issues whether uh and then and then if there's solidarity around their shared understanding because i don't think you're going to get solidarity if if there's not shared understanding to begin with good point well i i hope this research does uh does take a step in that direction we had some interesting views uh glennon in the chat about the the gap between or the differences between faculty and administrative salaries uh john hollandbeck says most of administrators are faculty who decided to quit teaching um they are rarely from outside the academy um pamela taylor responds some but not all administrative jobs uh can take their talents elsewhere and get better salaries lower level administrative positions however all for not highly paid well both of which are quite true well i don't know about the as far as administrators being former faculty or teachers i might my understanding is at the at at the executive level you know presidents and ccfos and all do not come out of out of the uh academic ranks um and there's there's sort of a corporate mentality that's developed across at least four-year institutions where you know the tendency is to try to bring in a president who will uh treat the the university uh like a corporation i'm speaking in very general terms and i i try not to do that so uh i'm just suggesting that yeah i i don't necessarily accept that assertion that that administrators come out of faculty ranks very good i would question that very good well thank you thank you we have another question who comes in i think i think you will appreciate this the way that the speaker identifies herself this is margo weiss who signs up as leslie and university a a up so i'm glad to see that um and margo says can you speak to the pros and cons of a up combining positions within rank in the salary data e.g associate professor and associate lecturer are now combined our admin is using this to discredit the data um we do not combine associate uh professor and associate lecturer i mean that's that's i'll be honest i i don't encounter that title associate lecturer very often but we do combine say you know associate professor with associate teaching professor and that that i think that kind of example might be in line with your question and you know from an a a up policy policy perspective um all faculty members all full-time faculty members should have the opportunity for tenure whether they're doing research or not tenure is not about research per se it's you know it applies to teaching faculty as well the our our faculty compensation survey lists out faculty titles and how they ought to be reported to our survey uh and in a different way than ipads ipads simply asks institutions to report as determined by the institution but our survey actually delineates all the titles and says well if somebody is a assistant teaching professor report them as assistant professor because we would argue any any kind of assistant any kind of full-time faculty members should have opportunity for tenure they're they're all kind of internal aid i don't know i don't know if that was getting at the question i hope so and feel free to drop me a line if you want to follow up on anything margo that's a really great precise question with the data um and if you want to uh if you want to follow please you know please email glenn i'm i'm happy to make him do more work um but uh um but seriously that's a that's a very good question glenn thank you for being willing to to wrestle with it um we're we're coming close to the end of the hour and i i want to bring up two questions um while we have time uh one is i really appreciate that you break out the data and the categories of data in terms of among other things medical benefits um and i've heard this from cfos and cbo's there's chief financial officers and chief business officers but rarely from other people um that this is very very important for college university costs overall it looks like according to your data that the average expenditure um has shot way up over the past few years that is universities and colleges are spending a lot more on medical benefits um but also that the percentage covered um has been dropping a bit can you speak to that a bit unfold that data for us sure well first of all most part-time faculty members don't have access to that at all right and that's half half the faculty in the u.s um but you know most um most um full-time do um there's a great study that robert took to tushion i hope i'm saying robert's name correctly from university of georgia uh published a couple months ago in the ti a a institute um um on on their website showing the patterns of benefits uh you know fringe benefit expenditures over the last 40 or 50 years and i highly recommend taking a look at robert robert's study on that with the ti a institute um and so that that being said i think that's the definitive source right now uh on like what is the trend um i have sitting in front of me the last five or six years of data um and um i don't know if that's i don't know if i could do a good job characterizing that uh off the top of my head but what's so is it is it sort of like why is the question why are expenditures shooting up or i'll just i just want to make sure first of all that i was reading this correctly but also um that this seems to be a increasingly significant item on university budgets yeah and i'll say the last our annual report that um just a quick point of clarification the the information that you posted at the bottom left it uh points at our preliminary survey results but the actual annual report will be released in june um the annual report is going to show among many other topics uh what has happened with fringe benefits over the last uh three years with with the pandemic and in the case of uh medical insurance contributions there was actually a drop um in expenditures per faculty member at the start of the pandemic and it has recovered among public institutions not so much among privates and same thing happens with retirement contributions so there's gonna be details about that um there were some clear differences in how public and private institutions handled fringe benefits during the pandemic um and well that's very interesting it it's one of the more interesting findings from this year's annual report that i'm sorry i can't share that with you yet but that's in in june it's going to press right now so well thank you for giving us the the advanced peak that's that's one of the things i love about hosting researchers in the forum is a chance to see where we're headed next unfortunately i have to wrap things up we've had an hour of great conversation glenn and and you've been you've been very generous with your thinking with your data um what's the best way to keep up with you and your research our uh aaup.org website has um some tabs across the top for our programs and under the program menu is research and that would be not only faculty compensation research but research on academic freedom tenure and shared governance um and we encourage you to check it out and drop us a line very good very good well thank you thank you so much um this has been a real treat and uh you're doing vital vital work for uh for everybody in and around higher education uh good luck and keep it coming thanks you too you too oh my pleasure my pleasure but don't go away yet friends um i have to uh we have to let uh glenn go back to his uh main location but also i just want to let you know where things are headed in the next few weeks and indeed months if you want to keep talking about these issues which are so powerful everything from women being paid less in higher education to medical benefits to the overall composition of the professoriate please keep talking about this uh you can find me on twitter bright alexander you can find me a mastodon there's my login and just use the hashtag ftte wherever you go um if you want to look ahead uh we have well sorry if you want to look back into the past we have a whole series of sessions which touch on today's topics just go to tinyurl.com slash ftfr archive if you want to look forward we have sessions coming up um on a whole variety of topics from open education to assessment to teaching with or without ai to economics just go to forum.futureofeducation.us to learn more thank you all for your excellent questions and comments today um that has really helped us make this into a very very rich and useful session uh shadows to people like john hollandbeck to um pamela taylor and to uh tom hams as well as lisa durr for giving us so many good questions uh in and around the chat and just about everywhere uh in the meantime i hope everybody has uh a good and safe may um i hope the summer gives you some opportunities to uh work in a productive way maybe some productive downtime as well please take care be well everybody we'll see you next week online bye bye