For love or money?

Professors at Penn earn salaries comparable to their colleagues at other Ivy League schools. and Eric Tucker Though they breed students who land the highest-paying jobs in the nation, most Penn professors acknowledge that they will never be the ones earning millions. But the University's professors, for the most part, say they are content with their earnings in comparison to other Ivy League salaries. Recent statistics show that Penn professors' salaries are competitive within the Ivy League. In fact, the University's average salary placed second in the Ivies and first in the state of Pennsylvania, according to the 1997-98 edition of Academe, the Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors. Penn pays an average of $105,616 to its full professors, $69,585 to its associate professors and $62,527 to its assistants, according to a recently released report from the Faculty Senate Committee on the Economic Status of the Faculty. These averages include the salaries from nine of Penn's 12 undergraduate and graduate schools -- excluding only the Medical, Veterinary and Nursing schools. Faculty from those latter three schools are excluded because they generally earn very small teaching salaries but take in much more revenue -- sometimes as much as several hundred thousand dollars -- from their clinical practices. But by combining the salaries of the well-paid Wharton and Law professors with the lower-paid professors in the other graduate schools and the School of Arts and Sciences, the actual average figures become exaggerated. And there are dissident voices who complain that the higher salaries earned by some professors create a campus-wide sense of intellectual inequality. The Ivy Rankings According to the Academe, Penn offers competitive salaries to professors in comparison with its peer institutions. The $105,616 mean salary for a full professor at Penn is slightly lower than the impressive $116,800 offered to full professors at Harvard University and $110,000 paid to full professors at Princeton University. Yet Penn offers significantly more than Cornell University, where full professors earn $89,900. Although the salaries for full professors at Penn may be in the middle range across the Ivy League, both the University's associate and assistant professor salaries match up very well with those at peer institutions. "We have to be competitive with our peers in areas of compensation and support," said College of Arts and Sciences Dean Richard Beeman. "Our peers are not only the best universities in the country but they're frequently the wealthiest universities in the country." Associate professors at Penn receive a mean salary of $69,585, and assistant professors earn $62,527. These rates are higher than those for both jobs at Harvard, Princeton and Cornell. Assistant Psychology Professor Sharon Thompson-Schill said she was satisfied with her $55,000 salary, adding that it is significantly higher than those of many of her peers in academia. "Across the board, across the nation for psychology, it's in the $40,000 range," she explained. And Associate Economics Professor Jose-Victor Rios-Rull said he would not expect to earn any more money at another Ivy League institution. "If some university wants to hire me who is in the same class as Penn, [Penn] would typically match the salary," he noted. At Harvard, non-tenured professors earn slightly lower salaries at both levels -- $64,300 for associate professors and $60,900 for assistant professors. Princeton associate professors receive $65,400 and assistant professors get $51,000. Finally, at Cornell, associate professors earn $64,200 and assistant professors earn $56,200. According to several Penn administrators, the University is firmly resolved to match offers made by rival institutions and generally does what it can to recruit and retain faculty members. Beeman cited Penn's "strong determination not to let salary be the decisive factor in losing a faculty member who we really want to keep." And Associate Provost Barbara Lowery claimed that "when schools want to retain faculty who have received offers from competing institutions, there is every effort made to match or exceed the offer." Across the Board But while Penn's mean salaries appear very competitive, the average figures actually combine salary rates from nine different graduate and undergraduate schools. The mean salary, for example, does not differentiate between the traditionally wealthy Wharton School and the less-heavily financed SAS -- a fact that ostensibly makes the average salary rate misleading. SAS Dean Samuel Preston attributed the disparity between Wharton faculty salaries and SAS faculty salaries to simple "market forces." Although the Faculty Senate does not release average salary rates for individual academic schools to the University community at large, some faculty members acknowledge that the salary differences among schools is obvious and well-documented. "What is adamantly clear is that a feature of this University is the enormous variation in salary scales between different schools," said Roger Allen, a full professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, adding that the "publication of information [on salaries in different schools] would cause severe distress." Allen, who is a former member of the Committee on the Economic Status of the Faculty -- which releases an annual report of Penn's faculty salaries -- noted that his salary is "radically" lower than the average $105,616 reported by the University. And one assistant History professor claimed that professors in the humanities are notoriously paid less than professors in business or medicine. "There's a discrepancy between the value placed on humanities and the value placed on other things," said the professor, who requested anonymity. "My most talented students don't want to pursue history because they don't want to be poor," the professor added. Still, despite the existing disparities among Penn's different schools, most professors in the area of humanities maintain that their earnings never discouraged them from pursuing their passion. In addition, professors accept their salaries as standard rates in the academic world. "I never saw myself as a corporate executive," said the assistant History professor. Recruitment and Retention When Thompson-Schill received her graduate degree in 1996, she immediately entered the academic job market looking for a competitive salary, strong research facilities and affordable housing. And now, at Penn, the 28-year-old incoming assistant Psychology professor claims to be quite content with her job status, which will officially begin this summer. "I was pleasantly surprised by how much money they offered me," said Thompson-Schill, who noted that her $55,000 salary was one of many factors that attracted her to the University. But Thompson-Schill's job search was not only contingent upon salary. With Ivy League universities offering relatively comparable salaries, prospective professors like Thompson-Schill must now weigh a number of factors when choosing between institutions. In short, it's not just the money doing the talking. Among the various criteria that many professors consider important are the academic prestige of the institution, the surrounding area, access to research facilities and the reputation of the respective department. "[Salary] was not the No. 1 factor. The No. 1 factor was a combination of the quality of the place and the geographic location," one associate Economics professor said. Indeed, many professors noted that they valued the affordable residential options offered in University City and promoted through Penn housing initiatives and that they also enjoyed the benefits of living in a major metropolis. "It's relatively cheap to live in Philadelphia," noted one assistant History professor, who currently owns a home in West Philadelphia. "If I were to live in Manhattan on my salary, I'd have to have a roommate." Yet another key recruitment device is the "start-up package" offered to potential employees, which generally includes specific provisions for research projects, such as lab space and equipment and adequate time to conduct research or write books and other analytical papers. Before hiring actually occurs, a prospective professor presents the University with a list of specified needs and estimated costs. Each individual case is then evaluated by Preston. According to both administrators and faculty members, the ensuing negotiations -- which result in a start-up package offer -- are a critical point in the hiring process. "[Start-up packages] are every bit as important, if not more important, than actual salaries," said Beeman. In addition, SAS is making a renewed effort to attract top-rate professors with its recent announcement that it would offer a $5,000 research fund to each newly appointed assistant professor and another $5,000 upon promotion to associate professor -- a move that administrators hope will supplement the already substantial start-up packages. Between salaries, start-up packages and the newly offered research funds, professors weigh a host of financial factors before officially committing to a job. And whatever price the University might pay individual professors, most faculty members, collectively, are neither surprised nor disappointed with the amount of money they make. "It's what I expected. I never tried to decide between history and something else," the History professor said.

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