The amount in federal grants the Trump administration froze for Harvard University this week. The move came after the Ivy League institution refused to comply with federal officials’ demands to, among other things, eliminate diversity initiatives, curtail the power of some faculty and audit the viewpoints of students and employees.
Tag: Salaries
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Faculty salaries grow but still lag pre-pandemic era
This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.Full-time faculty salaries rose for the second year in a row, even after adjusting for inflation, according to preliminary compensation data from the American Association of University Professors.
Fall 2024 salaries rose an average of 3.8% year over year, though inflation brought that growth down to an increase of 0.9%, according to the study.
Even with two years of gains, faculty compensation has not fully recovered from the pandemic period, which brought a 7.5% effective drop in salaries from 2019 to 2022, AAUP said.
Faculty’s inflation-adjusted salaries are still climbing out of their pandemic dip
Year over year growth in nominal and real salaries from academic years 2017-18 to 2024-25.
During an era of constrained budgets for many institutions — with job and program cuts making headlines — institutions are under a countervailing pressure to invest in their people and infrastructure after years of belt-tightening. Some colleges have given employees raises even as they make budget cuts in other areas.
Preliminary data from AAUP’s latest faculty study shows salaries making some headway even in an era of slashed budgets. Fall’s salary increases for full-time faculty followed an inflation-adjusted 0.4% increase in 2023.
Those of course are averages, and figures varied across rank and job types. Associate professors’ salaries, for example, typically grew at a faster clip in the 2024-25 academic year than professors or assistant professors — while lecturers’ salaries rose faster than all of those positions, with growth over 6% at the doctoral and master’s level institutions, according to AAUP’s study.
The survey also found continued gender disparities for professor compensation, with men earning nearly $26,000 more than women at doctoral institutions and about $8,000 more at master’s institutions.
College and university presidents typically made around four times or more than the average faculty member across most institution types, according to the study.
Part-time faculty made an average of $4,093 per class section in the 2023-24 academic year. But their compensation “varied widely” depending on where they worked, AAUP said.
At private nonprofits, a part-time faculty member could make an average of $1,950 per section teaching at associate-granting institutions compared to $6,481 at bachelor’s-degree colleges.
Maximum payments could run into the tens of thousands of dollars across institution types. Meanwhile, some part-time faculty could earn as little as $700 per section teaching at a public university.
Just over one-third of colleges, 34.4%, made retirement plan contributions for at least some part-time faculty, and fewer than one-third, 32.5%, contributed to insurance premiums for at least some part-timers.
The AAUP analysis is based on surveys of more than 800 U.S. institutions, with data on roughly 370,000 full-time and 90,000 part-time faculty members.
CUPA-HR also found annual salary growth across much of the sector in the 2024-25 academic year.
After factoring in inflation of 2.7%, salaries went up 1.2% for administrators, 1% for professional staff, 1.1% for general staff and 0.5% for nontenure-track faculty, according to CUPA-HR. Real salaries for tenure-track faculty fell 0.1%.
As with AAUP, CUPA-HR noted that higher education salaries still fell short of pre-pandemic levels despite growth. The largest gaps are in salaries for tenure-track faculty — paid 10.2% less than in the pre-pandemic era after adjusting for inflation — and non-tenure-track teaching faculty, who are paid 7.6% less.
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Most Higher Ed Employees Received Raises This Year, but Salaries Still Fall Short of Pre-Pandemic Pay
by CUPA-HR | April 8, 2025
New research from CUPA-HR shows that median pay increases for most higher education employees in 2024-25 remained strong, although they have dropped from the historically high increases seen in the previous two years. And although raises this past year for most employees outpaced inflation, they are still being paid less than they were in 2019-20 in inflation-adjusted dollars.
The largest gap between pre-pandemic inflation-adjusted salaries and current salaries is for tenure-track faculty (who are paid 10.2% less), followed by non-tenure-track teaching faculty (paid 7.6% less). The smallest gap is for staff (paid 2.8% less).
Some of the other key findings from an analysis of CUPA-HR’s higher ed workforce salary survey data from 2016-17 to 2024-25:
- Staff employees continued to receive some of the highest pay increases compared to other workforce areas.
- Non-tenure-track teaching faculty received a 3.2% salary increase, which is lower than last year’s high but still among the largest increases seen in recent years.
- For the third consecutive year, tenure-track faculty received the lowest salary increase of all employee categories (2.6%). Across the nine years of data analyzed, tenure-track faculty salaries have not once exceeded the rate of inflation. This essentially means that — in real dollars — they have received salary decreases for the past decade.
Explore this data and more in CUPA-HR’s newest interactive graphic.
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Starting Salaries for Comm, Social Science College Grads Drop
Graduating college is a stressful process for many, with a May 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab finding seven in 10 current students feel at least somewhat stressed thinking and preparing for life postgraduation. The Class of 2025, on average, is pessimistic about starting their careers, due in part to competition for jobs and student loans, according to research from Handshake.
Recent survey data from the National Association of College and Employers points to uneven starting salary projections for the Class of 2025, with year-over-year movement on the decline for some bachelor’s degree majors, but all starting salaries have increased somewhat since 2022.
“These salary projections come on the heels of employers indicating plans to hire 7.3 percent more graduates from the college Class of 2025 than they did from the Class of 2024, which hints at the overall health of the current job market for college graduates,” Shawn VanDerziel, NACE’s president and chief executive officer, said in a press release.
The report draws on survey data from 158 employers and finds STEM students continue to have the highest starting salaries, compared to their communications, business and agriculture, and natural resources peers.
The results: NACE’s survey focuses on base salaries, not including bonuses, commissions or other benefits. Projected movement in salaries over all ranges, with agriculture and natural resources climbing 2.8 percent but social sciences declining 3.6 percent, compared to the year prior.
An Inside Higher Ed analysis of NACE’s winter surveys since 2022 finds that, while all degree programs have seen starting salary projections grow over the years, the growth has not been uniform. Communications and social sciences, in particular, saw growth in 2024 projections, which then fell in 2025.
The highest-paid individual majors were in the engineering field: computer ($82,565) and software engineering ($82,536). Math and sciences graduates remain the third-highest-paid majors but saw a 2 percent decrease in salary projections.
Employer respondents indicated the most in-demand majors are finance and computer science, with two-thirds of respondents indicating they will hire students in these majors. Similarly, accounting (65 percent), business administration (55 percent) and information sciences and systems (53 percent) are majors employers indicated that they will hire.
Students’ predictions: A November 2024 student survey by ScholarshipOwl found, on average, respondents expect to earn $60,000 to $80,000 per year for their first full-time job after they graduate. Around one-quarter of respondents indicated that they expect to earn $90,000 or more for their first job out of college, which is not reflected in employer responses.
In addition to having a competitive salary, students are most interested in jobs that provide tuition reimbursement or support for student loan repayment (61 percent), retirement savings benefits (59 percent), medical and dental benefits (58 percent), and paid vacation and holidays (49 percent). The results reflect the economic pressures college students face paying for college and high costs of living that disproportionately affect students.
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Higher Education Marketing Job Titles and Salaries
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