Today the AAUP research department released The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2021-2022, which collects the latest round of findings from the AAUP’s annual Faculty Compensation Survey. It found declines in real wages, a persistent salary gap between men and women, and continuing contingency, with three in five faculty members on contingent appointments.
Data collection for the survey concluded in March 2022, with over 900 US colleges and universities providing employment data for more than 370,000 full-time and 90,000 part-time faculty members as well as senior administrators at over 500 institutions.
Key findings:
From 2020–21 to 2021–22, average salaries for full-time faculty members increased 2.0 percent, consistent with the flat wage growth observed since the Great Recession of the late 2000s.
Real wages for full-time faculty fell below Great Recession levels in 2021, with average salary falling to 2.3 percent below the 2008 average salary, after adjusting for inflation.
Real wages for full-time faculty members decreased 5.0 percent after adjusting for inflation, the largest one-year decrease on record since the AAUP began tracking this measure in 1972.
In 2021–22, 97.2 percent of full-time faculty members were covered by retirement plans, a 2.8-point increase from 2020–21.
Institutions reported full-time faculty salaries for women that are 81.9 percent of those for men in 2021–22, on average. The gender pay gap is greatest at the full professor rank.
From 2019–20 to 2021–22, the number of full-time women faculty members increased 1.6 percent, compared with a 2.5 percent decrease for men.
In 2020–21, average pay for adjunct faculty members to teach a course section ranged from $2,979 in public associate’s institutions without ranks to $5,557 in public doctoral institutions.
In fall 2020, about three in five (61.5 percent) faculty members were on contingent appointments.
The report and associated data can be found on the AAUP website.