Average salaries for full-time faculty members decreased from fall 2024 to fall 2025, after adjusting for inflation, following two consecutive years of increases, according to preliminary results from the AAUP’s 2025–26 Faculty Compensation Survey (FCS). Nominal average salaries increased 2.3 percent overall from fall 2024 to fall 2025, while real wages decreased about 0.4 percent after adjusting for the 2.7 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers. Average salaries for continuing full-time faculty members—those employed in fall 2024 and remaining employed at the same institution in fall 2025—increased about 3.4 percent overall in nominal terms, or about 0.7 percent after adjusting for inflation. Real average salaries still have not fully recovered from the cumulative decrease of 7.5 percent observed during the COVID-19 pandemic, from fall 2019 to fall 2022.
Data collection on part-time faculty members was greatly expanded this year to enable better reporting on faculty members who are paid on a per-course-section basis; nearly 590 colleges and universities provided such data, an increase of over 50 percent from last year, greatly improving the validity of survey findings. Special emphasis was placed on collecting data on minimum (starting) pay for part-time faculty members: Among 555 institutions completing that survey item, the median starting pay was $3,121. Nearly 87 percent of institutions reported hiring at least some part-time faculty members on a per-course-section basis; among those institutions, nearly 70 percent reported providing them neither retirement nor medical benefits.
Preliminary FCS findings are now available at https://www.aaup.org/our-work/research/FCS, along with institution-level appendixes to accompany the forthcoming Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2025–26, which will be published online in June and printed in August in the summer issue of Academe. Complete datasets, which provide preliminary data from the appendixes with greater precision along with supplemental data, are now available to order. AAUP chapter leaders, AAUP state conference officers, and AFT local or state federation presidents may request FCS data access free of charge for their business purposes, and institutional research offices and human resources offices may purchase access to the data. Final data, including revised appendixes and datasets, will be released in July.
The Faculty Compensation Survey includes five components: (1) full-time faculty salaries by rank, gender, and contract length; (2) full-time faculty benefits, including retirement, medical, and dependent tuition benefits; (3) continuing full-time faculty salaries by rank and contract length; (4) salary data for key administrative positions; and (5) salary and benefits data for part-time adjunct faculty members who were paid on a per-course-section basis in the prior academic year. Data on part-time adjunct faculty members were collected for the prior academic year, 2024–25, to ensure that institutions could provide complete data for an entire academic year.
Data collection for the 2025–26 FCS concluded in March, with nearly 780 US colleges and universities providing employment data for approximately 360,000 full-time and more than 125,000 part-time faculty members as well as senior administrators at nearly 500 institutions. Participants reflected the wide range of institutional types across the United States, including approximately 285 doctoral universities, 210 regional universities, 190 liberal arts colleges, 65 community colleges, and 160 minority-serving institutions.
For information about data products available from the Department of Research and Public Policy, visit https://research.aaup.org/order. FCS data may be explored on the AAUP’s interactive data website, at https://data.aaup.org, which includes drill-down capabilities and tools for summarizing data by institution, region, state, Carnegie Classification, and other variables.