Economic Status of the Profession

The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2017-18

As several studies published during the past year have confirmed, higher education provides health and economic benefits that are vital to American society. These benefits, however, are threatened by ongoing political and financial attacks on higher education. Now, more than ever, faculty members and others who care about higher education must join together to resist these attacks.

Visualizing Change: The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2016-17

Between the 2015–16 and 2016–17 academic years, average salaries for full-time ranked faculty members (assistant, associate, and full professors) increased by 0.5 percent after adjusting for inflation. The average salary for full professors in 2016–17 was $102,402, the average salary for associate professors was $79,654, and the average salary for assistant professors was $69,206.

Higher Education at a Crossroads: The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2015-16

Last year full-time continuing faculty experienced an inflation-adjusted increase in salary exceeding 2 percent for the first time since the Great Recession began more than seven years ago. This year, inflation-adjusted full-time continuing faculty salaries increased by 2.7 percent. Table A provides four decades of data on the percentage change in average salaries in both nominal (actual dollar) and real (inflation-adjusted) terms from one year to the next for all full-time continuing faculty whose institutions participated in the AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey.

Busting the Myths: The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2014-15

Last year, the American Association of University Professors launched the One Faculty campaign to improve the job security and working conditions of contingent faculty. Writing about the campaign in the November–December 2014 issue of Academe, Jamie Owen Daniel, the AAUP’s director of organizing, asserted that “shrinking public resources, administrators’ random introduction of ‘creative disruption’ agendas, and the increasing possibility that state legislators will push for more right-to-work legislation” can be resisted only by “reclaiming the narrative” through “aggressive and unified faculties organized to speak together.”