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Economic Status of the Profession

The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2020-21

This year’s Annual Report on the Economic Profession outlines how years of unstable funding, combined with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, have created an existential threat to shared governance and academic freedom in higher education that severely weakens our nation’s ability to effectively educate our communities. The report presents findings from three related studies conducted by the AAUP: the AAUP’s annual Faculty Compensation Survey, a follow-up COVID-19 survey, and secondary data analyses of national employment and finance data.

The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2019-20

This year’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession summarizes results from the 2019–20 Faculty Compensation Survey, which collected data from 928 colleges and universities across the United States, including community colleges, small liberal arts colleges, and major research universities. The survey covered almost 380,000 full-time and more than 96,000 part-time faculty members, as well as senior administrators at nearly 600 institutions. Data collection began in December 2019 and concluded in February 2020, just as the first cases of COVID-19 were being reported in the United States.

The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2018-19

This year’s annual report provides an overview of the results of the 2018–19 AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey, which compiled data on more than 380,000 full-time faculty members at 952 colleges and universities, as well as improved data on pay and benefits for more than 64,000 part-time faculty members at more than 360 institutions. In addition, this year’s report examines the changes in full-time faculty salaries and appointment types, with a particular focus on progress toward gender equity, in the ten years since the Great Recession. Finally, the report explores some of the improved data on part-time faculty pay.

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.”