Echoing the Strategic Long-Range Plan (SLRP) progress report last May, President Kent Chabotar and Vice President of Finance and Administration Jerry Boothby believe it is “highly unlikely” that Guilford will reach the SLRP goal to raise average faculty salaries for all ranks to $63,700 by the fall semester of 2010. According to Boothby and Chabotar, Guilford may have to forgo faculty and staff raises for two consecutive years, 2009 and 2010. Approved by the Board of Trustees in October 2004, the SLRP planned to raise faculty salaries by the fall of 2010 to the 50th percentile of baccalaureate colleges as reported each spring by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Reaching the 50th percentile would place Guilford faculty salaries near the middle in relation to all other American baccalaureate colleges.

As the SLRP’s largest financial goal, faculty salaries were planned to increase cumulatively by $6 million between 2005 and 2010.

“The slowdown in progress toward our pay targets was largely a revenue shortfall when we reduced our enrollment goal for 2010 from 3,300 to 2,800. We also had an enrollment shortfall in summer 2008 and fall 2008,” Boothby said. “Since enrollment increases in SLRP were the largest source of revenue for the raises to faculty and staff pay, there was much discussion about the negative effect on reaching the 50th percentile when we cut the enrollment targets from 3300 to 2800. The cut was approved by SLRP, the faculty, and the Board of Trustees.”

Academe, the bimonthly bulletin of the AAUP, reported this week that the 2008-9 average salary for all ranks of Guilford’s faculty is approximately $54,000. This is a 4.05 percent increase over last year’s average of $51,900. Guilford also experienced a 6.79 percent increase between 2006-7 and 2007-8 and a 4.74 percent increase between 2005-6 and 2006-7. The total increase between 2005-6 and 2008-9 is 16.38 percent.

The $54,000, 17.96 percent below the 2010 projected target and 11.45 percent below the 50th percentile for 2008-9, placed Guilford at the 30th percentile of baccalaureate colleges.

According to Chabotar and Boothby, from 2002-2008 Guilford raised continuing faculty salaries by 28.5 percent. This is in contrast to data available from the AAUP, which shows an increase in the average for faculty salaries of all ranks by 12.34 percent.

Chabotar said that the differences in these figures are affected by a 60% increase in faculty, mostly at junior levels, during these years. These new faculty members would not have been at Guilford to receive some of the raises.

“That being said,” Chabotar said, “our faculty are not paid enough.”

“Even given that explanation, which I think might explain why our numbers are so disparate,” said Richie Zweigenhaft, Dana professor of psychology and president of the Guilford chapter of the AAUP, “I don’t see full professors increasing or associate professors increasing as much as (Chabotar) claims, and almost all the full professor and associate professors have been here for those five years. We didn’t hire a lot of new full professors, we may have hired a handful of associate professors, so I’m not persuaded that his figure is accurate, but I think it may be explained in part by the many new hires.”

According to AAUP data for the years 2002-3 to 2007-8, Guilford’s higher ranking faculty salaries, full professors and associate professors, rose respectively by 21.80 and 22.08 percent while lower ranking faculty, assistant professors and instructors, rose by 17.88 and 10.96 percent. Together this averaged 12.34 percent for all faculty ranks.

While it’s difficult to gauge the effect of the raises on individual faculty salaries, because as a private college Guilford cannot disclose the salaries of most of its employees, Garland Granger, associate professor of accounting, confirmed that his salary increased by 29% from 2002-8.

Chabotar said that not all continuing professors would have seen the same level of raises since they were partially based upon performance reviews by peer faculty members and Adrienne Israel, vice-president for academic affairs and academic dean. Israel is currently away in Chicago because of a death in her family and was unavailable for comment.

According to Boothby, the last raise that professors received was an average of 3.5 percent in 2008, half of the intended raise because of the enrollment shortfall. No faculty salary raises have been implemented for 2009, and there are none in the provisional budget for 2010.

Responding to this slowdown, Guilford recently provided full-time and part-time employees with one-time bonuses of $500 and $250, respectively, in their paychecks for the month of February.

“I was happy the president was able to give a one-time bonus (of $500) to employees this spring, and I hope we are able to do more next year,” said Heather Hayton, associate professor of English and chair of the campus budget committee. “Two years with no pay raises will be tough for our employees, especially when times are so tough and costs continue to rise. But I do know other colleges are in worse shape and some faculty across the country have taken pay-cuts or furloughs, or lost their positions.”

According to Chabotar, if Guilford reaches its enrollment levels for the summer and fall, which is likely, Guilford hopes to be able to boost faculty pay again in the fall with either a bonus or a permanent raise.

While Guilford uses the AAUP percentiles as one way to gauge finances in relation to other colleges, it also uses a “greater comparison group,” a list of 18 peer, aspirant, and competitive colleges and universities used in the SLRP and to plan annual budgets. According to AAUP figures for these colleges and universities in 2007-8, both the average salary and total compensation (salary plus benefits) of faculty of all ranks at Guilford placed 16th out of the 16 schools with data available. Some ranks, such as associate professors, ranked higher than this at 12th out of 16 for salary and 13th out of 16 for compensation.