I have heard from several people across several departments that new hires have been offered salaries significantly higher than current employees at the same rank. This has created institutional inequity across several areas of the campus, which directly violates the Faculty Handbook. Historically, OU has handled cost-of-living raises across several years; this approach would NOT correctly address the institutional inequity that has been created by the administration, as those faculty who were overstepped would never catch up to the new hires. Therefore, what is being done to address this appropriately?
Offers to new faculty are determined at the college level, and compression issues created by hiring a new faculty member at a higher salary than an existing faculty member at the same rank and in the same department, should be a consideration for the college and department. It is important to note that faculty salaries do vary by discipline, not just here at OHIO but across higher education, so the compression issue is typically considered within the same department and not necessarily across all departments in a college.
There are certainly times when the recruitment of a key new hire – faculty or staff – requires us to be flexible within our salary guidelines. When that results in compression within a department or unit, the hiring manager has several options to attempt to address equity issues. First, the department may request an equity adjustment due to compression for an existing employee. Second, the Dean has some flexibility within the annual raise pool to address exceptional merit and/or compression.
In addition to the normal raise process, the Faculty Compensation Plan is designed to add an additional infusion of salary dollars into the colleges. This plan compares our faculty salaries at the discipline and rank level to peers. In past iterations of this plan, colleges have specifically been given discretion to use those funds to address issues like market comparisons and compression within a discipline/rank combination. This investment will need to occur over several years and we are currently working on fitting it into the annual budget process in future years.