Few faculty members have received pay freezes despite the economy.
Bradley froze senior administrators’ salaries last year and raises received have been more “modest” that usual, Vice President for Business Affairs Gary Anna said.
“In a short sense it’s a lot easier and smoother when the economy is better,” he said. “But, frankly, we still have choices to make when the economy is tough.”
Endowment and enrollment influence the university’s funds, but Anna said pay increases are a bit more complicated than the sum of tuition dollars.
“We reinvest those tuition dollars in terms of our programming,” he said. “If you’re a university, the lifeblood of your enterprise is the students, and those who are involved in the learning experiences of the students.”
University employees also do not receive a set increase from year-to-year. Rather, Anna said increases are evaluated on a large amount of factors.
“That’s a part in function of inflation,” he said. “If your cost of living increases dramatically, you need to maintain a reasonable standard of living.”
Anna also said most employees have been receptive to their respective freezes or minimal pay increases because they understand it is not something the university is doing because it wants to.
“At this point in time many of our competitors are freezing salaries or laying people off,” he said. “So there’s less hostility, because we’re really in a pretty good situation.”
Anna also said an employee’s percent increase is not related to whether he or she is tenured.
“In some cases our tenured faculty do not technically have multi-year contracts, but it’s implicit with having received tenure that their employment continues,” he said. “But there’s not guarantee to salary increases.”
