Faculty salaries in the University of North Carolina system compare well with those of their peers, according to a study released in May by a Virginia public-policy think tank. The study, “Compensation of Campus Faculty: How Virginia Compares Within the Region,” was published by the Thomas Jefferson Institute and conducted by Pope Center for Higher Education Policy analyst Jon Sanders.

It compares faculty salaries and compensation at colleges and universities in Virginia with those at peer institutions nationally or regionally.

The Jefferson study adjusts 2001-02 salary data compiled by the American Association of University Professors according to area cost-of-living data from ACCRA, an association of chambers of commerce, in order to compare “institutions’ salary and compensation averages in terms of purchasing power.”

It looks at 443 institutions in total, comparing them according to their peer categories as specified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Universities in the category of doctoral/research-extensive are compared with national peers, and universities in the rest of the categories — doctoral/research-intensive, masters I, masters II, baccalaureate-liberal arts, and baccalaureate-general — are compared with peers in Virginia’s “competitive region”: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

The study examines salaries and compensation for three levels of faculty, assistant professor, associate professor, and full professor. It ranks the results, gives each category’s average adjusted salary or compensation, and also shows where the 60th percentile falls in each ranking. The reason for showing the 60th percentile line is because, as the report explains, “Virginia policy has been for years to strive to ensure public university instructors receive a salary of at least 60 percent of their peers.”

The crucial aspect in the Jefferson study is its comparison of salaries that have been adjusted for purchasing power. The author explains that the flaw in “comparing raw [salary] averages at one campus to another” is that “geographic areas differ in terms of cost of living, sometimes dramatically.” The report notes also that “pay is just one of the many factors that go into a professor’s decision of where to teach” and that the study “makes no pretenses of being able to quantify either institutional quality or any of the many other factors that go into deciding where to teach.”

As Jefferson Institute Chairman and President Mike Thompson explained in the foreword, adjusting salaries according to purchasing power “give[s] our public policy leaders, our business leaders, and the media the ability to compare salaries and compensation in a fair manner where the purchasing power of the dollar was equalized.”

UNC pay well above peer averages

UNC system salaries in 2001-02 — with few exceptions — were not only above peer averages, but also would have met the Virginia public-policy goal. Only at UNC-Asheville were faculty salaries below their peer averages. Salaries for associate professors at UNC-Greensboro and Elizabeth City State University were only slightly above their peer average.

For the other UNC schools, salaries for full, associate, and assistant professors were not only above the regional or national average, but also in the upper 40 percent among their peers in every category.