The widening gap between the salaries of UW System employees and those of their peers is causing concern among UW System administrators.
The problem is such that UW Regent President Toby Marcovich recently called for a comparison study of salary information for faculty, academic staff and academic leadership between UW employees and employees of comparable Midwest universities, according to George Brooks, UW System associate vice president for human resources.
Brooks presented the findings to the UW Board of Regents on Thursday. The study showed UW faculty salaries to be 17 percent less and academic staff salaries 17.7 percent less than those of their peers.
\Basically, the message I was trying to suggest is if you come up one percent short of what your peers are getting across the country year in and year out, after 17 years you're going to be 17 percent behind,"" Brooks said.
""It's a bit sobering to know that we've ... continued to be behind [in faculty and staff salaries],"" Regent Spokesperson Doug Bradley said.
According to Brooks, the inequality became so vast because, unlike other university systems, UW pay plans are determined by the state government, and the pay plans have been short over the years when compared to what other peer institutions receive.
""We have tried to get state government to understand that this is a problem that needs constant attention,"" he said, ""but we haven't been successful in convincing the state government that that's what's required.""
""We've slipped further behind because these past two years we've had a zero percent and one percent increase [in salaries, respectively],"" Bradley said.
A main concern of the UW System, according to Brooks, is the large number of faculty and staff that are approaching retirement age and the lack of experienced faculty to replace them.
According to UW-Madison journalism professor Jack Mitchell, the university has not been able to offer potential School of Journalism faculty as much as other universities.
""We've been impressed with what some of the competition is offering,"" he said. ""It is quite a bit higher than ours.""
Further research will be conducted on the salaries of UW employees as compared to peer salaries for the Regents' October meeting, which will take place in November.
