CSU professors get raises after salary equity review

CSU adjusted salaries upward for 59 full professors following a recently completed salary review, according to an email sent to faculty Tuesday morning.

The university reviewed the salaries of 152 full professors, 49 female and 103 male, out of 377. The review found 28 of the females, or 25 percent of all female full professors, weren't being paid enough. It found the same for 31 male professors, or 11.6 percent. The average salary increase was 5.4 percent, according to an email from Colorado State University Provost Rick Miranda and Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs Daniel Bush provided to the Coloradoan. The email did not detail what departments the professors were from or dollar amounts of the adjustments.

Male professors needed an average raise of $4,787, while female professors needed $5,214 to reach an appropriate salary level, Bush said in an interview with the Coloradoan. He said it would be "speculation" to say why there was the difference between number of male and female professors that needed adjustments, and that this review wasn't designed for that.

"We certainly have no capacity to determine why there was a difference among those individuals," Bush said "... It would be pure speculation to assign any reason for this difference."

The university selected the professors to review based on a regression line, a statistical technique used to determine those who may be getting paid less than colleagues with similar experience, and those who self-selected for review.

After those professors were identified, CSU analyzed their workload, achievements, annual reviews and more to determine if they were being paid fairly, according to the email.

"For an organization as large as we are, this is a very important and useful exercise for us to undertake," Bush said.

The Coloradoan first reported on the salary inequity issue in May, after receiving documentation from a CSU statistics professor who raised concerns that the university could have been systemically, if inadvertently, paying female professors less than male counterparts by including gender as a variable in past equity reports. The review was initiated after the data was made public.

The statistics professor, Mary Meyer, found male full professors were, on average, paid nearly 7 percent percent more than female full professors, once the inherent discrepancies between departments was controlled for. The College of Veterinary Medicine showed the greatest discrepancy, at 17 percent. Because her analysis highlighted full professors, and didn't find significant gender inequity among associate and assistant professors, Bush said this review only focused on full professors. Bush said that following Meyer's findings in 2014, the College of Veterinary Medicine undertook its own efforts to address inequality.

PROFESSOR:  CSU study based pay goals on gender

The email noted CSU also commissioned a Salary Equity Committee to find a new statistical model to identify salary outliers and "patterns of equity concern." The administration hopes to use those methods in its next annual salary report. Bush described the model like an alarm, which can highlight those who need further review to make sure their pay is close to peers with similar background, achievement and experience.

"The big message is that CSU is taking salary equity very seriously and we're doing our best to do thoughtful analysis and, if we find things that don't add up, we're very willing to take positive action to make adjustments," Bush said.

By the numbers

377 full professors at CSU

152 had a review of their salaries for inequity issues

59 had their salaries adjusted (16 percent of all full professors)

28 female full professors had their salary adjusted (25 percent of all female full professors)

31 male full professors had their salary adjusted (11.6 percent of all male full professors)

5.3 percent was the average adjustment

$4,787 average adjustment for males

$5,214 average adjustment for females

Source: Colorado State University