No pay discrimination at UNL, officials say
By Douglas Engh
Staff Reporter
An annual report on UNL faculty
salaries indicates in a broad sense that
female faculty members earn less than
their male counterparts. The report,
entitled “The Economic Status of Uni
versity of Nebraska-Lincoln Faculty,’’
was published in April and found that
at full professor level, women professors
earn $1,238 less annually than male
professors. At the associate level women
earned $22 more than men and at the
assistant level women earned $698 less
than their male counterparts.
The findings were based on across
the-board measurements. While taking
into account controls such as rank,
years in rank, years at UNL, and tenure,
the survey did not break down salary
disparities within individual colleges.
This broad view of salary comparisons
gave some people involved with the
survey questions as to its total validity.
Because oi wnai me survey reported,
and the way it reported it, pay disparit
ies due to sex discrimination do not
exist at UNL, according to Brad Munn,
UNL’s Affirmative Action Equal Employ
ment Opportunity Coordinator.
"The study infers that there are
discrepancies in salaries between men
and women, but to do a total analysis as
it should be done it would have to be
done in a different way,” he said.
To compile more accurate data, one
would have to compare equal faculty,
and not simply other faculty, he said.
"If you were to take a look at the
study... this is not comparing equals,”
Munn said. "I think we should take one
college, and one discipline within that
college and compare people in like
positions,” he said. “You cannot com
pare job title and salary on gender and
not look at other factors,” he said.
Speaking of the annual study in
general, Munn said tnat through the
years what the study attempted to due
was on target, but it doesn't offer data
to support any charges of discrimination
based on sex. He suggested taking a
look at a single faculty member, male
or female, and comparing them with
other faculty members of the same
tenure and credentials within that
particular department. If this were
done, Munn said, no disparities would
be shown to exist, and if they did
happen to exist, the university would
have some very serious problems it
would have to address, he said.
"No one by looking at this study
alone could win a case of sex discrim
ination without having more detailed
and refined data," he said. “This study
female faculty members throughout
the whole university system are paid
less than male faculty.
Along with these factors, he said,
training, research contributions, pub
lishing records and teaching abilities
are all included in salary determina
tions.
Most importantly, Munn said, one
needs to look at the total length of time
a faculty member has been in their
particular field as compared with
similar members.
“It appears to be a very important
"I
Figure #\
Faculty Salary Average Differences:
Female Compared to Male
Rank 1983-1984 1986-1987
Overall. -$570 -$572
Differences by Rank
Full Professor. -$782 -1,238
Associate Professor. +$370* +$22
Assistant Professor. -1,084* -$698
Instructor. -1,498 -812
* indicates statistical significance
Controls: Rank, Years in Rank, Highest Degree, Graduate
Faculty Fellow, College Appointment (9 or 12 month), Years
at UNL, and Age. (No control for department affiliation).
Figure #2
Average Faculty Salary by Sex: 1985-86
Women Men
Average Salary Professors. $41,643 $43,803
Average Salary Associate Professors. $30,584 $33,208
Average Salary Assistant Professors. $26,375 $29,673
Average Salary Instructors. $20,706 $21,104
Average Salary Overall. $29,706 $38,085
Controls: None
has not changed in 10 years, and its
results are not surprising nor are they
staggering,” he said.
Different disciplines have different
pay scales according to national supply
and demand, Munn said, so pay dis
parities do exist between departments
and colleges. Some colleges have a
higher percentage of female faculty
than others, and may normally pay less
overall, thus giving the impression that
consideration when you are looking at
salaries,” he said.
A larger issue is that of boosting
faculty salaries overall.
"Chancellor Massengale through the
years has asked for money to try to
improve this, not because of sex dis
crimination, and this university con
tinues to be in the doldrums when it
comes to dollars and cents,” Munn
said. "There are a lot of faculty who
don’t appreciate what’s happening at
this institution,” he said. The survey
describes only a part of what the larger
priority problems are, he said.
"I’m speaking as faculty have con
fided in me,” he said. Giving 3 percent
average across-the-board faculty pay
raises isn’t going to help the salary'
situation, he said. ‘‘It still leaves our
faculty far behind their peers, and this
is going to continue to be a problem,”
he said.
June Levine, English professor and a
member of the survey study group
agrees with Munn that salary disparity
does occur broadly, and better research
needs to be done.
"No information is available within
departments, and one doesn’t know of
inequities within departments,” she
said. The general inequities are signi
ficant, however, and better research
needs to be done to accumulate more
accurate comparative data, she said.
"There’s no doubt that differences
(in salaries) occur, the question is
what causes the differences,” she said.
Harry Allen, director of internal re
search and planning, and a m«yor
contributor of the salary survey agrees
that generalized statistics don’t give
the whole story.
"Disparities need to be approached
on an individual basis through parti
cular departments and particular
cases," he said, but there is real
sensitivity towards this matter on
campus.
A problem with collecting accurate
data may lie with the small number of
female faculty members in some disci
plines, Levine said. This would limit
any study in regards to a good statistical
base, she said.
Levine said that the American Assoc
iation ofUniversity Professors, with its
UNL chapter will continue to pursue
this study in the fall.
The committee that compiles the
salary survey each year is made up of
members nominated by the Faculty
Senate and appointed by the university
chancellor.
Understanding the graphs
By Mick Dyer
Staff Reporter
The fact that women earn less
than men while filling the same
occupational roles has been well
documented in this country. UNL is
no exception to this general rule.
Figure one describes some of
these differences under very strict
statistical control. Statistical con
trol refers to methods of negating
the effects of undesirable variables
on the statistical analysis. For ex
ample, controlling for rank alleviates
the effect of rank on the outcome of
the statistical analysis. According
to Harry Allen of the university
Office of Instructional Research,
“there is no significant statistical
difference between average salaries
of male and female faculty mem
bers.” Statistical significance refers
to what degree the difference be
tween two groups may be due to
chance. Statistical significance
means that the difference is not due
to chance at an acceptable level,
usually 99.95 percent of the time.
But there is that 0.05 percent chance
that the difference is due to chance.
Allen pointed out that in individual
cases, however, there may be some
statistically significant differences
(in this case, certain women’s salar
ies may be disparate with men’s
salaries).
Figure two is a much less sophisti
cated description of the differences
in salary earned by male and female
faculty members, both overall and
broken down by rank. Dollar figures
were determined by dividing the
total salary outlay per faculty posi
tion, according to sex, by the number
of faculty members holding that
position, according to sex. There
are no controls for figure two. There
is no statistical significance. There
are only averages and differences.