Police officers in West Palm Beach receive a 5% salary increase for their first ten years on the job. Not bad.
How are you and your family handling your 9.75% salary cut? It’s true that there have been not yet been any overt salary cuts or furloughs as propagandized by FAU administrators over the past few months. Still, the administration’s recalcitrant stance in rewarding faculty for their hard work for three years and counting is effectively a salary cut. That’s because for every year that passes where no cost-of-living raise is given our buying power is reduced by the prevailing rate of inflation. According to the Consumer Price Index, inflation on all consumable goods averaged 3.25% between 2006 and 2009.
In March UFF-FAU asked the PERC Special Magistrate to recommend that FAU administrators grant faculty a 5% raise—which would still cover only half of the cost of living increase. The Magistrate noted that FAU is capable of at least a 2.5% increase, a recommendation FAU’s administrators–and now the Frank Brogan-controlled Board of Trustees–spurned, even though they acknowledge having tens of millions in reserve. Indeed, since its self-imposed hiring freeze in January 2008 FAU has proceeded to spend $12 million on 495 new positions while rejecting the 2.5% salary increase that would have cost the University $1.9 million annually.
FAU President Frank T. Brogan promised when he came on board in 2003 that he would put FAU on the map. What he did not say was that FAU’s notoriety would come from its football program rather than its academics, the latter of which he pays extensive lip service but little more. Brogan’s legacy of driving FAU a significant distance down the road to academic oblivion is evident in the American Association of University Professors 2008-09 salary data. Among Florida’s doctoral granting institutions the only university that pays its faculty worse than FAU is the illustrious Florida Institute of Technology. Further, as the AAUP’s data indicate, the higher professors proceed up the ranks from assistant to full at FAU, the worse their compensation gets relative to peer institutions. Of course, this does not factor in other “pay cuts” FAU administrators impose on faculty by year after year failing to acknowledge and reward their contributions to the University’s mission.