AAUP Releases Annual Faculty Salary Survey

A key to Cornell’s academic success is the ability to attract and retain a world-class faculty. Faculty salary and benefits are a major factor in each university’s competitive position, and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) conducts an annual salary survey to add transparency to this important issue. The AAUP released its Fall 2023 survey on April 9.

Although faculty salaries increase each year, they have struggled to keep up with rapidly increasing inflation over the last couple of years. . . Cornell has yet to announce what increases in faculty salaries they are including in the 2024-25 budget.

Below summarizes how Cornell stands in the Ivy League. (All values are $1,000):

FCS FULL-TIME FACULTY SALARIES, FALL 2023

Average salary, equated to a 9-/10-month contract, by academic rank, Unadjusted (dollars)

In each category (except for Brown and for Lecturers), Cornell is at the bottom of the Ivy League. The main reason for this is that this data combines salaries for Cornell’s endowed and four statutory colleges. The salaries and benefits in those SUNY units have traditionally been lower.

RELATED: Cornell Announces Tuition for 2024-25

Another factor is that Cornell is located in a rural area where the cost of living is lower than New York City or Boston.

Cornell’s main effort to improve its faculty salaries has been to propose to raise $3 billion for the Ithaca campus in its “To Do the Greatest Good” Campaign. That goal has been further divided between financial aid and endowed professorships. Boosting the endowment for Cornell’s academic unit, in turn, boosts the funds for faculty salaries.

When the COVID crisis hit Cornell with a large deficit, Cornell reacted by freezing faculty salaries and suspending pension contributions. This survey suggests that although has made up for lost ground, Cornell’s competitors have gone further and faster.

Given that Cornell’s faculty salary pool is finite, Deans continually debate whether any new funds should be used to improve the salaries of existing faculty or whether to create additional faculty positions. Deans must also decide how to allocate teaching duties between tenure-track faculty and lower-paid lecturers, instructors or visiting professors.

The other major controversy is that Cornell is currently negotiating its first collective bargaining agreement with Cornell Graduate Students United, the new union for graduate students.  It is not clear whether that contract will claim a disproportionate share of the budget’s salary pool at the expense of increases in faculty compensation.