5.2% pay hike sought

Faculty, academic taff and UW executives would get pay increases averaging 5.2 percent each of the next two years under a pay plan proposed this week by UW System President Katharine Lyall.

The pay hikes are needed to get faculty salaries back to the peer group median by the end of the state’s two-year budget cycle, Lyall says.

But the proposal is a long way from the payroll office. First, Lyall’s plan must win approval from the UW System Board of Regents at meetings this week. Next, system leaders must lobby the governor to include it in his budget proposal. And then, the Legislature must agree to the increases.

Even if the UW System succeeds in beating back competing bids for new state money from public schools and the prison system, Lyall told the UW–Madison Faculty Senate on Monday that she can’t guarantee the faculty pay hikes will accomplish their goal. Other public universities have enjoyed a double-digit increase in state support in the past five years, while the UW System has seen just a 7 percent increase in state taxpayer support over the same period.

If that trend continues, Lyall says, it will be hard for UW–Madison to match the raises of its cash-rich neighbors, which means that those schools will continue to raid UW’s most talented researchers and faculty.

More than 50 UW–Madison professors left the university last year for peer institutions, Ivy League universities and other greener pastures. It would have taken a 10.7 percent pay increase last year to raise the average full professor’s salary to the peer group median. The $73,935 average salary for full professors in 1997-98 ranked next to last among UW–Madison’s peer group of 12 public research universities.