University of Northern Colorado faculty recently raised the issue of the university’s relatively low pay for its educators at a board meeting.
The issue is expected to come up again later this month at the next trustees meeting.
University leaders, including President Andy Feinstein, agree additional raises are needed for the nearly 400 full-time faculty, especially with a higher cost of living plaguing Colorado residents over the past few years. But the limited funding available to higher education means raises so far are incremental and slow to materialize.
Increasing faculty salaries was publicly raised in December when Faculty Senate Chair Britney Kyle presented information for discussion at a board of trustees meeting.
“The bottom line is places like UNC are not paying professors enough,” said Fritz Fischer, a longtime history professor and faculty representative to the board of trustees. “The money from the state is not enough. The rest comes from student tuition, and no one wants student tuition to go up.”
Colorado in 2023 ranked 49th of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. in public higher education appropriations per full-time equivalent student, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association that does financial analysis for higher education.
The association’s Fiscal Year 2023 State Higher Education Finance report showed Colorado spent $6,603 per full-time equivalent, ahead of Vermont ($5,649) and New Hampshire ($3,990).
UNC’s proposed college of osteopathic medicine is scheduled to open to students in 2026. Full enrollment is projected three years later, in 2029.
Faculty, staff and operational expenditures will be funded solely from tuition upon full enrollment. Faculty and staff expenditures will come from a combination of donors and student tuition in the years between the first class enrolling and full enrollment at the college, UNC Assistant Vice President of Communications Deanna Herbert said.
Kyle, a professor of anthropology, said faculty are looking for targeted compensation adjustments to bring the members in line with salaries paid to peers at 50 other institutions with similar characteristics across the U.S.
Faculty also want an evaluation of policies on how faculty and staff are considered, as well as a look at raising the percentage of the UNC budget related to instruction. Kyle’s presentation included data showing UNC spends the smallest percentage on instruction among in-state peer institutions, at 36.3%. Kyle compared this to Colorado Mesa (42.3%), University of Colorado Colorado Springs (43.9%), Fort Lewis College (37.4%), Metropolitan State University of Denver (43.2%) and Western Colorado University (51.6%).
“We want them to think about the core academic mission as they’re approving future budgets,” Kyle said.
University of Northern Colorado President Andy Feinstein congratulates the new UNC graduates during a Commencement ceremony at Bank of Colorado Arena on Dec. 14, 2024. (Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)At UNC, instruction includes salaries and benefits for faculty to teach a course, teaching assistant salaries, travel for faculty or students to present work at conferences and curriculum materials.
In the early 2000s, about 51% of the UNC budget was devoted to instruction. Board of trustees policy from long ago indicated 55% of the budget should go toward instruction.
Feinstein said the source is unknown behind the policy or document mandating the 55% for instruction. To his knowledge, the university has never met the 55% mark, he said. Feinstein believes it’s more important for the university to articulate and follow its priorities today.
“Then really come to an agreement with the faculty so that they are also supporting and believing that we are committed to them, and we are addressing the concerns that have been provided to me,” Feinstein said.
If it’s not possible to reach the 55% and it’s never been met in the past, Fischer said, faculty still want a strategy to steer the instruction budget higher.
“We’d like to see a serious plan that recognizes the main purpose of a university is instruction,” Fischer said.
Faculty see a widening gap between how UNC spends money on staff and faculty, according to Feinstein, contributing to the feeling of being underpaid. The university needs to determine how to address this concern, he added.
“The truth is, in the last 20 years, the work that universities are doing to support students has become significant,” Feinstein said, adding he thinks it’s a national theme in higher education.
These services are geared toward seeing a student to graduation in areas such as academic advising, career counseling and mental health. The university also has to think about housing, security and food issues for students.
“We know that if we do not provide the infrastructure and support for students to be able to focus on their education, they will not be successful,” Feinstein added. “It’s no longer students come into class, take a class and go home, right?”
Kyle’s presentation at the December board of trustees meeting included data showing different trends in pay for full-time faculty and staff over more than a decade.
Staff pay has risen steadily since 2021 from a total of $44.4 million to $58.8 million this year.
In the past 13 years, faculty compensation peaked at $46.9 million in 2019. The totals dipped to $39.4 million in 2022 with turnover following the COVID-19 pandemic. The total faculty pay this year is up to $40.8 million.
UNC has 378 full-time faculty for the current, 10-month 2024-25 academic year.
Salaries range from $44,000 to $160,000 depending on discipline (field), position rank and the number of years in the rank, Herbert said.
The faculty academic ranks are lecturer, instructor, senior lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor and professor. There are set requirements to meet each rank.
UNC is trying to reach 100% of the median salary of faculty at 50 other peer institutions. Recent 3% increases brought UNC faculty to at least 92.5% of those peer schools, the majority of which are universities offering doctorate degrees. Most of the universities on the list are also classified as having high or very high research activity.
Feinstein announced last week UNC recently earned a designation indicating high research activity. The university’s Research 2 Classification from Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education means it awards at least 20 doctoral research degrees annually on average and spends an average of at least $5 million for research in a single year.
Of those peer institutions, UNC ranks sixth in cost of living. Greeley has a cost of living index of 113.4, placing it above the national average of 100. Among the peer schools, only Portland State (127.7), Montclair State in Montclair, New Jersey (135), the University of Massachusetts-Boston (150.8), San Diego State (154.9) and City University of New York (172.5) are in locations with higher costs of living.
The cost of living in Northern Colorado is a key factor for tenure-contract English professor Molly Desjardins. Desjardins, 48, has taught at UNC for 16 years since she finished graduate school with a doctorate in English. She was hired at a salary of $47,000 to teach British Romantic literature. She has also taught 18th- and 19th-century literature.
“Now, I teach whatever they ask,” she said.
Desjardins earns about $61,000 as an associate professor, and her tenure contract status essentially gives her job security. With tenure, board of trustees policy says Desjardins has the right to be employed at UNC until she resigns, retires, is discharged for cause, is terminated because of a reduction in workforce approved by the board of trustees, is permanently disabled or dies.
Desjardins lives in Fort Collins, and until two years ago, she had a roommate because she couldn’t afford rent on her own apartment. She’s given up on one day owning her own home.
“It’s a pie-in-the-sky kind of idea,” she said. “The cost of living here is higher than at peer institutions with similar pay, and it’s difficult with student loans. If I was in rural Kansas with the same job and same paycheck, I could make it go a lot further.”
Desjardins’ current salary is nearly the same as what she would earn as a Step 1 certified staff member with a doctorate in Greeley-Evans School District 6. The District 6 salary at Step 1 is $61,813. With 25 years and a doctorate, a certified staff member could earn $118,788.
Within her field, Desjardins has known colleagues to opt for employment at a school district rather than continue teaching at the college level. Others have switched into writing grants for nonprofits. Desjardins said she’s stayed at UNC because her position would not be filled if she left the university.
“Students would lose another faculty,” she said. “I think many have stayed because we genuinely care about the students and are dedicated to them. There are a lot of good things at the university. Teachers teach, and we’re there because it’s meaningful work.”
Cost of living wasn’t always a factor in paying UNC faculty, said Dale Pratt, a UNC graduate and vice president for finance and administration and chief financial officer. Pratt said high rates of turnover among faculty and staff around the COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to a higher level of awareness on the need to better compensate employees.
“We’re not at that medium level. We didn’t have to be before, but we do need to get there now,” he said. “We’re not able to continue to rely on that (low cost of living) as a way to rationalize the compensation levels that were available here at UNC.”
Kyle made it clear the faculty does not want higher pay to come at any expense to staff. She said there were 780 staff at the university as of August 2024.
“We want to see our wages keeping up with staff on our campus, which is hard,” Kyle said. “We have a lot of great staff. We’re not saying we want staff to get salary cuts.”
The university is pausing all hiring for new and vacant positions while it evaluates its financial position with a projected budget shortfall.
The state’s total appropriation for higher education for the current fiscal year was $1.2 billion, UNC said. UNC’s portion was $69 million. Gov. Jared Polis in late 2024 proposed a $12.1 million increase, or about 1%, for all of higher education next year.
Pratt said with projected limitations in the state budget, as well as the “highly variable” nature of revenue around tuition and a continued need to improve compensation, the university has to be careful with its financial resources.
“We run the risk of putting the institution in a financially risky place, right?” Pratt said. “And we can’t. We can’t do that. It’s just not good business. It’s just not prudent.”
He said the faculty compensation increases can’t be implemented at a faster pace. Pratt said compensation rate increases are in the university budget for next year. The university will also try to give incremental increases to faculty to get them closer to parity with the 50 peer institutions.
State higher education executives were not happy with the governor’s proposed higher education budget for next year. Fourteen of those presidents, CEOs, chancellors, executive directors and directors requested a general fund increase of $80.2 million for their institutions in a letter to the Joint Budget Committee.
The higher education executives, including Feinstein and Aims Community College CEO and president Leah Bornstein, sent the letter to the six-member Joint Budget Committee in early December. The committee is made up of three state senators and three representatives who study the management, operations, programs and fiscal needs of state government.
The 14 executives asked for $65.1 million in state operating funding and $15.1 million in financial aid — with an authority for a 2.7% tuition increase for resident undergraduate students.
“Continued investment in public higher education is critical in order to keep resident tuition in check and to continue making progress as we work to meet the state’s workforce demand,” they wrote in the letter.
Polis’ office said the governor’s $12.1 million proposal to support higher education and a $2.3 million increase in financial aid are part of a balanced budget that protects critical funding for priorities including education.
The governor’s office through Deputy Press Secretary Ally Sullivan said the Joint Budget Committee has “tough choices to make as they set a balanced budget for Colorado’s future.
“Significant increases in any area of funding could result in cuts to critical areas like education and public safety,” Sullivan added.
The governor’s office said the increases proposed in this budget mean a 63% hike in general fund operating support for higher education institutions since the 2019-20 academic year. The state over the same span has increased state funding for direct financial aid to cover tuition, fees and other costs.
The $1.2 billion sent to higher education last year was a 10% increase in state support, Polis’ office noted — adding “we recognize that despite these investments higher education is expensive.”
Republican State Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, who represents parts of Larimer and Weld counties, is a third-year member of the Joint Budget Committee. She said she doesn’t know why Colorado ranks low in funding public higher education or how the state arrived to this position.
In her time on the committee, it’s been a fight get core increases for higher education, she said. Polis has come in low on early proposals.
Kirkmeyer said a lower general fund contribution from the state requires more institution costs. Some of these are handed down to students.
“It’s confounding,” Kirkmeyer said. “What do we tell students who can’t afford it?
“We’re trying to make things more affordable and people have the opportunity for post-secondary education so they can advance in their careers.”
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