The salary structure of sociology departments

Abstract

Department chairs have recently expressed concerns over the phenomenon of salary compression, or the narrowing of the gap between the salaries of assistant professors and those of senior faculty. Such a compression is thought to lower senior faculty morale. The paper explores salary data organized by academic rank (professors, associate professors, and assistant professors) on a sample of 78 graduate departments drawn from the 1988 ASAGuide to Graduate Departments. Significant differences in the highest, lowest, and average salaries of assistant, associate, and full professors exist between public and private universities and between schools in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas. Few differences are found among regions of the country and between terminal M.A.- and Ph.D.-granting departments, the latter perhaps due to the shortfall in the supply of new assistant professors. Analysis of salary data reported over a fifty-year period by AAUP suggests that salary compression is not a recent problem in academia. Rather, it has typified academic salary structures for at least a half-century. Salary compression in sociology is somewhat less severe than in other fields, but effects of a lag in supply may eventually be felt in the 1990s.