New Report Highlights Growth, Composition and Salaries for Faculty in Health Professions

A recent CUPA-HR research report provides a snapshot of health professions faculty, one of the fastest-growing disciplines in higher education. The report, Faculty in the Health Professions: Growth, Composition, and Salaries, indicates that the overall number of health professions faculty increased by 19 percent since 2014, compared to a 6 percent increase in the number of faculty in all other disciplines.

The report also indicates that the number of tenure-track health professions faculty increased by 5 percent in the last six years, compared to a 1 percent decrease in the number of tenure-track faculty in all other disciplines. The number of non-tenure-track health professions faculty grew at a similar rate to the number of non-tenure-track faculty in all other disciplines.

Faculty composition in the health professions differs in important ways from faculty composition in other disciplines. Half of health professions faculty have been non-tenure-track for the past six years — increasing from 45 percent to 52 percent from 2014 to 2019 — compared to one-fourth of faculty in all other disciplines. The median salary of tenure-track health professions faculty is 10 percent greater than that of non-tenure-track teaching faculty and 13 percent greater than that of non-tenure-track research faculty.

The report, which is available for free, also examines health professions faculty composition by institutional classification and by subdiscipline. It also provides critical questions for higher education leaders to determine their next steps in relation to health professions faculty.

Read Faculty in the Health Professions: Growth, Composition, and Salaries, and check out CUPA-HR’s other research publications.