Details About the Changes
The Administrators Survey will include total compensation for select executive positions.
The 2024-25 Administrators in Higher Education Survey (Administrators Survey) will include a new Total Compensation section designed to give participants data on total compensation for select executive positions. This section of the survey absorbs questions from CUPA-HR’s Executive Compensation and Benefits Survey (which will be discontinued) and focuses on the following administrators:
- Top Executive Officers
- Senior Institutional and Chief Functional Officers
- Academic Deans
- Institutional Administrators
It will collect data on these topics (and more!):
- Performance-based bonuses
- Contributions to retirement accounts
- Contributions to deferred compensation and other supplemental retirement accounts
- Housing allowances
- Reporting structure
Who can participate? Every institution participating in the Administrators Survey will have the option to complete the Total Compensation section. They are not required to do so, but only institutions that complete the Total Compensation section will have the option to purchase DataOnDemand for the Total Compensation data. DataOnDemand for the Administrators Survey (minus the Total Compensation data) will continue to be available for purchase by any higher ed institution, whether they participate or not.
It’s a win-win! With more institutions participating and more positions covered, the Total Compensation portion of the Administrators Survey will provide data that is often hard to come by. A DataOnDemand Total Compensation subscription will allow you to benchmark this data yourself with your own custom comparison groups or to provide easy access to this data for your consultants.
A new survey will collect data on the employee experience, workplace policies, benefits, and more.
The new Benefits, Employee Experience, and Structure Survey (BEES Survey) will collect data on:
- Core benefits offerings related to retirement, healthcare, paid time off, and dependent care
- Remote and hybrid work
- Performance reviews and professional development
- Where HR-related functions like Title IX are housed (or whether they’re outsourced)
- Adjunct pay policies
- And more!
The Benefits in Higher Education Survey will be retired, and many of the questions from the survey will be included in the BEES Survey.
Why collect this data? CUPA-HR has received countless requests for non-salary data related to workplace policies and benefits. This survey will capture data that can be used for planning across a wide range of benefits and policies.
Other changes will collect more useful data and improve the collection process.
The Faculty in Higher Education Survey (Faculty Survey) will now collect incumbent-level information on adjunct faculty.
The Professionals in Higher Education Survey will include many additional research support and development positions, as well as postdocs (moved from the Faculty Survey).
Institutions will now provide data for the Institutional Basics portion of CUPA-HR’s annual data collection via an upload file — no more tedious manual data entry! Institutional Basics will also have its own Survey Participation and Information Template to assist in preparing your upload.
Reminder: The survey participation window opens in early September.
This is not a change — just a friendly reminder!
- Early September — The Survey Participation and Information Template (SPIT) for each survey is available. The SPIT is a comprehensive document that includes instructions, position descriptions, the upload template, and survey deadlines. With SPIT files in hand, participating institutions are ready to organize their teams and start gathering data. Note: The SPIT file for the BEES Survey will not include position descriptions or an upload template, as it requires data to be input manually.
- November 4 — The portal for uploading data opens.
- January 9, 2025 — Surveys close.
- February 13, 2025 — 2024-25 DataOnDemand opens.
Because this year’s changes affect nearly every survey, we encourage you to prepare and upload your data before the winter break to ensure you have time to ask questions, avoid the January time crunch, and allow for the inevitable disruptions caused by the weather.
Plan Now to Participate!
The more data we collect, the more complete the picture we have of today’s higher education workforce. When your institution participates in CUPA-HR’s workforce surveys, it also qualifies for deep discounts on the DataOnDemand (DOD) subscriptions that provide access to the data.
