Faculty Composition and Pay Equity by Gender and Race/Ethnicity
CUPA-HR’s signature surveys have been gathering data for years on representation and pay equity for hundreds of higher ed faculty positions. The data shared here can provide invaluable insights for your leadership teams. To view trends in representation and pay equity for custom comparison groups or specific positions, subscribe to DataOnDemand.
Faculty information includes data for tenure-track faculty and non-tenure-track teaching faculty. These interactive graphics depict composition and pay equity by gender and race/ethnicity for higher ed faculty over time.
Composition of Faculty by Race/Ethnicity and Gender
Key Findings: There are two notable findings in faculty composition. First, more women faculty are represented in non-tenure-track than in tenure-track faculty. Second, with each increase in rank, the proportions of women faculty and faculty of color decrease for both tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty. This means that women faculty are over-represented in the lowest-paying and lowest-ranking positions, and as faculty get promoted there are fewer people of color. These findings hold even though representation of women faculty and faculty of color have increased slightly at each rank since 2017. Promotion to a higher rank has a significant impact on salary increases for faculty. The data show that the only group that has greater representation with each increase in rank are White male faculty, and this pattern has persisted over time.
Navigating the Chart: Use the drop down-menu to select faculty tenure status. Click the labels in the legend to select or deselect specific data in the graphic. Slide the circle side-to-side in the bar to change the year
Median Pay Ratios for Faculty by Race/Ethnicity and Gender
Key Findings: Pay gaps within rank persist, particularly for women faculty at the professor level, regardless of tenure status. These gaps are most notable for female professors of color in non-tenure-track positions. Pay gaps for assistant and associate professors have narrowed over time, particularly for tenure-track faculty.
When you click the “Animate All Years” button for either tenure-track or non-tenure-track faculty, it is difficult to note any consistent trends in pay gaps broken out by rank. We suggest that what is most important in this data is to note the trends in composition changes with increases in rank, as displayed in the first graph on this page. Faculty, particularly tenure-track faculty, often see substantial salary increases at only two points in their careers — once when they are promoted to associate professor and again when they are promoted to full professor. When there is bias in promoting women and faculty of color to successive ranks, as our data continue to show, this results in career earnings gaps that far exceed what is often detected in pay equity studies within rank for a given year.
Navigating the Chart: Use the drop down-menu to select faculty tenure status. Slide the circle side-to-side in the bar to change the year.
Methodology: Data were collected in CUPA-HR’s Faculty in Higher Education Survey with an effective date of November 1 of each academic year. (For these charts, the academic year is denoted with the last part of the year, e.g., 2023 is academic year 2022-23). Analyses include only non-profit institutions of higher education; each year of data includes data from at least 683 colleges and universities and over 210,000 full-time faculty. Ranks for non-tenure-track faculty correspond to years of experience in institutions where no ranks are conferred.
Median pay ratios control for discipline. For each rank, median salaries by race/ethnicity and sex for each faculty discipline were obtained; then the median of those medians was calculated by race/ethnicity and sex. Finally, each group’s median salary was divided by the median salary of White men to calculate the pay ratio. This controls for the fact that women and faculty of color may be represented differently in specific disciplines that pay higher or lower salaries, and it means that the wage gaps present are not explained by the fact that women or people of color may have greater representation in lower-paying disciplines.