News & Notes: Columbia Spectator finds professors’ salaries are lower than those at peer schools

The salaries of full professors were reported being the lowest, 6 percent lower than peers’, and assistant professors received salaries that were 5.8 percent lower than peers’. The relative salaries of assistant professors have increased since 2005-06, however, when they were 8.3 percent lower than the salaries of assistant professors at other Ivy League schools.

“There’s fairly broad agreement that junior faculty are suffering, that we’ve all taken a hit,” English department chair Nicholas Dames said to the Spectator. He added that the numbers “don’t come as a shock.”

Columbia’s Executive Vice President for Arts and Sciences Nicholas Dirks said he is working on a plan to increase faculty salaries over the course of three years, as the university’s endowment returns are “back to the level that they were.”

Political science department chair at Columbia John Huber added that Columbia’s salaries are lower than those at peer institutions because “places like Princeton, Yale and Harvard in particular have much deeper pockets than Columbia.”