December 2022
As we have discussed with the campus for many years, the HR Office is benchmarking staff salaries against nationwide data generated by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA). Beginning as survey research on administrators’ salaries many years ago, the data has expanded over time to include faculty, professional staff, and now also to comprehensively assess non-exempt staff compensation at all levels. About eight hundred colleges and universities participate in the surveys, yielding salary data as to about 263,000 full time faculty positions. The survey results are sorted and categorized as median salaries among cohorts of faculty positions, sorted by Carnegie classification and then by discipline and rank.
Shepherd benchmarks itself against the data for Masters Degree institutions. The University factored the median CUPA salary to 90%, and 52 of 135 full time faculty were below 90% of the applicable CUPA Median. These 52 are faculty recipients in this equity enhancement. The shortfall of salaries to a minimum of 90% of the respective CUPA medians is $409,662. For purposes of this equity enhancement and to distribute the limited funds more broadly, ten percent of the existing base salary was used as the maximum figure for the raise calculation process, which reduced the fundable shortfall to $230,637. The proportion of each recipient’s respective fundable shortfall, relative to the total fundable shortfall, was then factored against the budget funds available, $115,000. This produces the amount of Equity Increase for each of the recipients.