A new study reveals the effect that various factors, apart from scholarly productivity, have on faculty salary, according to a new study reported on by Inside Higher Ed. The data is for political science faculty, but probably displays a pattern common to most disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.
The study shows that, for political science faculty:
- Women earn about $3,500 less on average than men do.
- People with children earn an average of $3,420 less than those without children.
- Nonwhite people earn an average of $4,770 less than white people.
- The professors who graduated from top-ranked programs (per the National Research Council) had a significant wage advantage.
- Those who earned Ph.D.s at institutions in the Northeast or West earned more than those who earned doctorates elsewhere.
- The more undergraduate courses a political science professor teaches, the lower their salary is likely to be.
- Negotiating over salary appears to result in gains for male faculty members but not female faculty members.
Tenured and tenure-track positions in the social sciences have salaries that are, on average, around $6,000 higher than those in the category of “philosophy and religious studies,” according to data reported earlier.
