The AAUP has released provisional data from the 2021–22 Faculty Compensation Survey, including summary tables, appendices with detailed institution-level data, and an interactive AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey Results Tool. AAUP chapter and conference leaders may order full datasets and research portal access free of charge and institutions may purchase data products for a fee. Complete analyses of this year’s results will be presented in the forthcoming Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2021–22, to be published in June. Final data, including corrected appendices, will be released in July.

Data collection for the AAUP’s 2021–22 Faculty Compensation Survey concluded in March, with over 900 US colleges and universities providing employment data for over 370,000 full-time and 90,000 part-time faculty members as well as senior administrators at over 500 institutions. Participants reflected the wide range of institution types across the United States, including nearly 280 major research universities, 320 regional universities, 160 liberal arts colleges, 100 community colleges, and 170 minority-serving institutions.

The AAUP’s annual Faculty Compensation Survey complements the US Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Human Resources survey component and collects not only full-time faculty salary data by rank, gender, and contract length, but also four additional components, including (a) full-time faculty benefits, including retirement, medical, and dependent tuition benefits, (b) data on continuing full-time faculty, (c) salary data on key administrative positions, and (d) salary and benefits data for part-time adjunct faculty members who were paid per course section in the prior academic year. The AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey is the largest source of data on part-time adjunct faculty members and draws attention to the appallingly low rates of pay and benefits offered to them at many institutions. Data on part-time adjunct faculty were collected for the prior academic year, 2020–21, to ensure that institutions could provide complete data for an entire academic year.

Last year’s annual report documented the lowest nominal wage growth for full-time faculty since the AAUP began tracking annual wage growth in 1972. The forthcoming annual report will further document the economic impact of the COVID–19 pandemic on faculty in a year when the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 7 percent, the largest December-to-December percentage increase since 1981. The report will document not only changes in the economic status for full-time faculty members, but also the status of part-time adjunct faculty members who are paid on a per-course-section basis—and contingent faculty members in general—as well as the continued underrepresentation in higher ranks and pay disparities for women full-time faculty members.

For information about the AAUP’s annual Faculty Compensation Survey, visit https://www.aaup.org/our-work/research/FCS.

Best wishes,
Glenn Colby, AAUP Senior Researcher