Updated: April 18, 2023, at 12:52 p.m.
Tenured and tenure-track faculty in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences have the second-lowest average salaries out of seven of GW’s 12 schools while serving the most undergraduates out of any GW school on campus, according to a University report last month.
Provost Chris Bracey said in a report at a Faculty Senate meeting last month that the average salary for tenured and tenure-track CCAS professors was $151,439 during the 2021-22 academic year – about 25 percent lower than GW’s average tenured and tenure-track salary of $200,589 across CCAS, GW Law, the School of Business, the Milken Institute School of Public Health, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Graduate School of Education and Human Development and the Elliott School of International Affairs. CCAS faculty said the school’s average salary is lower than those of their peers in STEM and business disciplines at GW.
Paul Wahlbeck, the dean of CCAS, declined to say why the average salary for CCAS tenured and tenure-track professors is lower than the averages for GW’s other schools or how officials determine salaries for professors across schools.
“CCAS greatly values the work of our faculty and their commitment to GW’s educational and research mission,” Wahlbeck said in an email.
Wahlbeck said officials have “worked diligently” over the past “several” years to increase CCAS faculty salaries. He said officials bumped up the merit increase they implemented for tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty in 2021 and increased the average salaries of non-tenure-track assistant and associate professors last year.
Wahlbeck said Bracey’s report at last month’s senate meeting does not reflect the salary merit increases officials issued in summer 2022 because it only contains data from the 2021-22 academic year. He said Bracey’s report also does not include the salaries of professors on yearlong sabbaticals.
Ivy Ken, a tenured associate professor of sociology in CCAS, said the University often rationalizes giving more raises to STEM and business professors to encourage professors to stay at GW and deter them from seeking “lucrative” employment options elsewhere. She said the University does not apply the same rationale to social science and humanities professors receiving job offers from other universities or employers outside academia.
GWSB, Milken and GW Engineering ranked second, third and fourth out of GW’s academic schools for average salary for tenured and tenure-track faculty during the 2021-22 academic year with $230,615, $211,488 and $200,337, respectively, according to the report.
“I have worked at GW for 22 years, and I just broke $100,000 about a year ago,” Ken said in an email. “The only way to increase my salary is to get an offer from another university, and I don’t want to waste anybody’s time doing that.”
Ken said GW’s system of faculty compensation does not reward faculty members for their “loyalty, excellence or service,” but rather on whether faculty members could receive well-paying job offers outside of GW.
“Students should also know that the quality of a professor’s teaching has almost nothing to do with whether they are paid well,” she said. “Some of the worst teachers are most highly paid, and loads of terrific teachers get scraps. It’s a demoralizing game, and lots of us lose.”
Tatiyana Apanasovich, an associate professor of statistics in CCAS, said while salaries at GW may not appear drastically lower than other American universities, the high cost of living in and around D.C. makes it difficult for professors to live off GW’s current salaries.
Living in and near D.C. costs 53 percent more than the national average cost of living, according to WTOP News.
“If I compare my salary to someone somewhere in the middle of the country in a rural area, the living expenses are much lower, so here, I cannot afford to buy a house, that’s kind of reality,” Apanasovich said.
Apanasovich said six professors have left her department, which currently hosts 19 full-time faculty members, over the past 10 years after receiving higher-paying offers from other institutions, including one faculty member who left GW for Georgetown University.
The average salary for faculty with the title of “professor” across all GW schools for the 2021-2022 academic year was $189,700, whereas at Georgetown University, the average salary was $221,300, according to the senate report.
“I know it’s really, really hard to negotiate salaries with GW because they just really don’t want to pay more,” Apanasovich said.
A tenured professor in CCAS, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern of retribution from the University, said after holding the title of professor for seven years, their salary is still comparable to the average salary of an associate professor at GW, one level below his professor position.
The faculty member said low salaries often incentivize CCAS faculty to search for other jobs because they feel they need more compensation for their work when they would otherwise prefer to stay employed at the University.
“It is a shame because, in many cases, the faculty member really wants to stay at GW, but the financial reality of low salary may force them to move,” they said.
Harald Griesshammer, a tenured professor of physics in CCAS, said salaries for professors working in the arts and humanities are on average lower than the professors’ salaries in fields like physics, chemistry and economics because they have limited job opportunities outside of academia and more competition for professor positions within their field of study. He said this compensation system decreases many humanities professors’ salaries because universities can pay them less without having to compete with industries outside of academia, but the majority of people entering the higher education industry are aware of the disparity.
“We’re never going to end up with something that’s even approaching comparable between the disciplines, and the reason is just the American system,” Griesshammer said.
Griesshammer said GW looks for outliers and makes adjustments to salaries within departments, but differences in employment demand between disciplines make it difficult to compare salaries across an entire school.
“I do know that GW and CCAS wants to make sure that within a department everybody gets the fair salary, but I think between departments, between disciplines, between schools, it’s a much harder thing,” Griesshammer said.
