Making Fair and Predictable Salary Adjustments for Faculty of Public Research Universities

Building upon earlier work by Camp, Gibbs, and Masters II, (1988). The Journal of Higher Education 59(6): 652–667 and Wenger and Girard, (2000). Research in Higher Education 41(2):195–207, we present a model for allocating funds for salary increases to faculty lines within an academic unit at a public research university. The model first divides available funds into three separate amounts, based on the unit norms adopted by the faculty of the academic unit. These norms define the relative effort levels to be placed on teaching, scholarship, and service. The model enables individual faculty members to negotiate different effort levels for the respective activities. Within each of these activities, specific weights can be assigned to different types of accomplishments. The result is a flexible approach that allows fair and predictable salary increases to be assigned on the basis of criteria that have been agreed to by the faculty of the academic unit.