A new analysis of faculty salaries at public universities
worldwide -- designed to make comparisons possible by focusing on purchasing
power, not pure salaries -- finds that Canada offers the best faculty pay among
28 countries analyzed.
Canada comes out on top for those newly entering the
academic profession, average salaries among all professors and those at the
senior levels. In terms of average faculty salaries based on purchasing power,
the United States ranks fifth, behind not only its northern neighbor, but also
Italy, South Africa and India.
The figures (see table at end of article) are the result
of an unusual research project between the Center for International Higher
Education, at Boston College, and the Laboratory for Institutional Analysis at
the National Research University Higher School of Economics, in Moscow. The
comparisons are designed to bypass a typical hindrance to international
comparisons of faculty salaries (or any salaries for that matter): the sharply
different costs of living in various countries.
Pure salary comparisons based on exchange rates would
find the highest salaries in select Western developed nations. And certainly
those countries do well even with the methodology used for this study. That
methodology is based on the "purchasing power parity index"
(PPP),[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity] in which salaries
reflect what it takes to purchase similar goods and services in different
countries. This enables countries with relatively low salaries (in pure
finances) but also with low costs of living to be competitive with others where
base pay is much higher.
And that's why it's possible for countries like South
Africa and India to appear above the United States. In fact, because the
American numbers are based on full-time positions and exclude most adjuncts,
the American comparative position may be lower than is indicated. Generally,
China and formerly Soviet-dominated countries fare poorly in the comparisons in
the study.
The authors of the study are today releasing a series of
articles about the project, which will be fully detailed in a forthcoming book
from Routledge, Paying the Professoriate: A Global Comparison of Compensation
and Contracts. [http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415898072/] (Two of
the co-editors of the book, Philip Altbach and Liz Reisberg, are also
co-editors of an Inside Higher Ed blog, The World View.)
[http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/world-view] Much of the data for the
project may be found on the project's website. [http://acarem.hse.ru/data]
In an interview, Altbach, who is director of the Boston
College center, noted that there are numerous factors that differ from country
to country for which the study could not control. Saudi Arabians pay no taxes,
while Western Europeans pay relatively high taxes, he noted. The focus on
public higher education faculty has little impact on the many countries without
much of a private higher education sector, while in the United States, the sector
is influential. Excluding private higher education means that the colleges and
universities with the highest salaries are not in the American averages, but
private higher education also includes many small colleges that pay on the low
end of the scale.
Even with these various caveats, Altbach said it was
important for those who track higher education to start paying attention to the
relative economic state of faculty members around the world. "There is a
global academic market for talent," he said. Overall, the flow of talent
is south to north, but the data reveal important trends beyond that of wealthy
nations attracting brain power from less wealthy nations, he said. For example,
the relatively solid position for India may suggest an ability of many Indian
universities to hold on to academic talent. The relative strength of South
Africa, he said, may explain why that country -- while concerned about brain
drain to Europe and the United States -- attracts talent from elsewhere in
Africa.
Altbach said that the research team members were not
surprised by the dominance of Canada in the calculations, but that the healthy
positions for Italy, South Africa and India "totally shocked us."
Two countries -- China and India -- have been the focus
of many global education watchers in recent years as they have moved rapidly to
expand capacity and expertise in their university systems. The study shows
India holding its own in international faculty salary comparisons (factoring in
cost of living), but not China. This reality has led Chinese universities,
Altbach noted, to offer very high Western-style salaries, to a very small
number of academics (typically Chinese expats recruited home).
The numbers are such a small share of the total Chinese
academic labor pool that they don't influence the Chinese totals, he said, but
without these deviations from salary norms, China couldn't attract those
researchers. India, in contrast, does not permit universities to deviate from
salary norms for superstars.
Another area where the countries differ is in the
difference between entry-level salaries (averages for assistant professors) and
those at the top of their fields (full professors). Across all 28 countries
studied, the average ratio of the senior salary average to the junior salary
average was 2.06 to 1 (factoring in the PPP). The gaps between senior and
junior pay levels were greatest in China (4.3 to 1) and smallest in Norway (1.3
to 1). Western European nations generally had low ratios.
The analysis examines many other issues as well,
including fringe benefits, the nature of employment contracts and the existence
of tenure (present in only some of the countries studied).
Altbach noted that there was one financial finding that
was consistent across all of the countries studied: The middle class may be
open to academics in many countries, but for most, they are not going to be 1
percenters. "In some countries the academic profession does all right,"
Altbach said. "But in no country are they treated like a key element of
the international knowledge economy. No exception."
The following table, using PPP in U.S. dollars, shows
monthly average salaries for entry-level, senior-level and average across-the-board
salaries for public higher education faculty members. The countries are in
order, lowest to highest for average salaries.
Monthly Average Salaries of Public Higher Education
Faculty, Using U.S. PPP Dollars
Country Entry Average Top
Armenia $405 $538 $665
Russia 433 617 910
China 259 720 1,107
Ethiopia 864 1,207 1,580
Kazakhstan 1,037 1,553 2,304
Latvia 1,087 1,785 2,654
Mexico 1,336 1,941 2,730
Czech Republic 1,655 2,495 3,967
Turkey 2,173 2,597 3,898
Colombia 1,965 2,702 4,058
Brazil 1,858 3,179 4,550
Japan 2,897 3,473 4,604
France 1,973 3,484 4,775
Argentina 3,151 3,755 4,385
Malaysia 2,824 4,628 7,864
Nigeria 2,758 4,629 6,229
Israel 3,525 4,747 6,377
Norway 4,491 4,940 5,847
Germany 4,885 5,141 6,383
Netherlands 3,472 5,313 7,123
Australia 3,930 5,713 7,499
United Kingdom 4,077 5,943 8,369
Saudi Arabia 3,457 6,002 8,524
United States 4,950 6,054 7,358
India 3,954 6,070 7,433
South Africa 3,927 6,531 9,330
Italy 3,525 6,955 9,118
Canada 5,733 7,196 9,485
Inside Higher Ed
Tomorrow's Professor: Tomorrow's Academia - Faculty Pay, Around the World
