Syracuse University’s move last week to launch a committee that will review faculty salary data could begin to quell frustration that has mounted in the two years since SU stopped providing such data publicly in the Committee Z report.

SU Vice Chancellor and Provost Michele Wheatly on Thursday announced the creation of the Faculty Salary Review Committee as well as the appointment of 18 faculty members and administrators to the committee. Over the course of the current academic year, the committee will be tasked with reviewing the average salary of faculty members across faculty rank, gender and schools and colleges — similar to the data formerly compiled in the Committee Z report, a public record that compared average faculty salaries across gender, schools and colleges and other factors.

The committee plans to share data with the campus community, though it is unclear to what degree and in how much detail. LaVonda Reed, associate provost for faculty affairs and the head of the committee, said it’s too early in the process to determine how much data will be made public.

“There will be high-level university salary data available. As far as how detailed it gets from there, I’m not prepared to say yet,” she said, adding that there is currently no deadline for the committee’s review of salary data to be completed.

More information about the committee and its plans will be made available after its first meeting, which will be held sometime this calendar year, Reed said.

Faculty across campus have often voiced displeasure with the university’s refusal to share faculty salary data since August 2014. It was then that, for the first time in almost 50 years, SU opted not to provide the data used in compiling the Committee Z report.

Bruce Carter, chair of the University Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Affairs, said in an October interview that the report was a valuable tool because it allowed SU to look for problems such as gender pay inequities and pay inequities across ranks in different departments as well as across schools and colleges.

“And then we could create a plan to address those kind of problems,” he said.

The creation of the new committee could represent one of the first steps in acknowledging faculty concerns that have built over the past two years, particularly if the data that is eventually made public is similar to the Committee Z report data.

“(The Faculty Salary Review Committee) will replace the Z report because faculty feel that there has been no transparency,” said Deborah Pellow, a professor of anthropology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and a member of the committee.

SU stopped sharing the Committee Z report because of concerns stemming from an antitrust lawsuit regarding the sharing of law school faculty salaries, SU Chancellor Kent Syverud has said.

Though Syverud has not specified which lawsuit in particular drove those concerns, it appears to be a reference to a 1995 complaint brought by the U.S. Justice Department against the American Bar Association. A settlement in the case prohibited the ABA from disseminating salary data for deans, administrators, faculty and staff at law schools.

Carter, though, said the area of concern in the lawsuit Syverud has referred to “isn’t at all” similar to how SU faculty salary data was shared in the Committee Z report.

Kevin Quinn, SU’s senior vice president of public affairs, did not return emails requesting more information about SU’s concerns over the lawsuit Syverud has referenced.

It isn’t uncommon for employers to shy away from sharing salary information because of legal concerns, said Andrea Johnson, an expert in gender pay equity for the National Women’s Law Center.

But Johnson added that such concerns are generally unjustified, and that transparency in salary data is useful because it sheds light on pay disparities.

“It’s really just about giving employees information so they can go to their employers and remedy these problems,” Johnson said.

Once the Faculty Salary Review Committee begins its work, members will be given a chance to provide their input on how much information the committee should disseminate to the campus community, Reed said.

Ravi Dharwadkar, a member of the committee and professor of management in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, said he isn’t sure what the value of making detailed salary information public would be. He added that the committee’s main purpose will be to look at the salary data and, if there are problems, make decisions to fix them.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing what the data looks like, because we really don’t know,” Dharwadkar said. “Once we look at that, then we can come to some conclusions.”

Published on November 15, 2016 at 10:05 pm

Contact Michael: mdburk01@syr.edu