DCCFA Climate Survey Results Confirm Correlation between Salary Compression and Difficulty Improving Faculty Diversity

The DCCFA Biennial Climate Survey is administered to gauge faculty attitudes and perceptions on a wide variety of issues, including compensation. Starting in 2015, the Communications Committee of the DCCFA began conducting the survey in two parts. The first part, administered in the fall semester, would gauge faculty attitudes on specific issues identified as important by large numbers of faculty. This data helps the Faculty Council identify strategic priorities to advance throughout the academic year. The second part, administered in the spring semester, gauges faculty perceptions of the overall climate of the DCCCD.

Part One of the DCCFA Biennial Climate Survey was completed this fall. Special thanks go to long-time DCCFA member, Doug Keenan, who recently retired from Mountain View College, but graciously agreed to conduct the survey again from his home computer, as well as compile and aggregate the data, and produce reports to share with members.

DCCFA members are invited to peruse the overall Climate Survey results from faculty across the District, as well as those from each of the individual colleges: Brookhaven, Cedar Valley, El Centro, Eastfield, Mountain View, North Lake, and Richland.

After correlating and sorting the Climate Survey data by respondents’ demographic selections, the Faculty Council found that survey results largely confirm what we have learned anecdotally and historically about the extent to which salary compression is inextricably linked to the lack of ability of the DCCCD to retain faculty from diverse backgrounds.

Our recent efforts to improve entering faculty pay, establish milestone increases, and perform targeted recruitment of potential faculty will continue to pay dividends with even more diverse faculty hires in the coming years. However,  we are struggling to retain diverse faculty from historically underrepresented backgrounds because many of them can earn higher pay in industry or at other institutions. In other words, making a diverse hire now does not improve our diversity numbers if we lose an experienced faculty member from a diverse background to another employer.

Historical data supports this hypothesis. Despite significant efforts at all colleges to hire faculty from diverse backgrounds, an analysis of DCCCD Board meeting agendas and minutes since 2007 reveals that a disproportionate share of faculty resignations (not retirements, and not non-renewals of visiting scholars at several of the DCCCD colleges), are faculty from diverse, historically underrepresented backgrounds, in large measure because their DCCCD salaries have not kept pace with what they can earn with other employers. Indeed, a significant percentage of our diverse faculty fall within the large “middle” of career faculty hired between 1981 and 2012, who never will earn a 3-year milestone increase, who never benefited from step raises, and who increasingly are seeing their salaries surpassed by younger colleagues with equivalent credentials.

Data from the Fall 2017 Biennial Faculty Climate Survey, in which 420 full-time faculty participated, confirms the hypothesis that salary compression hinders efforts to retain faculty from historically underrepresented backgrounds, and thus keeps the District from diversifying its faculty ranks.

Faculty first were asked to respond to demographic sorting questions, such as sex/gender, race/ethnicity, teaching area, and longevity. Then, they were asked to respond to a series of statements on a Likert scale. Some of the most relevant correlations are excerpted here:

On Question 21: “Lack of compensation adjustments to reflect my experience relative to the entering salary of faculty in my range makes me more likely to seek employment outside the DCCCD,”

53% of DCCCD faculty overall agreed or strongly agreed

56% of African-American faculty agreed or strongly agreed

50% of Hispanic/Latino faculty agreed or strongly agreed

64% of CTE faculty agreed or strongly agreed

51% of STEM faculty agreed or strongly agreed

On Question 27: “I rely on extra service teaching to make ends meet in my personal/household budget,”

73% of DCCCD faculty overall agreed or strongly agreed

77% of DCCCD faculty who teach extra service agreed or strongly agreed

73% of female faculty agreed or strongly agreed

71% of African-American faculty agreed or strongly agreed

76% of Hispanic/Latino faculty agreed or strongly agreed

76% of CTE faculty agreed or strongly agreed

68% of STEM faculty agreed or strongly agreed

The Faculty Council plans to share these findings with Chancellor May in the coming weeks, with a mind toward generating concrete recommendations to ameliorate salary compression in an effort to retain what diversity we have now, even as efforts are undertaken to continue to hire additional diverse faculty in forthcoming searches.