Faculty Assembly criticizes Pitt raises

At a recent meeting, the Faculty Assembly passed a resolution criticizing the Board of… At a recent meeting, the Faculty Assembly passed a resolution criticizing the Board of Trustees for the raises given to Pitt officers.

The original resolution, tabled on Jan. 28, called on the Faculty Assembly to “censure” the Trustees.

According to Assembly member John Baker, who drafted the original resolution, the form that was passed does not use the word censure because some Assembly members considered that word to be too strong.

Instead, it “recommends that the University of Pittsburgh’s Board of Trustees give greater heed in the future to the chancellor’s concern, as reported in the media, about the very large compensation increases and bonuses to himself and other top University officers in a time of severe campus budgetary problems which necessitated a 14-percent increase in tuition for students and a mere 3.5-percent raise in the faculty and staff compensation pool.”

Assembly members voted 16-2, with two abstentions, to approve the resolution.

Faculty Assembly President James Cassing did not vote, but he expressed his backing of the resolution, saying that he was “100 percent supportive of its sentiment.”

“I was worried that it maybe gave the impression that the faculty was not supportive of the chancellor.”

Baker reiterated his support of the chancellor and his administration, but also said the raises uncovered a “dramatic double standard” of faculty and staff salaries compared to those of the top Pitt administrators who received raises. He said one of the Assembly’s goals in passing the resolution was to improve faculty salaries.

According to a study published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the chancellor, after his recent pay raise, is now the seventh best paid chief executive at public Association of American University schools. That is compared to the ranking of Pitt faculty in the bottom third of faculty compensation rates at public AAU universities.

“Students should be concerned because it is going to be increasingly difficult for Pitt to retain its quality of education if the faculty is so badly paid,” Baker said.

The resolution gets published in the minutes of the Faculty Assembly meeting, gets discussed in the Senate Council and will be mentioned by Cassing to Board of Trustees President William Dietrich II.

Dietrich was unavailable for comment but, Cassing said, is “always open to [the suggestions of] both the Assembly and I.”