#78595 - Salary of religion professors

[Katya]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/78595/

The HBLL's published starting salary* for faculty librarians is around $50,000. I highly doubt that professors in the Religion Department are starting at twice what the librarians are making, especially since there's a ton of competition for those positions (and equivalent positions don't really exist at non-Church-owned universities). However, it may be that some professors who are well into their BYU careers or who have other responsibilities (such as being a department chair) are making around $100,000, but I suspect that it's more the exception than the rule.

*BYU faculty are asked to keep their salaries private (which is not a practice that I agree with, but I wasn't consulted), but in the academic library world, it's standard to publish salaries of beginning, mid-career, and late-career professional employees, so the HBLL does publish those figures, even if most BYU colleges don't.

[Whistler]

yeah, I highly doubt it's as high as $100,000.

[Concorde]

I knew it sounded far too good to be true. I wish salaries were more available though.

[Amity]

Just wanted to point out that tenured faculty get paid more than pre-tenure faculty, so I'm sure post-tenure religion professors are getting paid more than faculty librarians who are just starting out. I have no way of knowing whether BYU pays its tenured religion professors $100,000, but I bet that's pretty standard at other universities and in other fields for that career stage.

And yeah, I agree that BYU's practice of not publishing salaries is kinda shady.

[Marduk]

That's extremely high for most of the liberal arts. Even for tenured professors. Tenured professors tend to be around 60-70k, unless they have a lot of notoriety.

[Amity]

That's extremely high for most of the liberal arts. Even for tenured professors. Tenured professors tend to be around 60-70k, unless they have a lot of notoriety.

It depends on the field and the university. The $100,000 range is probably about right for professors in STEM fields or even some of the social sciences, or for highly prestigious universities (especially private ones).

[Marduk]

Yeah, that's why I said most. Everything but science and math (and technology and engineering aren't liberal arts disciplines.) I mean philosophy, history, arts, music, art history, music history, the languages, rhetoric, literature, etc.

And most universities are actually pretty well in that range, except for their allstars.

[Katya]

Just wanted to point out that tenured faculty get paid more than pre-tenure faculty, so I'm sure post-tenure religion professors are getting paid more than faculty librarians who are just starting out. I have no way of knowing whether BYU pays its tenured religion professors $100,000, but I bet that's pretty standard at other universities and in other fields for that career stage.

You raise a good point, so I went back and looked at BYU's salaries for mid-career employees as well as beginning employees. According to this year's numbers, beginning faculty librarians start at $55,000, the average salary of all faculty librarians is $73,000, and the median salary of all faculty librarians is $70,000. Also, the average faculty librarian had 19.3 years of experience. 19.3 years is much higher than the nominal 6 years required to get tenure. Even if you looked at someone in my position, who has 6 years of previous work experience that don't count towards tenure and even if you added in another possible year for maternity leave, you'd be looking at 13 years to get to tenure, which is still less than 19.3 years. Consequently, I think it's fair to assume that the "average" BYU librarian is tenured and therefore that their published salary takes any tenure bonus into account.

If it takes 19 years to get from $55,000 to $70,000 (I'm not sure if that math works out, but let's take those numbers as a thought experiment), it could take another 19 years to get from $70,000 to $89,000 (or possibly longer, since there wouldn't be a tenure salary bump in there, although there might be a senior librarian salary bump), so that's almost 40 years to get 89% of the way to $100,000.

Again, it's entirely possible that the average religion professor is making 35% more than the average librarian, in which case they would be making around $100,000, but given the reality of liberal arts professorships (as Marduk pointed out), I'm skeptical that they're making that much more than us.

And yeah, I agree that BYU's practice of not publishing salaries is kinda shady.

To be fair, private universities generally don't publish their salaries, but I'm of the opinion that more information is better when trying to make career decisions.

[Portia]

Only semi-relevant, but Tally's answer about how the tenure hunt coincides with peak reproductive years has pushed me back towards thinking I want to jump into the warm welcoming arms of academia. What better excuse for not settling down or having kids than "I'm too busy hunting tenure?" :D

[Katya]

Another question relating to BYU faculty:

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/78660/

As a religiously-affiliated university, BYU may discriminate in favor of members of the LDS religion, but they still may not discriminate against members of other federally protected classes, including discriminating on the basis of sex or on the basis of pregnancy. However, the courts have in the past granted exceptions for persons in ministerial employment, and since seminary and institute teachers work directly for the Church, the Church may believe that it can discriminate against women with young children on that basis.

[Cindy]

I don't think a seminary or institute teacher would have a chance of proceeding with a discrimination case. A court would be extremely likely to consider them to be engaged in ministerial duties (i.e., advancing the religious teachings of the church), and this would cause the ministerial exception to apply, thus exempting the church from both federal and state anti-discrimination laws with respect to this employment decision.

Actually, I think the exception would apply to BYU religion professors too, and possibly to other faculty members as well. In the recent case of Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Supreme Court recognized the ministerial exception in a case brought by an elementary school teacher who was fired by a religiously affiliated school, even though she mostly taught secular subjects and even though she wasn't directly employed by a church. (See http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/01/opini ... exception/ for more analysis of this case.) This case suggests that the ministerial exception may be even broader than courts have applied it in the past.

[Katya]

Actually, I think the exception would apply to BYU religion professors too, and possibly to other faculty members as well. In the recent case of Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Supreme Court recognized the ministerial exception in a case brought by an elementary school teacher who was fired by a religiously affiliated school, even though she mostly taught secular subjects and even though she wasn't directly employed by a church. (See http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/01/opini ... exception/ for more analysis of this case.) This case suggests that the ministerial exception may be even broader than courts have applied it in the past.

When I was trained, we were specifically told that BYU could only discriminate on the basis of religious affiliation, so even if other types of discrimination might hold up in court, BYU doesn't appear to be operating under that mindset.

[Cindy]

When I was trained, we were specifically told that BYU could only discriminate on the basis of religious affiliation, so even if other types of discrimination might hold up in court, BYU doesn't appear to be operating under that mindset.

Interesting. That makes sense, since litigation would be costly even if the school could ultimately be successful. It also seems like a good decision from a moral standpoint.

[Katya]

When I was trained, we were specifically told that BYU could only discriminate on the basis of religious affiliation, so even if other types of discrimination might hold up in court, BYU doesn't appear to be operating under that mindset.

Interesting. That makes sense, since litigation would be costly even if the school could ultimately be successful. It also seems like a good decision from a moral standpoint.

Agreed. (Although I also think that the moral position would be to allow women with young children to be paid seminary and institute teachers.)

[Katya]

Yet another question relating to BYU faculty:

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/78659/

I think the entire premise of this question is flawed. The presupposition is that if 28% of tenure-track faculty at BYU are female, but only 16% of tenured faculty are female, then over 40% of the women who are hired into tenure-track positions don't get tenure (either because they voluntarily leave the position (possibly due to family concerns) or because they are denied tenure when they go up for it (possibly because they focused too much on their families)).

Here's the problem with that logic: Tenure-track faculty represent a certain class of employees, but they also represent a certain "age group," in terms of hire date. In other words, tenure-track faculty are faculty who are in their first 6 years of employment. Tenured faculty represent a different class of employees, but they also represent a very broad "age group," which spans anywhere from barely 6 years of employment to 40+ years. It would be one thing to compare tenure-track faculty to faculty who have 6-12 years of experience; if there was a drop from 28% to 16% in those groups, then I think it would indicate that female faculty weren't getting tenure, although we still wouldn't necessarily know why. But to compare the number of female tenure-track faculty who are roughly my age with a group that includes female tenured faculty who are the age of my mother or even my grandmother isn't meaningful because, frankly, there weren't nearly as many women in those generations who were interested in becoming BYU faculty. (And, to be fair, they probably would have faced strong institutional barriers, but that doesn't mean their situation is comparable to the current one. On the contrary, I know of departments that are very eager to hire and keep female faculty, for a variety of reasons.)

[Amity]

Except that there's a widely-acknowledged leaky pipeline in academia. It's a pretty well-established fact that women advance through the academic ranks at lower rates than men. A couple relevant links:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles. ... -Pipeline/

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/mbaum/doc ... rs2013.pdf

[Katya]

Except that there's a widely-acknowledged leaky pipeline in academia. It's a pretty well-established fact that women advance through the academic ranks at lower rates than men. A couple relevant links:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles. ... -Pipeline/

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/mbaum/doc ... rs2013.pdf

Oh, I'm aware of that and I don't doubt that there is some dropoff, I'm just saying that the figures cited in the question are measuring something different and we can't infer a dropoff number from them (especially since BYU faculty have a much lower turnover rate than faculty at other major research institutions).

[Marduk]

I'd be curious to know just how much lower. Are there stats readily available on that?

[Katya]

I'd be curious to know just how much lower. Are there stats readily available on that?

I don't know if there are published stats, but we were told by the Faculty Center that the average BYU faculty member stayed at the university for 25 years, and I believe the average at comparable institutions was 10 years. (I do have one article which gives a lot of statistics about the BYU population and I'll have to see if that particular statistic is part of the article.)