Though the University announced approximately 60 staff layoffs about two weeks ago, the freeze on faculty and staff salaries will be lifted next year in order to keep Brown competitive with its peers.
Next fiscal year's budget, approved by the Corporation at its February meeting, includes a 4 percent increase in the pool of funds for faculty salaries and a 3 percent increase in the pool for continuing staff salaries. Each individual's salary increase may be more or less than these percentages because compensation is determined based on merit.
The increases are necessary "to address recent loss of ground in faculty salaries" and "a somewhat lesser rate of loss of competitive ground for non-faculty salaries," according to President Ruth Simmons' e-mail to the Brown community following the Corporation's February meeting.
The increased pools, which follow a year of salary freezes, will also be used to provide merit-based salary increases and promotional adjustments, according to the Feb. 27 e-mail.
"I think people understood why we had to (freeze salaries) given the endowment," said Provost David Kertzer '69 P'95 P'98, adding that he believes people expected some increase for the coming year. "We need to be sure we stay competitive with other institutions." Brown's endowment lost $740 million, or more than 25 percent, in fiscal year 2009.
Over the past eight years or so, Kertzer said, Brown has made "a fair amount of progress" in achieving more competitive faculty salaries, but has "slid a little bit" in the past few years in comparison with its peers.
Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Beppie Huidekoper said the discrepancy between Brown's staff salaries and those of its competitors was "less pronounced" than that of faculty salaries.
Though the salaries of continuing staff will be higher next year, Huidekoper said the total amount paid to staff will be significantly smaller. The overall decrease in the budget for staff salaries will be achieved through organizational restructuring, including this year's 60 layoffs, 139 early retirements and numerous positions eliminated through attrition.
The increase in faculty salaries is certainly preferable to the current year's freeze, but still "less than what's been done historically," said Chung-I Tan, professor of physics and chair of the Faculty Executive Committee. The University has made "some inroads toward becoming more competitive," he said, but Brown's salaries are still lower than its peers'.
"I don't think you can catch up in one year," he said. "But we're making sure we're not losing ground."
One professor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she was surprised that there was any raise at all given the state of the economy, and would have been willing to reduce or forgo her raise completely if it meant saving jobs.
"Given the economy, this looks to me pretty generous," she said.
Tan said it was hard to judge the faculty's general reaction to the salary increase in light of the layoffs.
"Our main mission is providing a first-rate education for students and maintaining the strengths of the University in terms of first-rate teaching and research programs," Tan said. "I don't think anybody disagrees with that."
No faculty layoffs have been announced, and Tan said he does not expect any."We don't want to cut any academic programs," he said. "In terms of faculty, that's not being contemplated."
Kertzer also acknowledged the trade-off between eliminating positions and increasing salaries to remain competitive.
"We have to balance the attempts to minimize layoffs with the desire not to have another freeze in salaries," he said.
