For years in public presentations, petitions and meetings, faculty have raised concerns about a major issue: compensation.
Since 2023, a University committee has reviewed these concerns and offered recommendations on how to address issues regarding salary, retirement and pay transparency.
President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 released a report to faculty on Tuesday about actions Brown plans to take to rework faculty compensation. She also acknowledged the concerns of faculty, many of which were compiled by the Task Force for Faculty Compensation.
In February, the compensation task force shared preliminary recommendations to restructure faculty salary and benefits. The committee hired a consultant who ranked Brown 11th out of 20 peer institutions for faculty compensation.
Paxson emphasized the importance of considering the University’s past practice when setting faculty compensation.
“We have to be competitive within our peer group,” she said, adding that compensation should “reflect the quality of their teaching, research and service,” the three factors that the University uses in the assessment of faculty performance.
She emphasized that faculty compensation should mirror cost of living changes and the University’s financial health. She also wanted to provide additional transparency about the compensation process, addressing a concern raised by many faculty.
The University plans to restructure the current compensation structure, adding a “base pool” that Paxson said “is meant to be a salary increase.”
“It will reflect changes in the cost of living, and it will be a base amount that all faculty can expect to get,” she said.
This will happen through a vote of the University Resource Committee on the division of the salary pool into three components: the base pool, merit pool and PRE pool.
Previously, the salary pool consisted only of the merit and PRE pools. The merit pool consists of performance-based pay increases, and the PRE pool involves increases associated with promotions, retention and equity. Faculty members can still expect to receive compensation from the merit or PRE pool on top of the base pool, if applicable.
The compensation task force previously recommended a one-time 5% salary increase for all faculty. But Paxson said that the University does not have the financial resources for this change.
“An immediate one-time increase in compensation for all faculty is not possible,” she wrote in Wednesday’s Today@Brown post regarding faculty compensation. “Not only would it deepen Brown’s current budget deficit, it also would not align with Brown’s goal of providing competitive compensation.”
Paxson presented another reform to the compensation structure aimed at faculty whose salary is “at risk of falling behind.” These are often “long-serving, high-performing faculty who haven’t solicited outside offers.”
To fix this, she proposed a Faculty Market Adjustment Fund, which, starting this year, would “add to the base compensation of certain faculty whose compensation has fallen behind.” Approximately $2.5 million is available for the Faculty Market Adjustment Fund for fiscal year 26. Specific criteria for receiving this fund are to be determined by the provost and deans.
“We’re looking at being able to have a big impact on a number of faculty if it works well, and we think there are a lot of people out there who deserve this bump,” she said.
She hopes that the budget will allow this “bump” year after year. “Especially as we recruit new faculty at competitive salaries, we should move Brown into the top half of that distribution,” she added.
The provost and dean of the faculty will also continue to research compensation to help improve transparency. During this process, the dean of the faculty will work with “faculty-facing deans” to examine research faculty’s salaries, and the provost will convene a working group of department chairs to develop best practices for performance evaluations.
October’s faculty meeting also addressed the annual report of the Academic Priorities Committee, which included plans for expanding masters and professional programs, and touched on the incorporation of the humanities into the newly approved School of International and Public Affairs.
Cate Latimer is a senior staff writer covering faculty and higher education. She is from Portland, OR, and studies English and Urban Studies. In her free time, you can find her playing ultimate frisbee or rewatching episodes of Parks and Rec.
