The problem comes when we are determining the percentage for merit pay. These percentages are negotiated among the department chairs. If all four departments were equal performers, it wouldn’t be an issue. But two of the departments are clearly stronger performers than the other two. In other words, our college is divided between the eagles and the cockroaches. Our department is an eagle. (I say that taking none of the credit. Everyone who is currently hired in our department was hired under the previous chair’s time in office. The Colonel did an excellent job of evaluating faculty, with the obvious exception of me.)
Because of this distribution, two of the departments argue for a higher percentage of merit going to the upper third of faculty while the other two argued for the percentage going to merit being smaller. The dean casts the deciding vote of course, and effected a compromise that resulted in the lower group getting a 4% (2.5% COLA and a 1.5% merit) raise, the middle group getting a 5% raise and the highest group getting 5.5%.
Not proportionally fair to the upper group? That was my (and one other chair’s) point to the Dean. He responded that the high performers tend to be the higher paid faculty already, and a larger percentage for them would cut down the raise of the lower producing faculty…which I saw as a positive.
But the Dean casts the deciding vote, and makes the recommendation to the Provost. Which he did.
Ultimately, only the head chef gets to adjust the recipe.
4 comments:
Do the Deans go through the same process re: how the money is divided among the colleges?
My experience is limited to this campus, but here each of the four colleges are given a bucket of money that is 5% of their total faculty salaries. But then each Dean apportions it as they see fit. If the state puts qualifications on it (e.g. 2.5% for COLA) then they must abide by that.
But each Dean decides how to distribute it. This could (and has in the past) lead to Deans showing favoritism. Our Dean has done well with letting us haggle it out.
Is that the question you are asking?
I think so. I was wondering if each Dean has the same amount of money or if they argued about which college was the strongest "performer".
Each Dean is awarded a percentage (5% in this case) of their aggregate faculty salary. Probably in our case the College of Business gets the most (becuase they are paid the highest salaries), then Science, then either Liberal Arts or Education. I'm not sure which is paid the lowest.
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