UW Wants to Raise Faculty/Staff Pay

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents president says increasing faculty and staff pay is one of the greatest priorities and challenges for the year.

President Brent Smith says he gets emails from System chancellors regularly, saying they lose employees to other universities that offer better pay. He says the UW System has to develop more competitive compensation plans. UW System faculty and staff pay is about 18% behind peer universities.

Smith says it is not only difficult to retain employees, but to attract the best faculty and staff. “It’s just gotten to the point; it’s the biggest threat to the quality of our system if we don’t do a better job at paying our faculty and staff.”

Smith says the Board of Regents will vote on a pay plan at their next meeting, which is in October. That pay plan will then be submitted to the governor and state legislature. UW employees as a whole have not received pay raises since 2008.

UW-La Crosse chancellor Joe Gow says finding resources to pay faculty and staff what they deserve is an ongoing challenge. Gow says, “That’s likely to come in part through tuition, and nobody wants to raise tuition. But, we need to have that conversation about what is the appropriate balance in terms of tuition, state funding, and what we pay our people so we can keep moving the university forward.”

UWL recently gave raises to 75 faculty and staff that were making below average salaries. The money came from savings in retirements and increased enrollment.