Financial Inequality in Higher Education: The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2006-07

Inflation is down, and full-time faculty salaries are finally back up. These would seem to be encouraging signs for the economic status of higher education. Unfortunately, however, one good year cannot reverse discouraging trends that have been developing over decades. Growing financial inequality in the United States has become a prominent public issue. In February 2007, President Bush publicly acknowledged the growing gap between rich and poor Americans and recommended that firms reconsider the size of the salaries they pay to chief executives. In a fall 2006 speech, Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, said that U.S. income inequality has risen to such a level that 'there are signs that [it] is intensifying resistance to globalization, impairing social cohesion, and could, ultimately, undermine American democracy'. Financial inequality is growing in U.S. higher education, too. In this report, we observe increasing differences between the endowments of rich and poor institutions, between the salaries of college and university presidents and their faculties, between the salaries of athletic coaches arid professors, and between well- and poorly compensated faculty members. This economic inequality has the potential to negatively affect higher education. Adapted from the source document.