MSU announces raises following COVID-19 pay cuts. Faculty wants lost wages returned, too

EAST LANSING — Faculty and staff at Michigan State University will receive pay increases a year after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted pay cuts and reductions in retirement contributions.

MSU President Samuel Stanley Jr. announced in a letter to faculty and staff on Friday that all non-union faculty and academic staff hired on or before June 30 will receive 2% merit raises effective Jan. 1.

“During the past 18 months, we have had to make many difficult decisions in response to COVID-19,” Stanley wrote. “Responses to our financial challenges have been among the most difficult, knowing the impact on those who enable the academic mission of the university every day. The ways in which you have pursued your scholarly work and the education of our students have been extraordinary. On behalf of a grateful university, thank you. While we continue to face challenging financial terrain, I feel it is extremely important to provide a raise for faculty and academic staff next year.”

The pay increase announcement comes after faculty raised compensation concerns at the Oct. 29 MSU Board of Trustees meeting.

MSU cut salaries for non-union faculty and academic staff by 1% to 7% and between 2% and 10% for deans and executive managers in 2020 amid COVID-19 and its financial impacts on the university. Those salaries were returned to pre-pandemic levels effective July 1.

In a Sept. 27 letter, Stanley announced the end of retirement contribution reductions, also effective Jan. 1, returning employees to a 10% university contribution for employees contributing at least 5% themselves.

Karen Kelly-Blake, MSU Faculty Senate chairperson and an associate professor for the Center for Bioethics and Social Justice and the College of Human Medicine, told trustees and Stanley that faculty and staff struggled through what she called some of the deepest and longest cuts among Big Ten schools.

While Kelly-Blake welcomed the salary increases coming to instructional staff in 2022, she said faculty will continue to work with administration to be compensated for the lost wages and retirement contributions incurred during the pandemic.

“We appreciate the raise. We also appreciate the administration’s recognition that the work of both the faculty and academic staff continue to be extraordinary,” she said. “We also look forward to continuing to talk with the administration on how to make the faculty and academic staff whole.

“I think that the compensation at Michigan State University and any restoration thereof now must take into consideration the current inflation rate. I am not a financial manager, but I imagine that even with the cost of living, that with the 6% inflation rate, MSU’s compensation does not put it at the top of the pack.”

She pointed to National Center for Education Statistics data showing the average salary for MSU instruction staff last year — $106,315 — ranked 10th out of the Big Ten Conference’s 14 universities. Penn State University salaries were not immediately available.

Only the University of Iowa, University of Nebraska and Indiana University instructional staff reported lower average salaries.

MSU was one of four Big Ten schools that saw average salaries shrink among instructional staff last year. Average salaries dropped by 1.8% for instructional staff at MSU, by 0.5% at Nebraska and 0.1% at Rutgers University and University of Illinois. Average salaries at every other Big Ten school increased last year.

Prior to COVID-19’s financial implications, MSU ranked toward the bottom in terms of average salaries for instructional staff in the Big Ten and between 2016 and 2020, MSU staff saw the smallest salary increase at 1.1%. Northwestern University saw the largest increase over that time at 8.9%.

Stanley said the Big Ten salary rankings lack some context.

“We recognize we’re in an extraordinarily competitive market. As we talked about in the strategic plan, we want to make Michigan State University a destination place for people and it is important that we treat our faculty fairly and compensate them fairly,” he said, following the Oct. 29 Board of Trustees meeting. “I will say that if you look at our numbers in the Big Ten, it’s not adjusted for cost of living. If you look at actual purchasing power, we’re closer to the middle of the Big Ten in terms of faculty salaries.”

The lower salaries for instructional staff among Big Ten schools likely played a role in damaging equity at MSU, Kelly-Blake said. According to data she provided, faculty turnover grew by 30% this year, with a 60% increase in turnover among Black faculty, a 36% increase among Hispanic faculty and a 29% turnover increase among Asian faculty.

MSU spokesperson Emily Guerrant said it’s unclear whether compensation levels played a role in turnover because staff are not required to indicate why they’re leaving the university when they depart. Kelly-Blake partially agreed.

“I don’t think we can point directly to the compensation for those rates of turnover,” she said. “But, I think it would be fair for us to say that compensation could potentially be a reason for why people have left. We don’t know that for sure, but we also know that when compensation is not up to par with your peers within your own conference, it makes it more difficult to realize your real value at the institution.”

Contact Mark Johnson at 517-377-1026 or at majohnson2@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ByMarkJohnson.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU faculty and staff will get 2% raises after taking pay cuts during COVID