Professors at the University of Saskatchewan disagree with a recent Statistics Canada report that claims they are paid more than the national average.

The report, released in early May, compared the average salaries of university professors in Canada over the 2010-11 academic year. According to the report, the average full professor at the U of S earned $148,754 last year, the average associate professor made $121,339 and the average assistant professor made $105,102.

The U of S Faculty Association claims, however, that Statistics Canada overestimated its calculations of the U of S salaries.

“We wish these numbers were accurate, but they are not. The numbers cited include the salaries of all faculty, all senior administrators, as well as some clinical earnings which are in addition to academic salary,” Jim Cheesman, senior professional officer of the faculty association, wrote in a letter to faculty. The letter responded to an article published in the StarPhoenix about the report.

The faculty association calculated the average salary for U of S professors in 2010-11 as $142,251 for full professors (0.8 percent below the national average), $112,050  for associate professors (0.2 percent below the national average) and $92,403 for assistant professors (5.6 percent above average).

Cheesman wrote that the university relies on the StatsCan data to be revised by the Canadian Association of University Teachers before it can be properly compared to other universities.

Revised CAUT calculations eliminate the pay of senior administrators and exclude any units in which academic salary is inseparable from clinical salaries from the calculations. If the numbers reported by the CAUT differ by little from those calculated by the faculty association, then the faculty association will deem them more appropriate than Statistics Canada’s numbers for comparison with other universities.

U of S professors were hit with a pay cut after they were the highest-paid university instructors in the country during the 2003-04 academic year. Since then, the faculty association has been working to negotiate a raise.

Cheesman argues that competitive salaries are not only important for faculty, but for students and the university as a whole. Strong professors who can provide a higher standard of education and who can establish prominent research initiatives are more likely to come to a university with higher salaries.

The salaries of assistant professors, associate professors and full professors at the U of S are ensured through a bargaining agreement to match the 75th percentile of the average salaries of comparable benchmark universities.

“The benchmark universities have been selected based on comparative size, research intensiveness and similarity of programs. All of the benchmarks except one are medical-doctoral universities,” according to the U of S Human Resources faculty bargaining update issued Feb. 7, 2007.

From the salary years of 2006-07 to 2009-10, the average earnings of assistant professors and associate professors at the university did not meet the 75th percentile and were below the benchmark average. The average salary of a full professor at the U of S has been above the benchmark average since 2006-07, with an exception of the 2008-09 year when it was below.

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Image: U of S faculty association