Vagueness clouds raises for lib arts faculty

Last summer, it was seemingly announced that faculty of the College of Liberal Arts would receive a 4% raise.

But some faculty are confused as to why the raises are advertised as such, when the actual raise is lower as different levels of administrations will take money out of that percentage.

The Office of the Provost held 0.5%, and the College of Liberal Arts held back an additional 0.25% from the original 4%, so when the money trickled down to the school, it was, in reality, a 3.25% pool for raises.

Merit raises for faculty at Purdue are typical. Each year, schools are given some percentage of money based on current base salaries to be used for raises for faculty. The raises are based on merit, and are typically determined by the heads of the specific schools.

If a professor demonstrates exceptional work throughout an academic year, the head of the school may allocate a 5% salary raise to that faculty member, while if a professor demonstrates below-average work throughout the year, their raise may only be 2%.

The funds for merit raises come directly from the administration of Purdue, and the percentage given to each school changes from year to year.

Some faculty members have expressed their frustration over the percentages held back by the college and the provost.

A faculty member in the College of Liberal Arts, who didn’t want to be named for fear of retribution, said the frustration is two-pronged: Both in terms of the announced percentage not being the actual percentage, and the uncertainty of why the funds are being held in the first place.

“The reasons are vague,” said the faculty member. “I had it suggested to me at one point that it was for diversity hiring.”

The faculty member said that he was once told the held money was for diversity hiring, but also said some faculty hadn’t even been told that.

“All we knew is about half of the raise usually gets eaten up by these mystery sources.”

Arne Flaten, the head of the Reuff School of Design, Art and Performance, said that one of the possible reasons why money is held back at the university level is to keep professors from leaving.

“That is money to make sure that somebody who might be getting poached away by another university, that we’ve got the money in store to be able to make sure that we can match (an offer) and keep that person here,” Flaten said.

“At the college level, the dean then will carve off X amount to do similar kinds of things.”

Flaten said the College of Liberal Arts also uses the money to support other kinds of programs within the college, such as the Cornerstone program.

Once the money reaches the school level, Flaten says that in his department, he usually holds back a small percentage, about .25%.

“This little buffer allows me to sprinkle a little bit extra to those people who really did hit it out of the park,” Flaten said. “Unless someone really dogged it, and that just doesn’t happen very often, I’d like to be able to make sure that people are getting (what they deserve).”