Recently, Spencer Bagley of Westminster College tweeted a photo of a recruitment sign at Panda Express offering a salary of “$69,000/yr + bonus” and wrote, “My salary as an associate professor of mathematics at Westminster College, three blocks away from this sign, is $61,500.”
Although he later clarified that “The point of the tweet is that professors make way less than you think they do,” the Twittersphere quickly called Bagley out as an elitist and he was trolled online.
I recognize the devaluation of service work that the comparison drew, and the resulting rhetoric was unsurprising; however, the internet failed to recognize that higher education structurally lacks a funding model that adequately compensates faculty for their work — work that prepares our incoming Utah workforce and advances our competitiveness in a global market.
There is a clear trend that state funding of higher education is on the decline. The Pew Research Center published a 2019 report highlighting a trend of systematic defunding of higher education by state legislatures that was exacerbated by the Great Recession. As of 2017, public institutions in Utah had operating budgets that consisted of 9.9% of federal funding and 15.3% of funding by the state of Utah. Said differently, nearly 75% of these budgets were comprised by tuition, fees, gifts and other revenue streams. A significant portion of this is passed on to students and contributes to the current student debt crisis.
For a private institution like Westminster College, without state funding, there is even greater pressure to develop revenue while attempting to not pass the burden on to students. When you take into account the general trend of college enrollment decreases across the country, increased income inequality, economic inflation and increases in health care costs, college and university budgets look bleak and salary increases for faculty are often off the table. Therefore, the issue of wage stagnation persists and resentments about labor exploitation grow by college faculty.
It is necessary for colleges and universities to become sustainable using new models in a changing environment. It is also incumbent on our elected officials to increase state and federal funding for education in order to relieves students of financial burden and ensure that college faculty are compensated in ways that are commensurate with their experience and expertise, as data suggest Utah faculty are paid below the national average.
The state of Utah currently has a $685-million-dollar surplus in the state education fund. Legislators would be wise to use a portion of the current surplus to increase support for Utah colleges and universities and provide tuition assistance to all Utah college students.
Ultimately, the truth is revealed in what Bagley approached but did not quite say — wage stagnation and labor exploitation within higher education can be traced to structural gaps. Once these funding concerns are addressed in higher education and faculty are compensation fairly, demoralized professors in our community may finally feel that they are valued for their labor. This is good for our students, invests in our local workforce and advances Utah as an innovative place that can address the complex issues we face as a state and as a society.
Christopher Davids
Chris Davids, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Westminster College and a licensed counseling psychologist in private practice in Salt Lake City.