The Pay Gap in Academia

Last week the National Center for Education Statistics at the Department of Education released its "Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2009, and Salaries of Full-Time Instructional Staff, 2009-10" report [PDF], which offers statistics on employment in higher education.

There's a lot in the report that isn't too surprising from a gender perspective, but I will note two things. First, women are starting to make inroads among universities by achieving more full professorships than the last time they conducted the study (in the 2003-2004 school year).

More men than women were employed as professors at 4-year institutions between 2003-04 and 2009-10 ... However, during this period, the percentage change in the number of professors was higher for women. For example, the number of men at public institutions decreased by 4 percent while the number of women increased by 24 percent; at private not-for-profit institutions, the number of men increased by 1 percent and the number of women increased by 26 percent; and at private for-profit institutions, the number of men increased by 50 percent while the number of women increased by 73 percent.

The second thing is that there's still a pay gap between what men and women earn in pretty much every instructor level at pretty much every type of school. (One notable exception is that women out-earn men at the lecturer level at 2-year private non-profits, but that could be because there are so few schools that the sample size is skewed. Of course, if others have insight to offer on this point I'd love to hear it.)

The biggest pay gaps occur at the professor level at public, 4-year colleges and universities and private, non-profit 4-year colleges and universities, which are both most likely to be research universities. Based on my previous reporting on women in academia, this doesn't surprise me much at all. Though some of this pay gab can be attributed to both blatant and subtle sexism, there are some institutional reasons why the pay gap appears most prominently at research universities.

The data doesn't do a breakdown by discipline, and men are more likely to dominate the higher-paying professorships at research universities in math, science, and technology. The reasons research universities often give for the premium of paying a physicist more than, say, an English literature professor, is that these people are most likely to be lost to the lucrative private industry.

Many women on the professor track -- especially those in the the "hard sciences" -- find the demand of achieving tenure to be challenging. If a woman is planning to have children at all, the time in her life when she is supposed to be publishing lots of prestigious research and looking toward tenure is around the same time many women are looking to start families.

A few women I've spoken with have gotten around this by not having children or waiting until after they raise children to go into academia. But the pressure of child-raising, so long as it disproportionately falls on women, tends to directly conflict with the timely many aspiring professors must adhere to if they want tenure.

But I'll let the numbers speak for themselves. Below are breakdowns by overall salary differences for men and women as well as broken down by career type (complete with graphs).

Overall

• Public, 4-year institution: Men $83,379, women $67,878;
• Public, 2-year institution: Men $62,298, women $60,020;
• Private, non-profit, 4-year institution: Men $85,087, women $69,448;
• Private, non-profit, 2-year institution: Men $39,333, women $46,037;
• Private, for-profit, 4-year institution: Men $45,790, women $44,397;
• Private, for-profit, 2-year institution: Men $37,660, women $36,155

Professor

• Public, 4-year institution: Men $108,104, women $95,942;
• Public, 2-year institution: Men $73,169, women $69,487;
• Private, non-profit, 4-year institution: $113,639, women $99,454;
• Private, non-profit, 2-year institution: Men $55,028, women $51,510;
• Private, for-profit, 4-year institution: Men $58,642, women $54,772;
• Private, for-profit, 2-year institution: Men $40,849, women $46,537.

Associate professor

• Public, 4-year institution: Men $77,873, women $72,867;
• Public, 2-year institution: Men $60,973, women $59,341;
• Private, non-profit, 4-year institution: $76,635, women $71,875;
• Private, non-profit, 2-year institution: Men $45,040, women $48,871;
• Private, for-profit, 4-year institution: Men $52,658, women $55,139;
• Private, for-profit, 2-year institution: Men $39,454, women $39,680.

Assistant professor

• Public, 4-year institution: Men $77,873, women $72,867;
• Public, 2-year institution: Men $60,973, women $59,341;
• Private, non-profit, 4-year institution: $76,635, women $71,875;
• Private, non-profit, 2-year institution: Men $45,040, women $48,871;
• Private, for-profit, 4-year institution: Men $52,658, women $55,139;
• Private, for-profit, 2-year institution: Men $39,454, women $39,680.

Instructor

• Public, 4-year institution: Men $47,600, women $45,591;
• Public, 2-year institution: Men $64,855, women $63,069;
• Private, non-profit, 4-year institution: $47,472, women $46,878;
• Private, non-profit, 2-year institution: Men $36,535, women $45,645;
• Private, for-profit, 4-year institution: Men $43,029, women $40,726;
• Private, for-profit, 2-year institution: Men $37,608, women $35,682.