UI administrators give preview of state legislature request, salaries
From Moscow to Boise, finding funds for higher education salaries in Idaho is an annual struggle.
Keith Ickes, left, speaks at the UI Faculty Senate meeting on Tuesday. Ickes said UI will ask the state legislature for a 4 percent base salary increase.
“All of us are in the same situation,” said Keith Ickes, University of Idaho executive director of planning and budget.
Ickes said UI plans to request a base salary increase of 4 percent from the Idaho State Legislature in an effort to retain UI faculty and staff. He said the salary increase would also allow the university to become more competitive in attracting talented professionals.
As of March, Ickes said UI faculty members make 15.7 percent less than faculty members at peer institutions.
The numbers are worse for UI staff. Although a 2012 study found UI staff are paid 15 percent less than staff at peer institutions, Ickes said the figure is likely out of date and is probably around 30 percent today.
“We’ve seen a steady decline,” he said, presenting to UI Faculty Senate on Tuesday. “We’ve seen a sharper decline since the end of the recession.”
As other states have increased funding after the recession, Ickes said universities across the nation have begun to scout for talented faculty and staff at the expense of UI.
“State’s jumped on the bandwagon and they are hiring,” he said. “In fact, they are poaching.”
Ickes said the hiring of key administrators at higher salaries has lead to the decrease in compensation rates for UI staff.
He said this has had a negative effect on UI departments like ITS, which has lost talented staff to across-the-boarder employers like Washington State University and Schweitzer Engineering.
Even with a 1 to 2 percent salary increase, he said UI would continue to fall behind peer institutions’ salaries, which have been increasing at about 3 to 4 percent annually in recent years.
Ian Bartlett | Argonaut
On Tuesday, September 23, the Faculty Senate had their monthly meeting. One of the issues discussed was salary.
Within two years — if nothing is done — Ickes said UI faculty compensation rates could fall even further, with the university possibly paying faculty 20 percent less than their peer counterparts.
“That’s simply out of the game,” he said. “That’s not an acceptable situation for us.”
If the state does not approve the full request, Ickes said UI will likely turn to tuition increases make up the difference. Last year, the university was successful in working with student leadership to propose a tuition increase that the student body would support, he said.
Ickes said if the university were to raise salaries by 1 percent, it would cost UI $1.1 million, yet raising tuition by 1 percent only results in an additional $600,000. He said there are also annual budget items that continue to rise each year, including utility bills and inflation on library periodicals.
Ickes said there would have to be a tuition increase of 2 percent to just finance the mandatory costs, and with an added 1 percent salary increase, he said tuition would have to rise at least 4 percent to cover the costs.
The proposed tuition increase would also have to be approved by the State Board of Education, which has been reluctant in recent years to approve UI’s proposed tuition increase, he said.
Ickes estimated the SBOE would not like to see tuition increases go higher than 4 percent, which would not allow UI to provide a significant salary increase.
“That’s why we’ve made a very strong pitch to the state,” he said.
In order to prevent wide swings in salary increases within departments, Ickes said the salary increases would not be merit based, He said the higher the salary increase, the more flexibility departments would have to disperse the funds on merit.
Despite the negative numbers, Ickes said he is optimistic about the state legislature providing UI with necessary funds.
“We’re hopeful the legislature will support the salary competitiveness request,” Ickes said. “We will look long and hard if they do not at what we can find.”
Ryan Tarinelli can be reached at [email protected]