CUA Should Stop Procrastinating About Fairly Compensating Its Faculty
Dear CUA Current and Prospective Students and Their Parents –
As a CUA alumnus, I have a great appreciation for much of what I learned and experienced at CUA many decades ago and as a result I have been considering sponsoring some of my grandchildren’s attendance at CUA.
When I was a CUA undergraduate, I was fortunate to have had many excellent teachers. At the time, I was blissfully unaware of CUA faculty salaries nor what their religious beliefs were. All I knew was that my teachers sincerely cared about my education and development as a person.
But now that I am researching CUA as a possible college for my grandchildren, I have learned that CUA is very expensive and undergraduate tuition has been steadily rising for several years.
I have gotten to know a number of the CUA faculty and I have found them to be very proficient in their fields and more importantly, I have found them to be very dedicated teachers who are totally focused on the well-being of their students.
Unfortunately, I have learned that CUA does not pay its faculty competitively with other comparable institutions. Moreover, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, CUA has not given its faculty meaningful raises for the past 10 years.
In addition, almost 50% of the courses offered by CUA are taught by adjunct instructors who are paid a few thousand dollars per course and do not receive any benefits such as health insurance. Using adjuncts is a real money-maker for CUA. This makes me very concerned about how CUA can both retain its current outstanding faculty and attract new faculty members. Since the quality of the faculty is a major reason one attends college, CUA’s decision to underpay its faculty and staff causes me real concern.
Conversely, I have also learned that CUA has increased the size of its administrative staff very aggressively during CUA President Garvey’s administration while simultaneously holding the number of tenure-track faculty essentially constant. Moreover, CUA compensates its senior administrators very well and provides them with excellent annual raises.
Recently, President Garvey sent a letter (attached) to the faculty and staff in which he claims that the compensation of faculty and staff is one of his high priorities. He states this in spite of the fact that faculty salaries have been almost flat during his entire tenure as CUA president.
In spite of his disingenuous letter, I want to assume that President Garvey means well. But he clearly does not need to convene a committee and hire an outside consulting firm to learn that CUA’s faculty and staff have been underpaid for years – the data are easily available.
The bottom line is that President Garvey does not need to kick this can down the road for another year as he describes in his letter.
He needs to take action to fix the compensation problem immediately.
Sincerely, A CUA Alumnus and Grandparent of Several Prospective College Students
