Facultys’ salaries prove to be non-discriminatory

On average, a male working as a professor at the University of South Dakota makes more than a female.

According to the American Association of University Professors’ faculty salary survey, at USD, the average salary for full-time professors is $85,400, while a male full-time professor makes $85,500, women make $85,300.

A male associate professor makes $67,300 while a female makes only $61,000.  This trend is the same for assistant professors, where males make $56,000 and women make $54,500.  Finally, male instructors make $41,300 and women instructors make $39,900.

Miglena Sternadori, who is an assistant professor for the Contemporary and Media Journalism department for five years, clarifies some of the reasoning behind these numbers.

“Salaries for males and females depend on each department,” Sternadori said.  “Each field has a market for an average salary.  Fields like physics and chemistry, the hard sciences, make much more than fields like history.”

“It seems really unfair that women might make less than a man if they are doing the same amount of work,” sophomore Cienna Boylan said. “But, if it goes by department, it makes sense.”

A woman in a certain department does tend to make less than a male in the same department, but that is because of the market that every university follows, Tina Keller, a physics professor, said.

“USD has starting salaries based on the Oklahoma salary survey.”

There is a salary gap in genders, because of the market values listed in the Oklahoma salary survey and other surveys like it.

“Without an explanation for the gap in salaries between genders, I would have thought USD and other institutions were being discriminatory,” Boylan said.

“Not all women make less than men at USD though,” Sternadori said.  “A woman working in the hard sciences makes more than a male in the history department.  Women aren’t discriminated against at USD, not by their salaries, and not at all in their offices and work environments.”