Study: USD faculty gender pay gap less than one percent
When looking at the raw data, it appears as though women faculty members at USD are paid 16 percent less than their male counterparts. But, when accounting for rank and academic discipline – as one university study recently did – that gap shrinks to less than 1 percent.
Associate professors of economics Mike Allgrunn and Kathryn Birkeland were asked to evaluate faculty salary in regards to gender by the South Dakota Council for Higher Education (COHE), after the USD Faculty Senate determined the study needed to be done.
As a labor economist, Allgrunn said he’s used to seeing a raw gap of data get smaller with the addition of more controls. This particular jump is dramatic, though, he added.
“I guess it’s good news, for the most part, but it’s also not conclusive news,” he said.
The study couldn’t account for faculty performance, biases in hiring practices or more anecdotal information like promotions to administrative positions. Allgrunn said it’s “hard to imagine” what a study encompassing all that information would look like, as it’s not always easy to evaluate.
“It is possible that there are differences between faculty in a particular field or school and that those difference are not being shown here in this study,” he said. “Because for example, if you have a really high performing rank, let’s say high performing female, who was being paid the same as a lower performing male, but the same rank and school, the study couldn’t pick that up. And the reverse story is also true.”
In addition to evaluating faculty salaries from 2011 to 2014, “Examining Gender Salary Gaps for Faculty at the University of South Dakota” also evaluated how USD compares to the national averages in academic disciplines, or relative salary gaps.
According to the report, 46.3 percent of women and 7.7 percent of males are instructors. Additionally, 22.7 percent of men are full professors, while only 7.8 percent of women are of the same rank.
On average, professors at USD are paid $94,839, associate professors are paid $69,080, assistant professors are paid $64,316 and instructors are paid $47,866, according to the South Dakota Board of Regents 2015 Factbook.
“I guess if there’s any pattern here, overall it looks like, it appears before you add all the controls, that female instructors are paid better than male instructors and female tenure-track faculty are paid less than male tenure-track faculty, and as you add the controls that story sort of goes away,” Allgrunn said.
Because it takes about 12 years for someone to become a full professor at USD, Allgrunn said this difference may simply be a reflection of hiring practices several years ago.
Allgrunn said he expects the raw gap of 16 percent to decrease even more as assistant and associate professors get promoted to the rank of full professors.
Allgrunn added that because some schools have a small number of faculty in a certain rank, one or two people can affect a percentage or figure quite a bit.
“So you have one really high-performing person of either gender, and that gap could mostly be explained by that person, since we don’t have a control for that kind of performance,” he said. “I’m just a little cautious about saying this is definitive, you know to say there is nothing, or that there is.”
Though Allgrunn said he normally wouldn’t count on anecdotal evidence, it may have its place in a study like this one.
“I love numbers, and they’re really great, and anecdotal evidence is always a little bit questionable, but there’s small groups here that anecdotal evidence might explain actually some things here,” he said.
Though it’s beneficial to have as many controls as possible in a study like this one, Allgrunn said “it’s pretty tough” to account for all factors surrounding salary gaps, especially across different fields or disciplines.
“So to some extent, this is not a question that you can answer conclusively,” he said. “But the answers we do have, I think make me feel good that USD is doing a good job to try to make sure that gender isn’t determining salary, that it’s based on other factors.”
