Updated November 23, 2022

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The Faculty Compensation Survey is the oldest and largest survey of faculty salary and benefits in the United States and compiles data on more than 380,000 full-time faculty members at nearly 1000 colleges and universities, as well as nearly 97,000 part-time faculty members at more than 370 institutions.

All institutions of higher education that (1) are Title IV eligible, (2) have first-time, full-time undergraduate students, and (3) are degree-granting for the prior academic year are eligible to participate in the AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey. Title IV refers to a section of the Higher Education Act of 1965 which enables institutions of higher education access to the administration of federal student financial aid. There are over 3,700 institutions of higher education eligible to participate in the 2022-23 Faculty Compensation Survey.

Beyond the frequently asked questions provided here and below, there are detailed survey instructions available to support users under the Documentation tab. For additional questions, please contact the AAUP FCS Staff at [email protected].

Data for the Faculty Compensation Survey are collected directly from colleges and universities, usually from an administrative office. Data are reported in the aggregate for the institution, by faculty rank, and gender. Currently, the Faculty Compensation Survey does not provide individual-level salary data or data at the discipline level. Data include full-time and part-time instructional and instructional/research/public service faculty, with the exception of clinical or basic science faculty, medical faculty in schools of medicine, and military faculty. Data are collected for the current academic year, as defined by your institution, with the exception of part-time faculty, for whom data are collected for the prior academic year. All data for full-time faculty, unless otherwise noted, are for a nine-month academic year base salary.

The AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey makes transparent the economic conditions of faculty members in the United States by publishing salaries and other compensation data. This work depends on the cooperation and support of colleges and universities. When institutions openly share data on faculty and administrator compensation, they indicate that they are committed to creating fair compensation for all. AAUP, in turn, is committed to reporting the data that institutions submit to us with accuracy, objectivity, and integrity.

Provisional data are released in April and provide current faculty salary and benefits data for the same academic year. Given the large number of higher education institutions that participate, these data offer excellent coverage for peer analyses, which many institutions use for benchmarking and institutional planning. Institutions have reported the following benefits of participating in the AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey in recent years:

Finally, the survey provides participants publicity in Academe, the official journal of the American Association of University Professors, which has broad readership among faculty members, academic professionals, and graduate students from many different disciplines as well as academic leaders, policy makers, and media professionals involved in higher education issues.

Provisional results for the AAUP's annual Faculty Compensation Survey are published on the AAUP website and in the AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey Results Tool in April for the current academic year and a full Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession is published in July. The AAUP also offers a variety of data products for purchase. Data from the survey are available in several custom formats: research portal access, complete datasets, peer compensation reports, and survey report tables. Access to data through the AAUP research portal access is available for institutions to create and save peer lists and conduct fully customizable analysis on specific variables not included in peer compensation reports. Complete datasets are provided in Excel and include all of the report appendix institutional listings plus additional fields.

Yes, follow the IPEDS practice of reporting full-time faculty members and administrators on the payroll of the institution as of November 1 for the current academic year. For part-time faculty members (Form 6), report data for the entire prior academic year, not the current year.

The deadline for inclusion in the April provisional data release and the full Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession is February 24, 2023. Revisions and late submissions will be considered on a case-by-case basis through June but cannot be included in the full Annual Report due to publication deadlines.

Shortly after the data collection period ends, participating institutions will have an opportunity to review their data and make any necessary corrections before the results are released in April 2023. AAUP FCS Staff will analyze and review the submitted data, propose publication footnotes (if applicable), and provide each institution with a data validation report for review. Institutions will then have a set amount of time to review the results and make any necessary corrections. This process helps to ensure that the most accurate data possible are reported.

The percentage completion bars indicate the number of cells entered relative to the total number of cells in a form, not the progress of uploaded data. Please only fill in the fields that are applicable to your institution. The percentage of completion is only for FCS staff’s reference. An institution need not reach 100 percent completion overall, or on any single form, as some institutions may not be able to provide data for all possible fields. For example, an institution that does not employ any faculty on 12-month contracts would not be able to complete any of those fields throughout the survey and will not be able to reach 100 percent completion overall.

Please do not enter zero values for cells that do not pertain to your institution. Please leave them blank as leaving them blank will not contribute to norm values.

Make sure to save your data after completing each form. There is a "Submit Your Data" button located on the Data Overview page. However, make sure to address any data issues prior to submitting your data.

If you have already submitted your data and would like to make corrections, please go to Data Collection -> Data Overview and click the Request Data Unlock button to notify the AAUP FCS Staff of your request to re-open your data submission. You will receive an email notification when your data have been unlocked and you will then have the opportunity to submit corrections by 1) uploading a corrected Excel template or 2) entering corrections directly into the research portal. Prior to the annual data submission deadline, make sure to review all changes, address any identified data issues, and re-submit your data.

The AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey and the IPEDS HR survey component have somewhat different purposes. At a high level, the AAUP Faculty Compensation survey seeks to collect “typical” salaries of faculty members to help institutions achieve correction or mitigation of the distortion in salary structures, whereas the IPEDS HR survey component seeks to collect institution-level data on salaries of full-time instructional staff. Key differences include the following:

To reduce the reporting burden, the AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey uses the same eligibility criteria and definitions as the IPEDS HR survey when appropriate. For example, both surveys collect data on full-time employees on the payroll of the institution as of November 1 for the current academic year, and AAUP defers to the IPEDS instructions on reporting faculty with unknown or non-binary genders (see FAQ). However, there are some key differences in eligibility criteria for full-time faculty members:

The following questions have been grouped by the form that they appear on the Faculty Compensation Survey.

No. The following fields are pre-populated using your institution's submission from the prior year and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS): Institution Name, Unit ID, Institutional Control, AAUP Category, and AAUP FCS System. If you believe any of the pre-populated fields are not accurate, please contact the AAUP FCS Staff at [email protected].

This field should automatically pre-populate and is aligned to institutional reporting made available through IPEDS. This field indicates the institutional identification number as assigned by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

This field is assigned to your institution by the AAUP FCS Staff and is pre-populated in Form 1. This field indicates the institution's AAUP category based upon the type and number of degrees awarded. If you believe the AAUP Category listed for your institution is incorrect, contact the AAUP FCS Staff at [email protected]. In determining the category for an institution, the highest applicable level shall be assigned.

Category I (Doctoral) refers to institutions characterized by a significant level and breadth of activity in doctoral-level education, as measured by the number of doctorate recipients and diversity in the doctoral programs. Institutions in this category grant a minimum of 30 doctorate degrees annually, from at least three distinct programs. Awards previously categorized by NCES as first-professional degrees, such as the J.D., M.D., and D.Div., do not count as doctorates for this classification. Awards for the new category of "doctor's degree - professional practice" will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

Category IIA (Master's) refers to institutions characterized by diverse post-baccalaureate programs (including first professional), but not engaged in significant doctoral-level education. Institutions in this category grant a minimum of 50 post-baccalaureate degrees annually, from at least three distinct programs. Awards of post-baccalaureate certificates will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

Category IIB (Baccalaureate) refers to institutions characterized by their primary emphasis on undergraduate baccalaureate-level education. Institutions in this category grant a minimum of 50 bachelor's degrees annually, from at least three distinct programs, and bachelor's and higher degrees comprise at least 50 percent of total degrees awarded.

Category III (Associate's with Academic Rank) refers to institutions characterized by a significant emphasis on undergraduate associate's-degree education. Institutions in this category grant a minimum of 50 associate's degrees annually. Associate's degrees comprise at least 50 percent, and bachelor's and higher degrees comprise less than 50 percent, of total degrees and certificates awarded.

Category IV (Associate's without Academic Ranks) refers to institutions that meet the criteria for "Associate's" (Category III), but do not utilize standard academic ranks. An institution that refers to all faculty members as "instructors" or "lecturers" but does not distinguish among them on the basis of standard ranks should be included in this category. However, if an institution utilizes another ranking scheme that is analogous to the standard ranks, it can be included in Category I, II, or III as appropriate.

This field indicates whether or not the institution is reporting data as part of a system for the purposes of the AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey.  This field is not necessarily indicative of all university systems or eligible institutions.

At many institutions, faculty may receive contracts of different lengths depending on a number of factors. For example, many institutions provide some faculty 9-month contracts while providing other faculty 11- or 12-month contracts. The longer contracts are commonly referred to as 12-month contracts even though they may be 11 months long. In order to fairly compare salaries, AAUP converts the 12-month salary amounts to their 9-month equivalent by applying a conversion factor that is determined by the lengths of the faculty contracts within an institution.

Completion of this field is necessary only if you report data for faculty on 11- or 12-month contracts. Enter the conversion factor used to convert 12-month amounts to a 9-month equivalent. Historically, AAUP and IPEDS have used 9/11 or 0.81818181818 as a default conversion factor. However, another value may be more appropriate depending on the exact lengths of the faculty contracts in an institution. The conversion factor will be used to automatically convert 12-month amounts for the totals in the last section, "9-Month Contracts plus 11- or 12-Month Contracts," once the user completes the form and clicks "Save" The conversion factor will be applied automatically to Forms 2, 3, and 4 for 12-month faculty.

If you wish to convert 12-month amounts equally into the 9-month equivalent period, please use a conversion factor of 0.75. If you are working with data that has already been converted, please enter the converted total figures in Form 1: Institutional Information and for each additional form add a comment in Form 1 to that effect. Once you complete the section, click "Save".

Comments: This field indicates any comments you would like to provide to the AAUP FCS Staff concerning your submission that you would not like published, or, in response to comments provided to the AAUP FCS Staff. You are not required to enter this field.

Additional Comments: Please use this field to indicate any additional comments or concerns for the AAUP FCS Staff. You are not required to enter this field.

A detailed explanation and table of reporting categories are provided in the instructions under the "Data Collection" tab. Please report the unduplicated combined total of "Primarily Instructional" and "Instructional/Research/Public Service" faculty, excluding clinical or basic science faculty, medical faculty in schools of medicine, and military faculty.

Full-time faculty members are those designated as full-time employees in the institution's payroll system.

Primarily Instructional refers to an occupational category used to classify persons whose specific assignments customarily are made for the purpose of providing instruction or teaching. Regardless of title, academic rank, or tenure status, these employees formally spend the majority of their time providing instruction or teaching.

Instructional/Research/Public Service refers to an occupational category used to classify persons for whom it is not possible to differentiate between instruction or teaching, research, and public service because each of these functions is an integral component of his/her regular assignment. Regardless of title, academic rank, or tenure status, these employees spend the majority of their time providing instruction, research, and/or public service.

Contributed service personnel are administrative officers with titles such as Provost, Dean, Librarian, Registrar, Coach, etc. who may devote part of their time to classroom instruction and have faculty status and other administrators/staff clinical credit courses. If faculty are contributing to instruction on a part-time basis and their numbers and salaries can be isolated as part-time faculty, they may be included in the survey as they would be part-time faculty on a supplemental contract. If this is not possible, please exclude their numbers and values.

Please report "Visiting Assistant," "Visiting Associate," and "Visiting Professors" that have full-time appointments and an instructional component under "Instructor."

Your response should be based on the ranks you actually use at your institution. If you do not use the rank of "Lecturer," you do not need to report them. Generally, those considered "No Rank" are full-time faculty with an instructional component with titles such as "Artist-in-Residence," "Executive-in-Residence," and "Scholar-in-Residence."

If your institution does not use faculty rank at all, for example if all faculty members are referred to as "instructors," report all faculty on the "No Rank" line. Associate-degree colleges not utilizing ranks are in AAUP Category IV; others will be footnoted for publication. These institutions are listed in Appendix II of the published AAUP Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession.

"Basic science faculty" are medical school faculty and science faculty that don't have instructional duties. Many institutions have switched to labeling these as research ranked faculty (e.g., research assistant, associate professors, etc.).

For the purposes of the Faculty Compensation Survey, the following medical degree programs and faculty should be excluded: Medicine (M.D.), Dentistry (D.D.S., D.M.D.), Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.), and Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.).

In the past, the AAUP has generally advised that faculty with “clinical” in their title be excluded from the survey. In recent years, the proliferation of non-tenure track titles has made it difficult to delineate comparable categories for a national survey based on solely on job titles. Therefore, we generally advise that full-time instructional faculty with “clinical” job titles be included as long as they meet all other eligibility criteria (e.g., not medical or military faculty).

These individuals should be reported as they would be reported in the IPEDS Human Resources Survey. According to the IPEDS Survey Materials FAQ, "It is up to the institution to decide how best to handle reporting individuals whose gender is unknown. However, a common method used is to allocate the individuals with gender unknown based on the known proportion of men to women for staff."

We recommend including these individuals using the annual salary that they were receiving prior to termination. Inclusion or exclusion are both reasonable options, though, as long as they are consistently applied -- it is up to the discretion of the institution. We understand that it may not be straightforward to remove someone from the survey data depending on how an institution's reporting systems operate or the date of termination.

Extreme outliers are those whose base salary falls well outside the norm for a particular rank. There is no rigid definition for determining which faculty members are extreme outliers, and the choice of how you deal with potential outliers depends on the cause. You may consider using various methods of outlier detection, but ultimately use your own judgement about whether the inclusion of potential outlier faculty members may lead to misleading summary statistics.

Example 1: An institution employs about 20 full professors with salaries generally around $100,000, but also employs a “celebrity” professor—perhaps a former elected official or Nobel laureate—with a salary of $500,000. In this case, we recommend excluding the individual because the resulting average (mean) salary would be misleading; most people would feel that the faculty member belongs to a different population than the rest of the faculty population.

Example 2: An institution employs about 50 assistant professors with salaries generally around $60,000, but several assistant professors in a particular unit, perhaps a school of business or law, have salaries around $120,000. In this case, we recommend including these individuals because the cause of the salary difference is not due to special status of individual faculty members; most people would feel that the faculty members belong the same population as the rest of the faculty population.

A useful rule of thumb for deciding whether to exclude a potential outlier is as follows:

If a reasonable member of the institution (faculty or staff member) would feel that the institution’s average salary would be misleading if a particular faculty member’s salary were included in the survey data, then the faculty member should be excluded.

We recognize that benefit expenditures will be an estimate, so this would be one good way to produce such an estimate. The goal is to represent the employer's expenditure for the current academic year, so multiplying the employer's contribution per pay period times the number of pay periods in the year is a reasonable approach.

This stipend for directing an academic program seems analogous to the way stipends for department chairs and/or division directors are handled at many other institutions. Ideally, we would like the salary amount reported without the stipend for additional administrative responsibilities. However, we recognize that it might impose an additional reporting burden. We will accept the most accurate information you are able to provide, even if that means the stipend being included with the salary.

Retirement should include the projected total annual contribution by the institution, state, and/or local government to the retirement plan(s) but exclude payments for unfunded retirement liability. That means payments for unfunded retirement liability, prepaid retiree health insurance, and social security should be excluded.

Retirement should not include any projected amounts for post-retirement benefits, even though these are shown on institutional budget and financial statements. Amounts paid to retired faculty should also not be included. We are looking for actual expenditures for current faculty.

Contributions to the Emeriti plan (or similar plans to provide for faculty health care during retirement) paid by the institution on behalf of active faculty members who are reported in Form 2 of our survey should be included in the Form 3 benefits figures under Retirement. The Emeriti plan is not a retirement pension; however, the accounts will provide for health care once the faculty member is retired, and that is why it should be included in the retirement line. Only the institution's contribution should be included.

Include projected total annual premiums for insurance plans which provide medical, prescription, hospital, surgical, dental, and/or vision benefits. Do not include any expenditures related to health savings accounts (HSAs).

No, only indicate whether dependents are eligible for tuition benefits by selecting from the options available under the dropdown menus.

No, only indicate what type(s) of dependent tuition benefits are available, not the expenditure.

We are not asking for the number of faculty whose dependents receive benefits, just the type of benefits that they have access to.

In the "Number of Continuing Faculty" column, only include faculty members from Form 2 who were employed full-time in the prior academic year (2021-22) and are employed full-time at the same contract length in the current academic year (2022-23). Entirely omit faculty and their salaries from all fields in Form 4 if they are: (1) new appointees; (2) faculty who left at the end of 2021-22; or (3) did not have the same length contract in both years (unless the second is prorated to the same length as the first). Where a faculty member received a promotion in rank for 2022-23, that individual's salary should be reported under last year's rank in both salary outlay columns. The percentage change will be calculated automatically. It is intended to include promotions as well as individual and across-the-board increases.

The intent of Form 4 is to capture year-to-year salary increases for continuing faculty by rank. In order to capture salary changes, the same pool of faculty members at each rank (Form 2) needs to be carried over from the previous year (meaning the faculty at a given rank in 2021-22 are categorized at that rank in 2022-23), which isolates salary and allows us to calculate salary increase over one year. Therefore, please report the values for faculty at their 2021-22 rank for 2022-23 when completing this form. In the 2023-24 Faculty Compensation Survey, data on the 2022-23 faculty rank will be collected. At that point, the Assistant Professor promoted to Associate Professor will be included as an Associate Professor because they will have been counted as an Associate Professor in Form 2 for 2022-23.

A negative change in this form means that there were at least some individuals at the particular rank who took an overall cut in salary, which is highly unusual. Please verify that you are reporting salary for the same individuals in both the "Current Year" and "Previous Year" columns and that the salaries are for the same contract length. If there were salary cuts due to COVID-19, please provide a note indicating so. Generally speaking, it is more likely that there is a positive percentage increase for a rank, indicating an overall average salary increase, or 0.00% change, indicating that salaries remained the same from last year to the current year for the given rank. If an individual held an administrative appointment in the previous year, it would be preferable to report salary for the previous year without any additional administrative stipend.

No, Form 4 should only include faculty members who were full-time last year (reported in Form 2) and full-time this year. This person will be included in Form 2 this year and they will be part of Form 4 next year.

No, Form 4 should only include faculty members who were full-time last year (reported in Form 2) and full-time this year. This person will be included in Form 2 this year and they will be part of Form 4 next year.

It depends on how you reported these faculty members in last year's survey, if they were reported at all. Did you report them in Form 2 last year? If so, how did you report their salary to indicate they were hired in the middle of the year? The goal of Form 4 is to see how much, if any, the average salary for any professorial rank changed from the previous year so we want to compare the same individuals from year to year. So if these faculty weren't included in Form 2 last year, then they shouldn't be part of Form 4 this year. If they were reported in Form 2 last year, then it becomes important how their salaries were reported (whether the salary was for a full year or pro-rated for a shorter time period).

Or, were they considered part-time faculty last year? If these faculty members were considered part-time in 2021-22, then they wouldn't be included as continuing because Form 4 only pertains to full-time faculty.

No. Figures for individual positions at specific institutions will not be published or distributed. The AAUP does not release identifying data that would impact anonymity for individuals.

If the Interim VP of Academic Affairs is filling the duties of the Chief Academic Officer and is receiving a salary based on that role you can include them. This applies to other administration positions as well. The AAUP does not publish figures for individual administrators to ensure anonymity. Those data will only be published in the aggregate.

Please provide additional direct compensation supplementing the base salary, including bonuses or deferred compensation, which might come from the institution itself, directly from the state government, or from an affiliated private foundation. It is not intended to include housing, entertainment, travel allowances, general expense accounts, club memberships, or tuition allowances for dependents.

Yes, for Form 6 you should report data for the prior academic year, in this case 2021-22. Many institutions have a difficult time reporting current year data for part-time faculty members because the numbers vary throughout the year, and for institutions on a quarter calendar system the spring quarter figures are simply unavailable until well after the FCS data collection period. By collecting data for the prior academic year, the FCS lessens the reporting burden on institutions and ensures that they have complete data records available.

Part-time faculty members are those designated as part-time employees in the institution's payroll system. Only part-time faculty members who were paid per course section to teach undergraduate course sections in the prior academic year are included on Form 6. Other part-time faculty members (e.g., salaried faculty members working on a reduced load) are not included on Form 6.

Please provide the distinct (unduplicated) headcount of part-time faculty, not the number of course sections taught.

In Form 6, we’re only asking if part-time faculty have retirement/medical benefits, not the actual payout. Select the appropriate option from the dropdown menu for each benefit.

Simply speaking, the least, most, and average (mean) pay per course section for those part-time faculty members who were employed on a per-course-section basis in the prior academic year.

Users should report the minimum, maximum, and average (mean) pay per section, defined as a 3-credit-hour course section (or whatever the typical number of credits are for a course section). For faculty teaching sections that are not 3 credit hours, that pay should be converted to a 3-credit-hour equivalent so that pays are comparable across the board.

You can report policy-based data for the minimum and maximum pay, once that pay rate is converted to a 3-credit-hour equivalent to equal a course section. Simply multiply the pay rate by 3.

In the case of a celebrity part-time faculty member, such as a former elected official or Nobel Prize laureate, who vastly out-earns peer faculty members, it is recommended that users omit this individual as it otherwise creates an outlier in the data and artificially inflates the maximum and mean pay.

If all of your part-time faculty teach the same credit hour section, in this case 4, you do not necessarily need to convert them to a 3-credit-hour course section equivalent. You may use the figures as is, if you think it is appropriate, but please provide a comment (on Form 1) explaining your approach (e.g., "FORM 6: Pay is on a course-unit system, where all sections are essentially 4 credits.") so that a footnote can be added to Appendix III for your institution.

For Form 6, please provide the total number of part-time faculty paid on a per-course-section basis, regardless of which semester(s) they taught. The key is reporting the total unduplicated headcount of part-time faculty, not the number of course sections they teach.

Yes, that is a reasonable approach. The goal of this form is to represent what part-time faculty typically earn for teaching a course section and that representation can be complicated by the inclusion of clinical faculty.

You should report the maximum salary expenditure that a part-time faculty member receives for teaching a course section as opposed to the maximum salary theoretically possible.

No, Form 6 is optional. We encourage users to submit as much data as possible to provide the greatest contextualized view of faculty salary and benefits at their institution.

All users who are affiliated with an institution will have access to the survey results for a particular year if the institution has purchased access to the FCS data for that year. Results will be posted in April following the close of data collection. Users who have been assigned the "data manager" role for an institution have access to all data submitted for the institution since 2016. For users submitting data via the Excel survey template method (recommended), we recommend saving a copy of the completed template for their own records.

Within the research portal, users with the "data manager" role may download their previously submitted data by navigating to the Data Collection tab and selecting Submitted Values. Choose the year for which you are interested and click "Download" to download an Excel spreadsheet of your institution's submitted values.

We encourage users to provide supervisors or senior administrators the opportunity to review FCS data submissions and results prior to publication. However, to protect confidentiality, only users with the “data manager” role can view completed survey forms or download previously submitted values. Users with the “Data Viewer” role cannot view completed survey forms or download previously submitted values; they may view survey results if the institution has purchased access to the FCS data for a given year (see above).

To provide supervisors or senior administrators the opportunity to review FCS data, we recommend the following:

Either way, we encourage users to take appropriate steps to ensure confidentiality. AAUP FCS staff are aware that some institutions have stored completed copies of the Faculty Compensation Survey template files on shared file servers or have placed printed copies in filing cabinets. Confidentiality issues can arise, especially for data submitted on Form 5: Administrative Compensation, which includes compensation data for individual employees. While the AAUP FCS staff strive to protect the confidentiality of FCS data, we cannot protect data that institutions store themselves outside of the secure portal. While this might not be an issue for all institutions, we recommend that institutions avoid storing local copies of data submitted to the FCS.