How does your salary compare with others’ in academia?

Interested in learning the typical salary range for an academic physics position in Idaho versus New York? At a public versus a private institution? Want to compare your salary with others’ in your cohort? Take a look at the US salary calculator produced by the Statistical Research Center (SRC) of the American Institute of Physics (which publishes Physics Today).

The tool spits out salary ranges based on the type of institution—four-year, two-year, public, private, or historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs); the highest degree the physics department offers; a specific state or the national average; the user’s faculty rank and educational background; and (if desired) gender.

The SRC’s assistant director, Susan White, created the salary calculator using statistical regressions and data from a 2016 faculty survey . The data include salary and employment information for nearly 1700 faculty members who started their careers over many decades. The figures do not take benefits into account.

Let’s say you received your PhD in 2016, did a postdoc, and are applying to become an assistant professor. According to the calculator, the national average academic-year salary range in that category at public institutions that offer a physics doctorate is $61 430–$106 350 for men and $59 520–$102 960 for women. (Roughly two-thirds of salaries fall into the ranges given.) The numbers are higher at private institutions: $65 890–$114 060 (men) and $63 900–$110 530 (women).

Salaries are considerably lower in departments where the highest degree offered is a bachelor’s, but they are still higher at private than at public institutions: $46 520–$80 540 (public institution, men); $49 900–$86 380 (private institution, men); $45 160–$78 130 (public institution, women); $48 490–$83 880 (private institution, women). At HBCUs, salaries are even lower: $41 140–$71 220 (men) and $39 780–$68 810 (women).

Those figures reflect the gender gap in salaries and resources in academia, which first gained wide attention two decades ago when MIT reported the results of a comparison of conditions for its male and female faculty and introduced corrective measures. Other institutions have carried out similar studies, but disparities persist (see Physics Today, November 2017, page 24 ). That being the case, White was surprised when the salary calculator revealed that at the associate professor level, women earn more than men. A possible explanation is that women tend to remain at the associate level longer than men do.

Established faculty can also compare their salaries with others’. For example, among those who earned a physics PhD in 2000, did a postdoc, and are now full professors at four-year public institutions in a physics department where doctorates are conferred, the average academic-year salary in California earned by men is $131 920. Women in the same state and category clock in with an average salary of $126 320. In Idaho, the numbers drop to an average of $112 210 (men) and $107 450 (women).

Want to know what you can pull in per course as an adjunct faculty member? At public institutions that offer doctorates, men who earned their PhD in 2010 and did not do a postdoc receive from $3800 to $6570 per course; women get $3660 to $6330. At two-year colleges those ranges are $2810 to $4870 (men) and $2710 to $4690 (women). (See the story on contract lecturers in Physics Today, November 2018, page 22 .)

Although she’d like to include employment sectors beyond academia, White notes that in other sectors the SRC has data only for starting salaries of individual cohorts. For now, the salary calculator corrects for inflation using the consumer price index. But the faculty survey may become an SRC regular, which would allow for updates using new data.

Thumbnail image credit: Ken Teegardin , CC BY-SA 2.0