Friday 23 March 2012

Academic salaries

Marginal Revolution points to an international index of PPP-adjusted faculty salaries. Alas, New Zealand isn't there listed. We'll work up the NZ figures; the Inside Higher Ed table is cribbed at the bottom of the post.

Entry-level in New Zealand is Lecturer; Assistant Lecturer is a rank generally reserved for those still finishing up their Doctorates. Or, at least, that's how it's used in Commerce at Canterbury.

OECD says the PPP exchange rate for 2010 was about 1.6

The starting rung on the Lecturer scale is around NZ$71,500. As a monthly salary, that's NZ$5,950. Or US$3720. Between Italy and Australia.

A mid-range Senior Lecturer gets around NZ$100k, or US$5,200 per month. Between Germany and The Netherlands.

The middle of the Professorial scale sits around NZ$150k, or US$7800 per month. Higher than Oz and the US.

What's missing? Non-salary compensation is going to be a bigger part of the bundle at US schools than at NZ ones, so differences are somewhat understated. Further, I'm not sure whether the salaries reported for the States are 9 month or 12 month; while in New Zealand we're on annual salaries, a lot of American schools have faculty on 9 month contract that are supplemented by summer research grants that might not be included in these figures

Also, American averages mask a lot more dispersion than do Kiwi ones that tend to be pretty flat across disciplines. Our compensation schedules are consequently relatively generous in English literature and relatively weaker in business disciplines.

On the whole, though, we're more competitive than I'd thought. Especially once you account for that, once you're here, you adjust your consumption bundle with the changes in relative prices instead of just trying to buy the bundle you would have bought in the US - things could look a bit different if we used a Kiwi consumption bundle as benchmark.

[note: updated to fix formatting]

Monthly Average Salaries of Public Higher Education Faculty, Using U.S. PPP Dollars
 Country                 
Entry
Average
Top
Armenia
   $405
   $538
   $665
Russia
   433
   617
   910
China
   259
   720
1,107
Ethiopia
   864
1,207
1,580
Kazakhstan
1,037
1,553
2,304
Latvia
1,087
1,785
2,654
Mexico
1,336
1,941
2,730
Czech Republic
1,655
2,495
3,967
Turkey
2,173
2,597
3,898
Colombia
1,965
2,702
4,058
Brazil
1,858
3,179
4,550
Japan
2,897
3,473
4,604
France
1,973
3,484
4,775
Argentina
3,151
3,755
4,385
Malaysia
2,824
4,628
7,864
Nigeria
2,758
4,629
6,229
Israel
3,525
4,747
6,377
Norway
4,491
4,940
5,847
Germany
4,885
5,141
6,383
Netherlands
3,472
5,313
7,123
Australia
3,930
5,713
7,499
United Kingdom
4,077
5,943
8,369
Saudi Arabia
3,457
6,002
8,524
United States
4,950
6,054
7,358
India
3,954
6,070
7,433
South Africa 
3,927
6,531
9,330
Italy
3,525
6,955
9,118
Canada
5,733
7,196
9,485

10 comments:

  1. As far as I could understand, my non-salary compensation (health insurance for 2) at a large public university was US$12,000 a year.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A nice, but very difficult to generate, measure would be take-home pay after tax, after health insurance, plus employer-side retirement plan contributions.

      Delete
  2. Who would want to work/live in Saudi Arabia?

    Tha pay differential between Australia and Saudi Arabia is insufficient compensation.

    Hristos

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, I'm very happy with lower pay in New Zealand and not having to live in the US. Saudi would be even worse.

      Delete
  3. Those numbers don't look right. When I moved from South Africa to Australia my salary rose dramatically (before we even look at exchange rates or PPP, the number went up). Mind you that was nearly 20 years ago. Okay. Then looking at the $7,499 (per month?) figure for Australia - that might be a senior lecturer figure, but it isn't a professorial salary.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agreed; the prof range in Oz can't be lower than the prof range in NZ.

      Delete
  4. 1. Employer contribution to retirement is 10% of salary in the USA, and 17% in Australia. In New Zealand, it's 4.5%.

    2. Unlike the case in most countries including New Zealand, the USA has no uniform national salary scale. USA academic salaries vary enormously by institution and by discipline. Of special importance to this blog is that in the USA, economic and business academics are paid a lot more than the "average."

    3. In the USA, only two salary levels matter: entry level (Assistant Professor) and career grade (Professor). I cannot make sense of a 3 part division as in the table above.

    4. I simply cannot believe that Malaysia, South Africa and Italy have among the highest salaries.

    5. In the current environment where hiring freezes are rampant, esp. in the USA, salaries lack meaning at the margin.

    6. UK top salaries are $8400 v. $7400 in the USA. This is not believable. If USA prices are the numeraire, the USA figures are too low.

    7. 9 month v. 12 month contracts must be handled with care.

    8. The middle of the Professorial scale is little used. 80% of Canterbury profs sit on the bottom of Prof scale.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I don't know to what extent the non-wage benefits are included in the compensation numbers here quoted, or, as noted, whether they've handled the 9 month vs 12 month contracts well.

      Delete
  5. The single most important determinant of the "value" of academic pay is the ratio of the price of an upper middle class house within 10 km, to a year's salary for an academic. Here Australasia and the UK fall down badly, as does California.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Flip that to "within a 40 minute commute" and I'll broadly agree.

      Delete