Higher Fringe Benefits, Pay Raises for Faculty Endorsed by Committee

Salary increases of five percent and fringe benefits amounting to five and one-half percent of present salaries have been recommended for the University faculty, it was learned yesterday.

The recommendations were made in the form of a report to President Pusey by the Committee on Compensation, one of the three presidential survey groups appointed last fall. It is expected that Pusey will use the report to prepare a program for submission to the Corporation.

If the Corporation approves, the program would probably go into effect next year.

The Committee's plan calls for the University to assume the total cost of faculty pension fund payments. At present, the University pays seven and one-half and each faculty member five per cent of his salary. The new plan would therefore amount to a general salary increase.

The fringe benefits recommended, however, would accrue chiefly to senior faculty members. The committee rejected an alternative proposal for a general all-faculty salary increase approximately equal to the cost of the benefits.

Senior Members Benefit

Fringe benefits amounting to four and one-half per cent of present salaries would go almost exclusively to senior faculty members, however, leaving only slightly more than one per cent of the advantages to be shared with junior members.

The recommendations are: 1) transitional retirement from the age of 66 to 70 in place of the present automatic retirement at 66, 2) scholarships for faculty children equal to the tuition of the college they attend and not to exceed Harvard's tuition, 3) sickness and accident insurance for the entire faculty and their immediate families contingent upon the approval of two-thirds of the faculty, 4) the extension of University Health Service facilities to the faculty (but not faculty families) on a voluntary basis, and 5) various minor recommendations.

Junior faculty members--unless they have children in college--would share in only the last three measures. Opposition to the committee's recommendations and support for a salary increase instead of most of the fringe benefits is therefore expected chiefly from non-professors.

$15,000 Average Hoped

The committee apparently based its decisions on a "need" to resist and even reverse the tendency since 1930 to narrow the distance between the salary of the beginner and that of the senior professional. Except at the lowest ranks, the basic salaries have not increased as much as the cost of living, it stated.

Although no proposals for direct salary increases were included among the recommendations, the committee is reported to have expressed hope that within the next few years the average professorial salary would increase from $13,000 to $15,000, and the maximum from $17,000 to $20,000, subject to modification in case of depression or inflation.

If eventually adopted, the increases would restore the position of a professor, before taxes, to somewhat short of what it was in 1930.

Minor Recommendations

Most fringe benefits would be non-taxable, unlike a direct salary increase, though opponents point out that this still doesn't help junior faculty members.

The committee's minor recommendations included: a codification of the present policy towards aid to permanently disabled faculty members, a longer (six instead of two months) continuance to his heirs of the salary of a professor who dies while still active here, and the abolition of Faculty Club dues. It also recommended further study of University aid to the solution of faculty housing problems and group insurance.