Cost of Living Diminishes Value of Harvard Profs' Pay, Study Says

Few doubt that Harvard professors make a living wage. But new data taken from universities nationwide claims that faculty in Cambridge may not be earning as much as they appear to be.

A recent study from North Carolina's Pope Center for Higher Education Policy calculates what full and assistant professors at 81 universities earn when cost of living is factored in. Harvard, second only to Rockefeller University in the ranking of professors' nominal salaries, fell to 27 on the adjusted list.

The study's author, Jon H. Sanders, said his intent was "to show how universities in North Carolina stacked up against their peers nationally."

When adjusted for cost-of-living according to Sanders' equation, salaries for full professors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ranked 20 on the list.

Sanders said the data might put seemingly low professor paychecks in a more positive light.

"For North Carolina," Sanders said, "one of the problems that they tell to the legislature is that their low salaries are hurting their recruitment."

But some school officials have called into question the methods used in calculating the figure.

Sanders used faculty salary data provided by the American Association of University Professors and cost-of-living numbers from the American Chamber of Commerce Research Association (ACCRA). But for those cities for which ACCRA did not have cost-of-living estimates--about one-fourth of the list--Sanders extrapolated data from surrounding communities. For example, the cost-of-living figure for Providence, R.I. was determined using data from New Haven, Conn., Springfield, Mass. and Manchester, N.H.

This method has drawn fire from school officials, who said in a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education that the extrapolation resulted in misleading figures.

But while Sanders admitted that the extrapolation might not provide the most accurate data, he said excluding universities entirely would have painted an incomplete picture.

"It would be more important to have as many as possible than leave a quarter of them out," he said.

As for universities that ranked low on his list, Sanders said he doubted the study would hurt their recruiting of new faculty.

"There's more to a job than salaries," he said. "I would dare say if Harvard offered [smaller] salaries than they do, they would still get anybody."