USC board approves merit-based raises for faculty, the first in 13 years

For the first time in 13 years, the University of South Carolina is giving raises to its top professors, the board of trustees voted Friday.

The $7.4 million in raises will be broken into to two, main categories. The first half of that money will be used to boost pay for tenured and tenure-track faculty. The second half of that money will be considered “merit-based” and given to faculty by their department based on exceptional performance, President Robert Caslen said at a Friday meeting.

In recent years, USC has given “compression” raises, which increase the pay of lower-level employees but do not raise the pay for top professors, USC spokesman Jeff Stensland said.

As a result, some new assistant professors were making roughly the same as associate professors who have been around for longer, Caslen said.

What’s more, USC’s faculty pay has fallen behind other, major universities, Caslen said.

Without updating USC’s pay structure, “We’re not going to be able to bring in the faculty we need to,” Caslen said.

“Recognizing salary issues with faculty...would go a long way,” Caslen said.

The board voted unanimously to approve the raise.

Faculty Senate Chair Mark Cooper said the “faculty very much appreciates the leadership of the president” in bringing forth the raises.

The $7.4 million will come from the university’s strategic initiative fund. This is separate from the $3,000 K-12 teacher pay raises state legislators are considering in next year’s budget.

The USC raises will begin in April, according to a news release from USC. The tenured and tenure-track raises will be given to any faculty member who has been at USC for at least three years and who makes less than 95 percent of their peers at other, similar universities, USC said in the release.

The raises will be up to “$1,500 for assistant professors; $4,000 for associate professors; $8,000 for full professors; $3,000 for librarians,” USC said in the release.