Economic Status of the Profession

The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2023-24

This year's Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession presents findings from the AAUP’s annual Faculty Compensation Survey. The report also describes key institutional finance trends in US higher education and documents the ongoing shift in the makeup of the academic workforce from mostly full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty members to mostly faculty members holding contingent appointments that are ineligible for tenure.

The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2022-23

This year’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession examines the economic conditions of the academy in a year that has seen both the World Health Organization and the US government declare an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report documents the economic status of both full- and part-time faculty members in a year when the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 6.5 percent from December 2021 to December 2022, following a 7.0 percent increase the previous year, which was the largest percentage increase since 1981. Furthermore, this report revisits the findings of the 2020–21 annual report, which documented institutional responses to COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic, including salary freezes or reductions, elimination or reduction of fringe benefits, and terminations or nonrenewals of faculty appointments.

The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2021-22

This year’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession documents the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in a year when the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 7.0 percent, the largest December-to-December percentage increase since 1981. The report documents the economic status for not only full-time faculty members but also part-time adjunct faculty members paid on a per-course-section basis—and faculty members on contingent appointments in general. It also includes special sections on the academic labor force and key gender equity indicators, with an eye toward documenting changes that have occurred since the 2019–20 academic year, when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2020-21

This year’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession outlines how years of unstable funding, combined with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, have created an existential threat to shared governance and academic freedom in higher education that severely weakens our nation’s ability to effectively educate our communities. The report presents findings from three related studies conducted by the AAUP: the AAUP’s annual Faculty Compensation Survey, a follow-up COVID-19 survey, and secondary data analyses of national employment and finance data.

The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2019-20

This year’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession summarizes results from the 2019–20 Faculty Compensation Survey, which collected data from 928 colleges and universities across the United States, including community colleges, small liberal arts colleges, and major research universities. The survey covered almost 380,000 full-time and more than 96,000 part-time faculty members, as well as senior administrators at nearly 600 institutions. Data collection began in December 2019 and concluded in February 2020, just as the first cases of COVID-19 were being reported in the United States.