As The Chronicle’s resident reporters on workplace issues, the two of us hear a lot from readers about how little faculty members are paid and how hard it is to get by on a professor’s salary. A little while ago, we got together with some colleagues to ask whether faculty members can afford the American Dream. The approach we took to answer that question relied on both individual perspectives and nationwide data.
We sought perspectives from across the country about how professors make ends meet. The seven instructors who spoke with us shared intimate details about how much they make, owe, and spend, revealing the strain many who work in higher ed feel — and how that strain measures up against their devotion to their work and to their students.
Meanwhile, our colleague Jacquelyn Elias, a news applications developer, analyzed how far professors’ salaries go in different areas of the country, based on the cost of living in each county. The interactive tool she built allows any instructor to see how their salary, and their buying power, compares to their peers’ across the United States.
