Collegiate Times

Although Virginia’s universities attempt to attract highly qualified faculty members with attractive salaries, that salary varies across different institutions.

The five highest paid employees are Charles Steger, university president; Cynda Johnson, dean of Virginia Tech Carilion  School of Medicine; Bud Foster, football defensive coordinator; Jim Weaver, athletics  director; and Mark McNamee, provost.


“Salaries are something you use to compensate an employee; the more you can pay a person, the greater the pool of potential people you can get,” said Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski.

Incentives for employees, such as salary, attract more highly qualified candidates, Owczarski said.

A variety of factors influence individual salary decisions.

Department heads make recommendations for the salary an employee should receive. The Dean of each college and the provost then review these requests.

“Fundamentally, a college is able to offer salaries based on the resources it has and what the market can bear,” Owczarski said.

For example, the highest paid physics faculty member at Tech is paid $157,050, but the physics department’s salaries start at $27,600.

These differences include performance, merit increases or decreases, full- or part-time positions, or tenured positions.

“Credentials, research and service also contribute,” said Richard Sorensen, dean of the Pamplin College of Business. “This is normal university policy.”

Starting salaries are based on credentials and if the position is for a professor or assistant professor position, Sorensen said.

Budgets and resources, and how they are allocated, is at the discretion of managers. Universities also have donors who give money that can add to faculty salaries through an endowment fund.

To attract stronger candidates, colleges and universities try to bring in more money through state funding, tuition charges and private philanthropies. Tuition increased $203.50 for in-state students over the previous school year, some of which foots the bill for higher salaries.

“When you recognize talented people who are leaders in their positions, you do what you can to keep them here,” Owczarski said.  He said that schools, including Tech, strive to improve faculty salaries regularly to ensure employees do not transfer to other institutions.

“If they love Blacksburg, you wouldn’t want their salary to be a reason a faculty member goes to a different school,” he said.

Owczarski also said Tech employs a number of distinguished “rock stars” that any college or university would want on its staff. 

“We want to encourage them to stay on the team, salary is one of the ways to do this.”

At the University of Virginia, department chairs work with faculty members to establish performance goals for the year. They are then evaluated on their performance and how well these goals were met.

Because of the impact of the recession, salaries at public universities in Virginia are currently stagnant.

“There have been no salary increases in the past two years. Salaries are frozen in Virginia,” said Carol Wood, assistant vice president for public affairs at UVa.

The State Council for Higher Education of Virginia, which advises the state government on education, has identified comparable peer group schools for all state-supported universities, including Tech.

Tech’s peer group schools include Purdue and Cornell, among others.

Based on SCHEV recommendations, the state government attempts to fund faculty salaries at the 60th percentile of the comparable national peer group, Sorensen said.

Tech has adopted a similar faculty salary goal, but it currently lags behind at less than 40 percent of the SCHEV peer group.