2024–25 AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey Results

Real average salaries for full-time faculty increased for the second consecutive year after adjusting for inflation, according to preliminary results from the AAUP’s 2024–25 Faculty Compensation Survey (FCS). Nominal average salaries increased 3.8 percent from fall 2023 to fall 2024, while real wages increased only 0.9 percent after adjusting for the 2.9 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). Average salaries for continuing full-time faculty—those employed in fall 2023 and remaining employed at the same institution in fall 2024—increased about 4.7 percent in nominal terms, or about 1.8 percent after adjusting for inflation. Despite the positive trend, real average salaries still have not fully recovered from the cumulative decrease of 7.5 percent observed during the COVID-19 pandemic, from fall 2019 to fall 2022.

Preliminary FCS findings are now available here, along with institution-level appendixes to accompany the forthcoming Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2024–25, which will be published online in June and printed in August in the summer issue of Academe. Complete datasets, which provide preliminary data from the appendixes to the annual report with greater precision along with supplemental data, are now available to order. AAUP chapter leaders, AAUP state conference officers, and AFT local or state federation presidents may request FCS data access free of charge for their business purposes, and institutional research offices and human resource offices may purchase access to the data. Final data, including revised appendixes and data sets, will be released in July.

The Faculty Compensation Survey includes five components: (1) full-time faculty salaries by rank, gender, and contract length; (2) full-time faculty benefits, including retirement, medical, and dependent tuition benefits; (3) continuing full-time faculty salaries by rank and contract length; (4) salary data for key administrative positions; and (5) salary and benefits data for part-time adjunct faculty members who were paid on a per-course-section basis in the prior academic year. Data on part-time adjunct faculty were collected for the prior academic year, 2023–24, to ensure that institutions could provide complete data for an entire academic year.

Data collection for the 2024–25 FCS concluded in March, with over 800 US colleges and universities providing employment data for approximately 370,000 full-time and 90,000 part-time faculty members as well as senior administrators at more than 500 institutions. Participants reflected the wide range of institutional types across the United States, including approximately 225 doctoral universities, 320 regional universities, 180 liberal arts colleges, 80 community colleges, and 175 minority-serving institutions.

For information about data products available from the Department of Research and Public Policy, visit https://research.aaup.org/order. You can explore FCS data on the AAUP’s interactive data website, https://data.aaup.org, which allows users to drill down in the data and includes tools for summarizing data by institution, region, state, Carnegie Classification, and other variables.