The larger-than-expected freshman class will allow many Ohio University employees to receive mid-year raises, President Roderick McDavis said in a press release.
When making decisions about the budget this past winter and spring
we indicated that we would try to provide our employees with additional pay raises should enrollment goals exceed projections McDavis said in the release.
Our record-setting class of first-year students has bolstered our overall enrollment and we are pleased to make this adjustment to reward the hard work and commitment of our university community members
he said.
Administrators and classified employees, who are mostly clerical staff such as secretaries and librarians, will receive 1 percent raises, said Phyllis Bernt, Faculty Senate chair.
Faculty will receive shares of a raise pool proportionate to how they performed on their most recent merit reviews, Bernt said. Each year, faculty must document what they have done during the previous year and submit it to merit committees. Each department has its own committee made up of faculty, she said.
There were plans to set the budget so that if enrollment goals were met, enough money would exist to give every faculty member a 3 percent raise for the next year, Bernt said. That number was then cut to 2 percent. The final decision was that if enrollment was strong this fall, the pay-raise pool would be sufficient to give each faculty member a 1 percent mid-year raise.
The 1 percent figure is an average, because the pool will be doled out according to the results of the merit reviews.
The raises become effective Dec. 11 for classified employees, Jan. 1, 2006, for administrative employees and Feb. 15, 2006, for faculty, according to the release. Bernt said she is grateful for the faculty raises.
It's bad for morale not to have a raise
she said. You just start losing good people.
Bernt said the university is not experiencing significant faculty departure because of low salaries, although OU's faculty salaries are among the lowest of its peer institutions.
The average salary for an OU professor is $80,580, which ranks 10th out of 11 peer institutions, according to the Office of Institutional Research's Ohio University Fact Book, released in June. Associate professors rank ninth out of 11 with an average salary of $62,359, and assistant professors' average salary of $51,953 is the lowest figure among the peer institutions.
An administrative merit review process is to be implemented by Dec. 31, as the university plans to change administrative pay raises from across-the-board to merit-based for the next pay raise, according to McDavis' release.
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