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Definitions and Guide to the Displays

All displays are in sets for schools/colleges, A&S departments, and Engineering departments. Display A includes full, associate, and assistant professor ranks with instructors. All remaining displays include full, associate, and assistant professor ranks only, without instructors.

• Display A1: CU-Boulder only, average salaries and FTE, by school/college or department, by rank plus all professor ranks which excludes instructors, three fiscal years.  FTE = sum of percent time over all individuals.
• Display A2: CU-Boulder only, percent salary increase by school/college or department for full, associate and assistant professors on 9 month contracts. The first segment of each display includes all instructional faculty reported in both years; the second includes only instructional faculty with the same rank in both years; the final display shows only those rank change. Includes ONLY individuals with 100% appointments both years. Excludes individuals hired within the last year, individuals not reported to IPEDS, AAUP or AAUDE in either year, immediate or gradual retirements, changes in contract type, and changes in percent time.
• Description of statistics in Display A2:
  • Average Pct Incr Over Indvs - The average percentage increase over all individuals in the row.
  • Median Pct Incr Over Indvs  - The median (instead of the straight average). 
  • Incr in Total Salary Pool - The percentage increase in the total paid to all individuals in the row. 
  • See examples of measures (Excel) for calculation examples.
• Display B: AAU and CU-Boulder average salaries and FTE, by school/college or department, by rank plus all-ranks, most recent fiscal year only. All-ranks average salaries are calculated using the UCB distribution of full, associate, and assistant FTE, not the AAU distribution. Figures shown in addition to average salaries and FTE:
  • $ diff: Dollar difference between UCB and AAU averages
  • Pct diff: Percentage difference between UCB and AAU averages
  • Tot $ diff: Total dollar difference. E.g., if UCB has 10 faculty with average $60,000, vs. AAU average 65,000, the total dollar difference is 10 * 5,000 = $50,000
  • AAU StD: AAU standard deviation, over institutions in the AAU
  • Dif/Std: Distance between the UCB average and the AAU mean, in numbers of standard deviations. This figure is comparable over all schools, colleges, and departments despite differences in base salaries. Dif/StD's greater than 2.0, or even 1.5, suggest that something is going on to make the averages different, especially in larger departments and colleges. (This measure is also known as a z-score.)
  • N insts: Number of institutions with any FTE in a comparison
  • AAU age: Average age among AAU faculty
  • UCB age: Average age of UCB faculty
• Display C: New hires only, shown only for school/colleges or departments by rank with new hires in the most recent year. Does not display AAU average salary if CU-Boulder did not hire at least one individual in that school, college or department and rank. Similar to Display B but without total dollar, standard deviation, N institutions, and age measures.
• Display D: Similar information to that in displays B and C, but for three academic years. Also shows AAU and UCB percentage change in average salary from one year to the next.
  • Display D for has one page per rank plus one page for all ranks combined.
  • Note that the percentage change in average salary can be tricky. If a department or college has some retirements/departures and/or some new hires between years, the percentage change figure may be quite misleading with regard to continuing faculty. See Display A2 for CU-Boulder continuing faculty percent salary change by school/college or department and rank. Includes only individuals with the same rank over both years.
  • Caution: Data shown for the prior two years may not match data we posted one to two years ago, due to
    • changes in how AAU departments are matched to UCB departments (some changed in 2002-03)
• Display E is an attempt to show the spread of average salaries across institutions, for the most recent year only, and UCB's place in the distribution. Each plot shows average salaries for CU-Boulder and for all other institutions, for each rank. The following hypothetical example does not reflect current year data. Example, for College X:

3 +         ^|^^^^^  ^                                  Assistant UCB almost lowest
2 +             ^^^^^^^|^^^    ^                        Associate UCB near middle
1 +                       ^^ ^^^^|^^^^^^^ ^  ^   ^      Full UCB below center
  -----------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
          40,000        60,000        80,000        100,000

• What can be seen graphically in the display is supported by the percentage differences and Dif/Std measures, from display B. For College X these were:

                                  Pct dif      Dif/Std
  Assistant                        -6.7%        -0.9
  Associate                         1.6%         0.2
  Full                             -4.2%        -0.4
  

• Display F shows FTE at each comparison institution (most recent year only) by school/college or by department, for full, associate, and assistant ranks only.
  • This display can be used to determine exactly what institutions contributed to every comparison. For example, while all institutions have FTE in areas corresponding to our colleges of A&S, Business, Education, and Engineering, not all have any corresponding to our Journalism, Law, or even Music. It also shows FTE in areas that correspond to no CU-Boulder college (e.g., agriculture, social work).
  • The display also shows the great range in number of FTE in some areas. For example, engineering has under 50 FTE at Indiana, North Carolina, and Oregon, but over 300 at Penn State.
  • Percentage full, associate, and assistant professors, by institution

• Display G: Public AAU institutions excluding CU-Boulder median and mean salaries by school/college or department by rank for three academic years. The median is the middle value of the distribution and not affected by extremely small or large observations. If there are an even number of observations then the median represents the average of the middle two values.

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Last revision 12/29/05