Duke professors to receive pay increase

After a two-year pay freeze, Duke University professors will receive a salary hike for the upcoming academic year.

Duke froze salaries across the board in 2009, but the university’s president, Richard Brodhead, recently announced that faculty raises are expected to go into effect July 1.

“I’m pleased that we could offer them,” said Peter Lange, Duke provost.

“We felt we had room to do it, and it’s important for the faculty to be rewarded for their efforts.”

At Duke, each school in the university will be offered a 3 percent increase in funding and the salary increases will come from those additional funds, Lange said.

The deans have the responsibility of handling the raises and will choose how to do so differently.

UNC professors who teach courses at both UNC and Duke will not benefit from the pay raise.

The graduate program in German studies is a collaboration between both universities with professors teaching courses at both campuses.

“Although all professors in German at UNC teach graduate courses to students enrolled at both campuses, our appointments ­— which is to say our salary homes — are all based at Carolina alone,” Eric Downing, chairman of UNC’s program, said in an email.

While many private universities have experienced some pay increases during the last few years, public universities in North Carolina are still enduring a dry spell which could lead to possible retention problems.

The UNC system’s last pay raise was in the 2008-09 fiscal year. This increase was about 3 percent for state employees.

While administrators at private universities experienced a median pay increase of 2 percent during the 2010-11 fiscal year, faculty and staff at Duke have not had their salary increased in two years due to the tightening of the university’s budget.

The initial freeze was a protective measure against faculty and staff layoffs during the state budget crisis.

The two exceptions with the freeze were the one-time raises for lower-paid employees that happened each year, Lange said.

Victor Strandberg, an English professor at Duke, said he welcomed the idea of a raise.

“It’s kind of nice to keep up with inflation if we can do it,” he said.

“If I get (a raise), I’m happy.” “If not, I won’t be disgruntled about it. I’ll just get back to my job.”

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