Re: Professor payment a priority

To the Editor of The Temple News,

I am writing in response to Romsin McQuade’s article, “Professor payment a priority,” published on Sept. 16, 2013.

McQuade asserts, “According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Temple paid its professors, on average, a salary of $134,000 per year.”

This figure is quite misleading, for multiple reasons.

According to the salary information that Temple’s administration provides to the Temple Association of University Professionals – TAUP – professors and instructors at Temple are paid as follows, rounded to the nearest thousand.

Full professors, of which there are 312 total, are paid a median salary of $134,000.

Associate professors, of which there are 251, are paid a median of $100,000.

Assistant professors, of which there are 155, are paid a median of $82,000.

Non-tenure-track professors, of which there are 532 at Temple, are paid an average of $59,000.

The approximately 1,500 adjunct instructors at Temple are paid $4,000 per course taught, with no health insurance or other benefits.

As these figures make clear, full professors earning handsome six-figure salaries constitute only a small minority of those who teach at Temple. The vast majority of course instructors with whom the typical Temple student comes into contact earn considerably less than McQuade’s article would lead one to believe. It is especially important to take into account the huge numbers of non-tenure-track professors and adjunct instructors, who do not even have the benefit of job security.

Sincerely,

Arthur Hochner

President, Temple Association of University Professionals