The Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning approved a long awaited proposal to increase Mississippi faculty salaries. The state Legislature must passthe proposal before Mississippi State University, among other state colleges, can raise its faculty pay.
According to Carl Nicholson Jr., chair of the State College Board finance committee, the proposed salary increase will be 12 percent carried out over a period of three years.
“The request is multi-year in recognition of the state’s budget crisis and an effort to help faculty see that there is a future here,” Dr. Pamela Smith, the chief public affairs officer to the IHL, said.
Smith said the lower salaries create difficulties in the recruitment and retaining of faculty. MSU, for example, employs faculty from across the nation, and the lower pay makes this recruitment difficult in the fields of high demand.
Dr. Walter Diehl, president of the Faculty Senate, said pay raises would benefit faulty if consistent.
“Four of the past five years, MSU faculty has not received a pay raise,” Diehl said. “If the raises are modest then they need to be consistent in order to help the faculty.”
Nicholson said the university is losing good faculty as a result of the low pay. He said he hopes the Legislature will realize the importance of having a quality staff. “In the past the legislature has always supported higher education and found some way to fund us,” Nicholson said.
According to Rep. Steve Holland (D- Tupelo), who serves as chair of the appropriations committee on higher education, the most important question now is how to fund the proposal.
Holland said he wants to propose another tax bracket on those with higher incomes.
“We are asking those who have most likely benefited from higher education to help,” Holland said. “There really is no other way.”
Holland said the proposal has been an ongoing idea over the past few years. At the time of the interview, he said that he was on his way to the state Capitol to help draft the proposal to put before the Legislature’s budget hearing at the end of the month.
According to Smith, the Legislative Budget Committee must first review the proposal. If the committee recommends the package to the Legislature in November, then the Legislature will vote on the issue during session. It is possible that the outcome may remain undetermined until the end of session.
“Current salaries for IHL faculty are, on average, $7,000 below their Southeastern counterparts. For MSU faculty, the difference is $11,164 per faculty member when compared to the Southeastern average,” Smith said. “Currently MSU faculty earn $56,875 per year and the average southern salary for universities like MSU is $68,039.”
Smith said that other states in the region will increase their salaries as well, and that even after the increase, Mississippi faculty salaries will still be low in comparison.
If passed, the proposal will go into effect the next fiscal year beginning July 1.
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