Average Faculty Salaries at Colorado State University Move Closer to Peer Institutions

The average faculty salary at Colorado State University increased from $56,600 in the 1995-96 academic year to $58,900 in 1996-97, a total increase of 4.1 percent.

That latest average brings Colorado State to within 99.3 percent of the average salary of $59,300 among 12 peer universities. In addition to Colorado State, the other universities are Illinois-Urbana, Ohio State, California-Davis, Purdue, Michigan State, Iowa State, North Carolina State, Texas A & M, Oklahoma State, Oregon State and Washington State.

Average nine-month faculty salaries at Colorado State now are $68,500 for professors, $51,900 for associate professors and $45,300 for assistant professors.

At a recent President/Faculty Council dialogue, President Albert Yates told council members that one of the university’s highest priorities has been to improve faculty salaries. In the 1988-89 academic year, Colorado State’s faculty salaries were 93.3 percent of the average among these peer universities.

"We’ve done well over the past six years in achieving a goal we set for ourselves," Yates said. "Even though we have made significant progress toward that goal, we’re not done yet." Keith Ickes, director of the university’s Office of Budgets and Institutional Analysis, said Colorado State has compared itself with the same peer-group institutions for the past 10 years. All the peer institutions, like Colorado State, are land- grant universities that offer veterinary medicine programs. The institutions are selected from throughout the country to reflect regional cost-of-living differences.

During the past year, the Colorado State administration, together with deans of colleges and some Faculty Council committee members, have discussed the appropriateness of using this current group of institutions for peer-comparison purposes.

The current set of peers were selected without taking into account the major differences in size, complexity and funding of the institutions – including large universities such as Ohio State, Illinois, Purdue and Michigan State.

"There is a clearly perceived need to add another group of peers that will allow us to have more meaningful benchmarks for data, information and other program and operational comparisons," Ickes said.

"Colorado State would continue to collect and review data on the current peers and would add data from the new institutions as well. Hopefully, this new peer list can be finalized later this spring or early summer," he said.