Faculty at Rutgers University are disappointed with a process aimed at addressing pay equity, saying that it instead reinforces those inequities, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.
It adds that faculty there who think they are underpaid are encouraged to identify higher-paid peers at the university or at other universities to make their case for a pay increase. But a number of faculty members, particularly at Rutgers' Camden campus, tell the Chronicle that though they uncovered differences in pay in the range of tens of thousands of dollars, they were offered pay increases of a few thousand dollars.
The university union, Rutgers AAUP-AFT, tells it that the university sometimes changed the comparators to include faculty members of lower ranks or included Camden faculty members whose salaries were generally lower.
"It's very sad that a program that was so promising was instead used to further entrench inequities," Rebecca Kolins Givan, an associate professor at the New Brunswick campus, tells the Chronicle.
The Chronicle notes that Jonathan Holloway, the Rutgers president, referenced the pay equity dispute in an address to the university senate last month, but declined to comment as negotiations are ongoing.