This report recommends formats for annual presentations to the University Faculty Senate on faculty salaries. We recommend continuation of biennial reports that focus on internal (within Penn State) salary levels and we recommend alternating these reports with biennial reports that focus on external comparisons (salaries at Penn State relative to salaries at peer institutions).
Our rationale for recommending continuation of both types of reports is that throughout their careers faculty members are engaged in two distinct “labor markets” for their professional services. In the external market salary is used as a vehicle that influences movement of faculty among employers, e.g., for recruitment and retention. Penn State competes in this market with its peer institutions. The internal market uses salaries to motivate and reward faculty productivity within the University. In the internal market salary levels and salary adjustments play an important role in providing incentives (or disincentives) to influence innovation and productivity within one’s college and within the University.
It seems that relatively more attention has been given by our faculty and by administrators to the role of salary in the external market as means for recruitment and retention. The fact is, however, that relatively few faculty members are actively engaged in the external market. We hope that the recommendations in this report will encourage us to examine both markets with equal interest.
Our objective is to encourage and facilitate analysis of external and internal faculty markets. To advance this objective we make recommendations for continuing the use of some time-honored and helpful tools for analyzing faculty salaries and we recommend some new analytical tools.
Salary is only one component of a compensation package.
Other components are non-salary (“fringe”) benefits, research resources, collegial environment, teaching load, location, and other factors. We recognize that faculty members make both internal and external comparisons with their peers and that salary information may shape decisions of both "buyers" (deans, department heads) and "sellers" (faculty members) of faculty services in both markets. Therefore, we believe that reports of salary data constitute a valuable service of the Senate for Penn State’s faculty and administration.
BACKGROUND: PRIOR SALARY REPORTS PRESENTED TO THE SENATE
The first significant report to use statistical analysis was given in the mid-1980s and this report examined salary differentials by gender. In 1988, the Salary Issues Subcommittee of the Senate’s Faculty Affairs Committee issued an extensive report of salaries by college and rank and used statistical analysis to relate salary to college, rank, length of service, time in rank, gender, degrees held, tenure status, campus, and graduate faculty membership. It was the first study to focus on salary differences among locations. A modified version of this type of report was given in 1990.
The By-laws and Standing Rules of the Senate were extensively revised in 1993.
The first compared Penn State salaries to peer universities and also displayed differences between Penn State salaries and salaries of other institutions in the Commonwealth.
The second report concerned salary adjustments (or “raises”) given that year. The Faculty Benefits Committee established the pattern of delivering to the Senate alternate biennial internal and external salary reports.
INTERNAL COMPARISONS
TYPICAL CONTENT OF INTERNAL REPORTS (Biennial):
Salary averages (mean and median), by college and by rank, and differences among Penn State colleges
- Convergence or compression of salaries, focusing on differentials between new PSU faculty and faculty with several years of PSU service (or “job tenure”)
- Salary differences by gender
- Salary differences by campus location
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Impact of other specific individual characteristics on salary such as time in rank, academic discipline, tenure status, years of professional experience, etc.
EXTERNAL (PEER INSTITUTIONS) COMPARISONS
TYPICAL CONTENT OF EXTERNAL REPORTS (Biennial)
- Average salaries (mean and median) of full-time appointments of faculty in peer institutions, by rank (from AAUDE membership), excluding faculty with administrative appointments
- Rankings of peer institutions by salary, including branch campuses
Salary increments over time at PSU relative to salary growth at peer institutions
Salaries among higher education institutions in Pennsylvania
After an assessment of past salary analyses the Subcommittee on Faculty Salaries of the Senate Faculty Benefits Committee presents these recommendations for future salary reports to the Senate.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FACULTY SALARY REPORTS
RECOMMENDATION 1: External comparisons of faculty salaries among peer institutions should be made and presented to the University Faculty Senate biennially.Internal salary data for each Penn State College should be presented to the Senate in alternate years.
External salary reports should be presented to the Senate that show salary statistics by peer institutions and these reports might include rankings of Penn State or of Penn State academic units and of others in its respective cohort. Nationwide, academic salary structure changes slowly over time. Past Senate reports demonstrate that the relative position of Penn State in rankings of peer institutions has been relatively constant.But we need to be aware of Penn State’s relative position and to look for changes in this position.
Internal faculty salary reports should be presented to the Senate that show statistics by academic unit by rank disaggregation by location should be made where there is a sufficient number of faculty to permit release of data under disclosure guidelines. Among Penn State’s academic units relative salaries do not change significantly from one year to the other. Annual monitoring is not warranted, both with respect to the cost of data collection and the time of the Senate.
RECOMMENDATION 2: Internal faculty salary reports should include data for University Libraries and for each degree-granting unit within the Pennsylvania State University, including Dickinson School of Law, the College of Medicine, and the School of Information Sciences and Technology, but excluding Penn College of Technology.
RECOMMENDATION 3: Internal (intra-University) faculty salary reports should show numerical data that includes arithmetic mean salaries and some measure of variation within each group.
should be measured by the standard deviation about the mean; however, the presentation might provide a simple statistic called the coefficient of variation, which is the average salary divided by the standard deviation and expressed as a percentage. The coefficient of variation is a percentage, so it is easily understood. If salaries in academic unit A that have a coefficient of variation that is two times as large as the coefficient of variation in unit B, it would clearly show that salaries in unit A are twice as variable (are less equal) than are salaries in unit B.
RECOMMENDATION 4: External and internal faculty salary reports should include mean growth rates of salaries over the same five year period for each academic unit or institution in a cohort.
The previous recommendation calls for a comparative static analysis of salaries at one point in time. Another indicator of faculty reward is progression in compensation. An external cohort member may have a lower current mean salary than does its corresponding PSU unit, but that differential may be temporary if its salaries are growing at a higher rate; if the growth rate is somewhat higher than that at PSU, mean salaries could catch up quickly. The same is true of differences among Penn State’s academic units.
These data could be the compounded rate of growth over five years expressed as the average annual rate of increase. For example, a college whose average salary has grown 16% over the past five years has had an average annual rate of growth of 3%; the salary report would show this 3% as the average annual increase over 5 years. We recommend a five-year time horizon because temporary budgetary factors make one-year growth measures misleading. For example, a university may implement a high percentage increase in faculty salaries in one year only because it needs to compensate for several prior years of inadequate raises. Similarly, a university may have a low growth rate for a period of one year due to temporary budget problems, but its long-term record may be enviable.
Growth rates reveal the dynamics of faculty rewards. An institution that displays a record of rapidly improving the rewards it pays to its faculty may be more attractive in the marketplace than a school with lethargic salary growth, even if its current salary level is high. For most faculty members, switching employers is a long-term investment. For these academics long-term earnings potential is most important.
In recent years, salary differentials by rank seems to have gotten smaller, which is sometimes an indicator of “salary compression” by rank, i.e., the average salaries of senior-ranking faculty is only moderately higher than, or equal to, the average salary of junior faculty. There may be a salary inversion in which average salaries of senior faculty are slightly lower than those of junior faculty. Differences in the growth of salaries of junior and senior faculty will affect salary compression over time. If the growth of salaries of senior faculty is higher than that of the growth of salaries of junior faculty, this inversion may be getting smaller, reducing salary compression.
At Penn State the Office of the President provides equal percentage increases in the salary budget for each college for continuing faculty. But growth rates vary slightly among colleges of the University in any given year due to additions to permanent funds made by deans or due to changes in the number of faculty lines. The compound effect of these differences can be substantial over time, producing wider gaps in relative salaries among academic units.
Growth rates reveal the dynamics of faculty rewards for service and achievement. We recommend a five-year time horizon because temporary budgetary factors make one-year growth measures misleading. For example, a university may implement a high percentage increase in faculty salaries in one year only because it needs to compensate for several prior years of inadequate raises. Similarly, a university may have a low growth rate for a period of one year due to temporary budget problems, but its long-term record may be enviable.
Each year the University’s Board of Trustees provides for a specific percentage increase in the faculty salary pool (which was as low as 0% for at least one past year). This percentage is applied equally to each college. But some deans have the opportunity to augment this from other funding sources so that the percentage adjustments may not be the same for all colleges. The President may also provide additional funding for salary increases. For example, the Trustees and President may provide a salary adjustment budget of 4.0% and this is passed on to colleges. But some deans may be able to increase this to 4.25% or 4.5% using permanent college monies; other deans will only use the 4.0% adjustment mandated by the University. All of these funds must be used for salary adjustments.
Once the college has received its funding for the coming academic year the dean has discretion for making allocations to schools, divisions, and departments. All of the funding may be passed on to departments directly so that each department head has the same percentage increment to allocate to individual faculty members. Alternatively, a dean may hold back funds for special individual salary adjustments across departments. If the dean’s fund is 4.25% (4% University funding plus ¼ percent college-level funding), using the figures from above, he/she might pass 4.0% on to all departments. The remaining 0.25% could be used to adjust individual salaries on a case-by-case basis. The result is that some departments, whose faculty benefited from the dean’s fund, will receive an over-all salary increase in excess of 4%.
The dean could give unequal percentage allocations to departments. For example, the 4% increment given to the dean by the University could be used to give 3.4% to one department, with the remaining funds used to give 5.1% to another. (Departments are likely to have different numbers of faculty members, which would account for the fact that taking 0.6% from department A and giving this sum to department B results in an added increment of 1.1% for department B, which has fewer faculty.)
Over time small differences in salary increments among Penn State colleges could create wider or narrower salary differentials. (See the discussion of growth rates in the previous section.)
Below is the suggested format for presenting internal salary data called for in Recommendations 3 and 4.
RECOMMENDATION 5: Whenever possible, comparisons of salaries for external faculty salary reports should be discipline-related and be made among members of meaningful cohorts.
We recommend supplementing university-wide rankings among a fixed cohort of CIC (Committee on Institutional Cooperation, which includes the eleven “Big Ten” schools), or rankings among the larger list of AAUDE (American Academic University Data Exchange) schools, with descriptive salary statistics that are discipline-based. (The AAUDE includes about 40 schools, but our salary reports are made from a smaller number due to data availability).
Past salary reports to the Senate have shown that rank and discipline account for a large amount of the differences among individual salaries. Our principal reason for not relying exclusively on institution-wide mean salaries for external salary comparisons is that all faculty members do not participate in the same academic market. The historian, for example, does not generally take academic positions in biology, language studies, engineering, etc. in the course of a career. Skills are discipline-specific so that faculty members participate in individual faculty job markets with little drift among them. This is one reason why university-wide average salary data, and rankings among universities, may not be useful for faculty in individual departments or colleges within Penn State. Institution-wide peer group salaries are only useful for broad comparisons among universities. Comparisons of individual Penn State salaries with average salaries in peer institutions may not be meaningful by themselves. For example, knowing that Penn State’s university-wide mean salary exceeds that of University X does not mean that Penn State ranks above University X in salaries of life sciences faculty.
Another reason that university-wide averages may not be useful for individual department or college comparisons is that faculty compositions differ among institutions. If University X, compared to Penn State, has a high proportion of its faculty in relatively high wage disciplines, such as business and engineering, it would be misleading to compare its university-wide mean salary with that of Penn State, which may have a small percentage of its faculty in these same disciplines.
FIGURE 1. SUGGESTED TABLE FORMAT FOR BIENNIAL INTERNAL SALARY REPORTS
In addition to consideration of discipline, good judgment should be used in selecting specific discipline-related cohort members. The cohort should correspond to the nature of the PSU college, or to the cohort that the Penn State college can realistically aspire to join within the near future. One guideline might be to form a cohort consisting of schools among which recruiting occurs and among which there is an exchange of faculty in both directions.
Another consideration for identifying cohorts might be media ranking, such as the U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT rankings based on surveys of deans across the nation. This list of institutions would be particularly relevant if the Penn State college is included in the ranking.
We recognize two specific problems in identifying the cohort. First, some PSU colleges have a unique composition that makes it difficult to find a similar external institution. For example, the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences includes disciplines in the physical and social sciences and this may be a unique structure. In these cases selection of cohort members will be difficult. That College might be innovative in composing hybrid peer schools by calculating weighted mean salaries from a collection of external colleges.
Second, PSU has five multi-discipline colleges that are classified as Class IIA, IIB, or III schools. For example, Capital College (Penn State Harrisburg and Penn State Schuylkill) has schools of business administration, education and behavioral science, humanities, public affairs, and engineering technology (the latter includes mathematics, computer science, and basic physical sciences) and offers baccalaureate, masters, and doctoral degrees. It should be possible to find a set of small universities or multi-discipline campuses (e.g., University of Houston-Clear Lake) to construct the cohort for that Penn State college.
We recognize that faculty members are part of internal and external markets that are related to their discipline. Salary reports should focus on the Penn State academic unit’s faculty compensation relative to the salary of non-Penn State faculty in the same cohort. This cohort should be discipline-specific and mission-specific. The cohort consists of the specific Penn State unit and the external academic institution or institutions that are its peers.
For purpose of salary comparisons, each college or other academic unit within Penn State should identify its own cohort of colleges or departments. For example, the salaries in the Smeal College of Business Administration should be compared only with mean salaries of other schools of business with undergraduate and doctoral programs. It may be more meaningful to compare Smeal salaries with those of other business administration units within Penn State (e.g., the Schools of Business Administration at Penn State Erie and Penn State Harrisburg), and with business administration units outside Penn State (e.g., Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University) than with non-business units within the University.
If possible, the external discipline-specific salary data from peer institutions should cover the same academic year as does the Penn State data.
RECOMMENDATION 6: Internal reports should provide comparisons of salaries by academic unit, by rank. However, internal reports should also include comparable broad discipline-specific external salary data.
Internal reports will reveal any differences in average salaries among colleges in the University. It follows from the rationale for RECOMMENDATION 4 that, if discipline helps to explain part of the differences among individual faculty salaries, some of the inter-college differences at Penn State may be discipline related. A knowledge of typical market differences among disciplines might help us to understand salary differentials among Penn State colleges.
We recommend that the internal report contain at least one table showing nation-wide average salaries by discipline among Penn State peer institutions. This table would serve as a reference. While many factors contribute to differences among institutions nationwide, this table would provide an approximate guide to market-related factors. Readers could use it to examine salary differences among Penn State units. For example, we could determine if the difference between average salaries in the College of Engineering and the Smeal College of Business Administration is similar to the average difference between engineering and business faculty salaries in the nation.
For multi-discipline (“campus”) colleges, the external data table should permit comparisons to be made with similar multi-disciplinary institutions outside Penn State.
The placement of the external data table, in an appendix or addendum to the internal report, should underscore our intent that it serve as an approximate reference rather than as a focal point for examining those salary differences within the University that are shown by the tables for individual Penn State academic units.
Salary data for a specific academic unit should appear on its own page. Furthermore, the placement of tables should not suggest groupings of academic units for purpose of comparison. Units should be arranged alphabetically or by location.
The external reference table in the internal salary reports should be based on discipline, whereas the tables in the external salary reports should be based on institutions.
RECOMMENDATION 7: For internal faculty salary reports, statistics on faculty salaries should be individually reported by academic unit, disaggregated by academic rank. For multi-location academic units, comparable statistics should be shown by rank and by location, subject to disclosure guidelines. For the purpose of calculating statistics, salaries of individual faculty members’ ranks and/or locations can be combined to avoid excessive data suppressions in accordance with disclosure guidelines. The priority order for aggregating faculty is [1] degree-granting academic unit (generally a college) or University Libraries, [2] rank, and [3] campus location.
An academic unit should avoid combining ranks for the purpose of reporting salary statistics if disclosure guidelines would require suppression of data for 2 or more ranks.
For each degree-granting academic, unit individual statistics on salaries should be disaggregated by rank and, if there are a sufficient number of observations, also by location. Faculty members should be included in a unit on the basis of their principal location rather than tenure home. For example, the salary of an associate professor of English at Abington College should be included in statistics of associate professors at Abington even if her/his tenure home is The College of The Liberal Arts.
A multi-campus unit such as the Commonwealth College might report salary statistics for faculty members by combining locations if there are an insufficient number of faculty at some ranks at individual locations. An academic unit may have more than one location combination. For example, University Libraries might report individual statistics for each of four combinations: University Park, Central campuses, Eastern campuses, and Western campuses. The campuses that are included in each grouping should be identified. If there are a sufficient number of observations, a multi-discipline academic unit might report salary statistics by division or school.
RECOMMENDATION 8: Numerical values should be accompanied by simple visual displays, such as the type of box plots used in the AY98/99 report to the Senate. Box plots are recommended, especially for internal salary reports.
See Figure 2. The box plot quickly shows the mean of one unit relative to the mean of another (comparable) unit. The box plot also graphically displays the salary range between the first and third quartiles, i.e., the salary range encompassing the middle 50% of all faculty members in the academic unit. It may also include an indicator of “outliers”, which are extremely low or extremely high salaries in the unit. The box plots provide quick information that is easily understood.
Since grouping of academic units on a box plot is arbitrary, and placement of all academic units on one plot would result in crowding, we suggest that each unit have its own plot. Below is a hypothetical box plot for an academic unit.
FIGURE 2. SUGGESTED GRAPHICS FOR BIENNIAL INTERNAL SALARY REPORTS
mean salary of $68,300
median salary of $68,900
range covered by “middle” 50% of salaries: 25% of salaries in this unit are below $59,900 and 25% of salaries in this unit are above $74,000
For example, a report of salaries in the Smeal College should include, on the same page, information about salaries of Type I doctoral level business schools at other CIC “Big Ten” institutions. The format of the report should be such as to encourage salary comparisons by discipline rather than among Penn State academic units.
As with the external salary report, the identification of members of each discipline/mission specific cohort must be made carefully and with reason. It is important that each unit identify the colleges or universities with which it is competitive for faculty. For example, a particular PSU college may place itself in a small cohort that includes Harvard and Stanford Universities; this would be valid if there is a regular pattern of faculty transfers, in both directions, among these schools and the Penn State unit. (See the rationale for Recommendation 5.)
Media rankings by discipline, such as those provided by U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT (which regularly survey deans across the nation), might be used by some academic units to identify cohort members.
Units with unconventional faculty compositions will be more challenged to identify their cohorts. For example, it may be difficult to identify benchmark colleges for the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, which has a unique composo-spacerun: yes"> In such cases it may be possible to construct a synthetic using department-level data. Penn State has several multi-discipline colleges outside of University Park that might be compared with external independent colleges (e.g., Albright, Swarthmore) or with small regional universities. Here care must be taken to avoid dissimilar compositions. For example, if 80% of the faculty in a Penn State multi-disciplinary unit are in the liberal arts it would be inappropriate to compare their salaries with those of an external college wherein only 30% of the faculty are in the liberal arts.
The statistical data should be reported by a Penn State college or other academic unit (school, campus, etc.) by academic rank within that unit. If possible, external salary data should be disaggregated by rank.
RECOMMENDATION 9: Each biennial internal report should have two parts. The first part is the mandated report containing the unit-specific data described in the recommendations listed above. The second part is a supplemental analysis of a particular type of salary comparison that has interest for the faculty. However, a specific type of comparison should not be revisited more than once every six years, except under special circumstances where substantial changes can be expected over a short period.
The focal point of a supplemental internal salary report might be salary differentials within Penn State due to gender, location, length of Penn State tenure, ethnic group, etc.
Therefore, to implement this recommendation all biennial reports should have two sections: a regular (mandated) analysis andade, e.g., males and females. In addition, the supplemental report might contain an appendix that provides the results of a simple statistical test of differences between (or among) means. The results of this comparison could have important policy implications. (Significant unexplained differences among classes protected by civil rights law could have legal implications, as well, such as unexplained differences between mean salaries of males and females.) Any statistical analyses should be accompanied by a carefully prepared verbal explanation.
This recommendation states that a specific focal point not be visited more than once every 6 years. That means that comparisons by gender, for example, not be made more than once every six years. Our rationale is that it may require that much time to correct undesirable differentials so that earlier follow-up analysis may not be warranted.
Here are some focal studies of salary differentials that might be considered:
·
Gender
·
Campus location
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Ethnic affiliation
·
Years in rank (salary compression over time)
RECOMMENDATION 10: In internal salary reports, statistics describing salaries of administrators with academic ranks should be reported separately for University Libraries and for each degree-granting academic unit. For the purpose of reporting these salaries, administrators with faculty appointments should include department heads, school directors, assistant and associate deans/provosts, deans/provosts, and equivalent positions within these degree-granting units. This category should not include administrators with University-wide offices who have responsibilities covering multiple colleges or similar units.
High quality administration enhances faculty performance. We recognize the need to attract, retain, motivate, and reward good academic leadership. It is important to monitor compensation of administrators in the same manner that we monitor salaries of faculty who do not hold administrative appointments. For the purpose of monitoring administrators’ salaries, salary statistics should be reported as a separate category. These salaries should be reported on the same basis that is used for reporting faculty salaries for each rank. See the categories in Figure 1, above.
CONCLUSION
For twenty years the Faculty Senate has received salary reports in a variety of formats. The Faculty Benefits Committee identified a specific set of issues that such reports should address. We recommend separate biennial salary reports: one comparing salaries of peer institutions (external) and the other comparing salaries, by academic unit and rank, for faculty in broad discipline groups (internal). Past studies have shown that salary is closely related to both rank and discipline. Therefore, we recommend consideration of rank, where possible, and we recommend inclusion of external discipline-based salary comparisons in both internal and external salary reports.
Our recommendations recognize that faculty offer their professional services in two markets, internal and external. Past studies at Penn State seem to have overemphasized external market comparisons for the interests of recruitment and retention. But most faculty members are only infrequently engaged in that external market during their careers. Over the long run salary equity is important in both the external and internal markets. Faculty members are continually involved in the internal market. In this internal market annual adjustments in salary serve to motivate and to direct faculty services on a short term, as well as on a long term, basis. The Faculty Benefits Committee believes that an expanded, detailed internal report especially serves the interests of loyal faculty members with years of service to Penn State. Reports to the Senate should cover both internal and external markets regularly.
Leonard J. Berkowitz, Chair
Edward W. Bittner
Keith K. Burkhart
Jacob De Rooy, Vice Chair
Richard C. Pees
Frank Provenzano
Paula J. Romano
Patience Simmonds
Gerhard F. Strasser
Jose Ventura
Billie S. Willits
SALARY SUBCOMMITTEE
Edward W. Bittner
Jacob De Rooy, Chair
Patience Simmons
COMMITTEE ON FACULTY AFFAIRS
Recommendations on Policy Governing Copyright Clearance and Royalty Payments
(Advisory/Consultative)
[Implementation Date: Upon Approval by the President]
NTRODUCTION
The following proposed policy acknowledges that faculty members are entitled to receive royalties on certain kinds of course materials regardless of where they are produced, and recommends a revision to Administrative Policy AD-46, Policy Governing Copyright Clearance, to provide guidelines under which such royalties would be appropriate.
AD-46 was originally approved in August 1995, and has as its primary purpose a statement of the rights and responsibilities of faculty and staff under copyright law-- their obligation to obtain permissions from copyright holders, and the assistance provided by the Copyright Clearance Office (CCO) for obtaining permissions. Only one paragraph in AD-46 refers to payments to faculty, staff and departments for coursepack material. This paragraph provides that payments are not “allowable” regardless of whether CCO or a third party produces the coursepack.
In December 1999, the Provost’s Office was considering revisions to AD-46 that would permit royalty payments under certain conditions, and asked the University Faculty Senate for its review and advice regarding the proposed changes. Murry Nelson, then Senate Chair assigned authority in the matter to the Faculty Affairs Committee. Initial work on the revision was done by Kim Steiner and Denise Potosky, and has been continued by Clay Calvert with input from John Nichols, Kim Steiner, Mel Blumberg, and many others. The recommendations of the Faculty Affairs Committee follow below:
RECOMMENDATIONS
To implement the overarching goal of the proposed policy, the Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs makes the following two recommendations:
Recommendation # 1
That the present Administrative Policy AD-46, Policy Governing Copyright Clearance, be revised with the changes shown below to allow faculty to receive royalty payments for course materials under guidelines proposed in ADxx.
Payments to faculty and staff or departments will not be allowable as part of the student’s cost for coursepack production, regardless of whether the coursepoack is produced by the CCO or a third party. ROYALTY PAYMENTS FOR INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS ARE ALLOWED. SEE ADXX FOR GUIDELINES UNDER WHICH SUCH ROYALTIES WOULD BE APPROPRIATE.
Recommendation # 2
That the proposed Administrative Policy, ADxx, Royalty Payments for Course Materials, be adopted.
Proposed Policy ADxx -- Royalty Payments for COURSE Materials
- Purpose
- Policy
- Cross references
________________________________________________________________________
Purpose:
To establish that faculty may properly and appropriately receive reasonable royalty payments for certain original instructional materials used in Penn State courses, and to establish advisory guidelines to facilitate the proper and appropriate receipt of those royalty payments.
Policy:
The overarching goal of this policy is to offer incentives for faculty to produce more, improved, and better quality instructional materials as intellectual products for the use and benefit of Penn State students and students elsewhere by allowing faculty to recover some of the costs of their work, and at the same time, to protect Penn State students from potential financial exploitation. This policy covers original instructional materials developed by faculty as intellectual products and printed and sold by Document Services, as well as by other publishing companies and copying services, and regardless of the tangible medium of expression on which they are fixed, printed, posted, displayed or distributed.
Faculty members may receive reasonable royalty payments on certain kinds of original instructional materials used in Penn State courses including, but not limited to, noncommissioned courseware modules. Faculty members seeking royalty payments on materials sold to Penn State students must obtain approval prior to receiving payment of such royalties in order to ensure that the payment of royalties is reasonable and justified in accordance with the guidelines set forth below, and that students are not financially exploited.
A written request for royalty payments describing the original instructional materials in question, the course(s) in which the materials are to be used, and the estimated overall cost to students must be submitted either to the department/division head or a peer committee in accordance with unit practice. A written decision must be rendered within one month of the initial request. If the requested royalty payments have been denied, or a reduction from the initial request by the faculty member has been recommended, the written decision must include an explanation of the reasons why such royalty payments have been denied or a reduction recommended, together with a recommendation of what a reasonable royalty payment would be.
Faculty members who dispute the department/division head or peer committee decision regarding reasonable royalties may seek a review by the Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee of the University Faculty Senate in cooperation with the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.
In accordance with the general standards of professional ethics embodied in AD-47, faculty members also have an ethical obligation when they collect any royalty payments for any instructional materials to reveal those payments to all those affected, including but not limited to, the Penn State students in those courses.
Advisory Guidelines Regarding Peer Affirmation and Royalty Payments:
1. In applying and interpreting the advisory guidelines established here, the academic administrator or peer committee should apply them in light of the overarching goal of this policy set forth above.
2. In every course there is some essential core of information that the instructor has been paid to organize and deliver and that students have paid to receive. Normally this essential core goes beyond course material prepared by others to include the faculty member’s own intellectual contributions, which may include printed or posted materials. Therefore, a royalty payment is not automatically reasonable and justified for printed or posted material of the faculty member’s own creation.
3. In light of Guideline No. 2, a royalty payment is not reasonable or justified for printed or posted materials that are customary to a faculty member's core contribution to the conduct of a course, including but not limited to a course syllabus, reading schedules, versions of lecture notes, packets of what would otherwise be “handouts” of illustrative material used in class, and collections of copied readings or other printed material authored or prepared by others that are merely assembled and organized by the faculty member for the convenience of students.
4. A reasonable royalty payment to the faculty member may be justified for printed or posted course materials if they represent a substantial intellectual product contribution by the faculty member and if they bring added value to a course as a supplement to the faculty member's core contribution. For instance, if the course could be taught using a commercially available text or manual in lieu of the printed materials prepared by the faculty member, or if those materials could plausibly be used as supporting material in a similar course at another institution, then those materials may reasonably be considered supplemental.
5. Faculty members are ethically obligated not to financially exploit students (see AD-47, Part II, "General Standards of Professional Ethics"). Procedures currently exist under HR-76 ("Faculty Rights and Responsibilities") and RA-10 ("Handling Inquiries/Investigations into Questions of Ethics in Research and in Other Scholarly Activities") to deal with alleged violations of this ethical standard. Faculty members should avoid conflicts of interest in making academic and/or financial decisions regarding students (see HR-91, "Conflict of Interest").
6. Royalty payments for textbooks and other books authored, co-authored, or edited by a faculty member are presumptively reasonable, and are excluded from this policy provided that: (a) their use is reasonably related to the purpose of the course for which they are assigned; (b) they have been published by an academic or commercial press in which the faculty member does not hold an ownership or vested interest; (c) they have been subject to a peer review process in their publication, and; (d) they have been produced for use beyond Penn State courses. Nevertheless, faculty members who author, co-author, or edit such publications and assign them to the courses they teach are encouraged to use the peer affirmation process described above to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.
7. The appropriate academic administrator or peer committee, according to unit practice, is responsible for determining the reasonableness of the royalty amount. In making this determination, the administrator or committee may, among other things, take into account factors such as standard royalty payments in academic publishing, royalties typically paid for reproduction permissions, and the percentage of the royalty payment in relation to the price for which the work is sold to students. These factors are merely suggestions and are not intended to be exhaustive of other considerations determined to be relevant by the appropriate academic administrator or peer committee.
CROSS REFERENCES
Related policies include:
AD-47, General Standards of Professional Ethics
HR-76, Faculty Rights and Responsibilities
HR-90, Extra Compensation for Exempt Staff Employees
HR-91, Conflict of Interest
RA-10, Handling Inquiries/Investigations into Questions of Ethics in Research and in Other Scholarly Activities
RA-11, Patents and Copyrights (Intellectual Property)
FN-14, Use of University Tangible Assets, Equipment, Supplies and Services
RATIONALE
Because AD-46 has as its primary focus copyright clearance, and because the issue of royalty payments is distinctively different from the obligation to obtain copyright clearance, the Faculty Affairs Committee agreed to recommend a separate policy governing royalty payments for course materials. The overarching goal of this new policy is to offer incentives to faculty to produce more and better quality instructional materials for use by students at Penn State and elsewhere by allowing faculty to recover some of the costs of their work, and at the same time to protect Penn State students from potential financial exploitation.
COSTING
The proposed policy will not add significant costs. The intent of the policy is to conduct most activities at the Department/ College/Campus level. Therefore, no major additional expenses are foreseen. Appeals will be conducted in accordance with established procedures under HR-76.
SENATE COMMITTEE ON FACULTY AFFAIRS
Shelton S. Alexander
Syed Saad Andaleeb
Kultegin Aydin
Ingrid Blood
Clay Calvert
Lynn A Carpenter
Renee D. Diehl
James M. Donovan
Jackie R Esposito
Dorothy H. Evensen
Veronique M. Foti
Margaret B. Goldman
Elizabeth Hanley
Ravinder Koul
Robert LaPorte
Sallie M. McCorkle
Louis Milakofsky, Chair
Katherine C. Pearson
William A. Rowe
Robert Secor
Jeffrey M. Sharp
Stephen W. Stace
Kim C. Steiner
Valerie N. Stratton, V. Chair
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FACULTY RIGHTS AND PRIVACY ISSUES
Shelton S. Alexander
Kultegin Aydin
Melvin Blumberg, Chair
Clay Calvert
Lynn A. Carpenter
James M. Donovan
Sallie M. McCorkle
Louis Milakofsky
Katherine C. Pearson
SENATE COMMITTEE ON FACULTY AFFAIRS
Revision to Administrative Guidelines for HR-23: Promotion and Tenure Procedures and Regulations
(Advisory/Consultative)
[Implementation: July 1, 2002 following approval by the President]
Introduction
The Faculty Affairs Committee makes the following recommendation to include quality indicators in the assessment of faculty publications and creative activity.
Recommendation
The Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs recommends that a new section “D” be added under “II. Criteria Statements” of the Administrative Guidelines for HR-23, as shown below. (The complete guidelines may be found at http://www.psu.edu/oldmain/vprov.)
[TABLE OF CONTENTS LISTING]
II. CRITERIA STATEMENTS
A. Role of the Academic Unit in Elaborating General Criteria
B. Role of the Academic Unit in Specifying Evaluative Methods for the Three Criteria
C. Special Guidelines for the Criterion of Teaching Ability and Effectiveness
D. Special Guidelines for the Criterion of Research or Creative Accomplishment and Scholarship
DE. Role of the Executive Vice President and Provost of the University
EF. Dissemination of Criteria Statements
The new section “II. D.” would read as follows:
D. Special Guidelines for the Criterion of Research or Creative Accomplishment and Scholarship
Evaluation of research or creative accomplishment and scholarship is based in part on the candidate’s record of publication, exhibition, performance, and similar achievements. The evaluation of accomplishments in this category shall emphasize their quality, although it is expected that this body of work will reflect sustained effort and productivity as may be indicated by quantity. Indicators of quality may include journal acceptance rates or other evidence of journal quality; quality of press and reviews of book publications; frequency of citation of the candidate’s works or other evidence of impact; awards related to the accomplishment; or other indicators deemed appropriate by the candidate’s unit.
In addition to a chronological presentation of the candidate’s record of research or creative accomplishment and scholarship, the department head or other appropriate administrator (as defined in these guidelines) shall identify a reasonable number of the candidate’s most significant works and obtain for the dossier documentation of their quality using indicators such as those listed above. Review committees and administrative officers shall explicitly address the quality of the candidate’s scholarship in their written evaluations. In doing so, they shall also consider evidence of quality contained in the assessments by external evaluators.
To indicate the place for this new information, a new bullet will be placed on the rainbow divider for RESEARCH, CREATIVE ACCOMPLISHMENTS, AND SCHOLARSHIP. The bullet will be placed after those requiring listings for research and/or scholarly publications and for creative accomplishments. It will translate the above recommendation as follows:
Quality indicators for shortlist of candidate’s most significant achievements
in research and/or scholarly publications and creative accomplishments
(as appropriate)
Rationale
The Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs believes that the University's tenure and promotion process should emphasize quality in assessing faculty research and creative activity. This is in keeping with the document issued in May 2000 by the Association of American Universities, in conjunction with the Association of Research Libraries, entitled “Principles for Emerging Systems of Scholarly Publishing.” The AAU commended the document to AAU presidents and chancellors for discussion with faculties. Of the nine principles presented in the document, one (Principle 8) addressed the promotion and tenure process as a possible causal factor in the proliferation of publications: “To assure quality and reduce proliferation of publications, the evaluation of faculty should place a greater emphasis on quality of publications and a reduced emphasis on quantity.”
This proposal to emphasize quality in the Administrative Guidelines is eminently sensible and entirely consistent with the criterion for Research or Creative Accomplishment and Scholarship in HR-23, which explicitly and implicitly emphasizes quality of performance:
competence, usually demonstrated through publication, exhibition, performance, or presentation of scholarly papers, to carry out research or creative work of high quality and scholarly significance and the ability to train students in research methods and practice; evidence of thorough understanding of the field; maintenance of high levels of academic performance; recognized reputation in the subject matter field; evidence of continued professional growth and active contribution to professional organizations. [HR-23, Section II]
