Comprehensive Salary Study Released

Late last year, the Part-Time Committee of the California Federation of Teachers asked the research office of the CFT for data comparing salaries of part-time community college faculty around the state. As a result, the CFT conducted a study of the salaries of all 72 community college districts. Unlike previous studies, the CFT study teased out factors such as office hour pay, which vary wildly from district to district and can skew the data when comparing part-timer compensation.

The CFT compared salaries at four data points: Masters Degree/Step 1; Masters Degree/5th Year or 9th Semester; Highest Salary (including longevity) without a PhD; and Highest Salary (including longevity) with a PhD. What becomes clear from the data is that in those districts whose salary schedules contain more steps, such as Cabrillo, long-time part-time faculty do much better than those in other districts. On the other hand, the data also show that Cabrillo part-timers at the low end of the step-and-column cells are much lower in the salary rankings.

You may have seen another recent salary comparison published by the California Part-Time Faculty Association, erroneously showing Cabrillo part-timers as the highest paid in the state. Alas, this is nowhere near true. That study merely compiled data reported by each district to the chancellor’s office. Obviously the Cabrillo district did not report the numbers correctly. CCFT will look into how the district reports this data in the future to see if we can improve the reporting by the district.

The CFT study only compares salaries. This study did not look at benefits, another important piece of the total compensation picture.

Note that the figures in the chart reflect salaries in place at the end of 2013, including the recent one-time Cabrillo raises for 2013-14.

(CFT Sources: Returned Surveys and Salary Schedules from districts obtained from their websites and phone calls to districts. Multiple data sources may result in a range of interpretation.)

The full report can be found at:
http://ccftcabrillo.org/links/SalaryStudies/Part-TimeFacultySalaryComparisonsinCaliforniaCommunityColleges2013UPDATE.pdf

by John Govsky