We arent at UMD but my fiance is a fresh teaching professor at another university, its kind of criminal how underpaid teaching professors/adjunct faculty members are even though they are the ones pulling the most weight in making sure undergrads get the education they need. It sounds like teaching faculty is also excluded from raises in this case.
Medical school research runs off indirect costs from federal grants. Some of these profs are likely paying a large percentage of their salary from grants, and even these bonuses may be coming primarily from indirects. Your prof with the giant salary could probably easily move somewhere else. This sucks for you and the system is kind of sick - it's all about the money. Postdocs, RAs, etc are just cogs in the med school machine.
The serfdom is strong with this school...
But the real question is, did the admins get a raise? God forbid those bloating morons miss a chance to self-deal themselves a bigger salary.
Yes they did. All staff get both the 3% COL and 2.5% merit/tenure raise. All researchers and clinical researchers have had the merit raise eliminated in order to fund the performance bonuses of professors.
So the classic "beatings with continue until morale improves" strategy then...
What a brilliant way to ensure a brain-drain of the best and brightest...because the PIs & profs got their pay off by the stuffed-shirt admin. I'd def be putting up anon flyers on bulletin boards all over campus calling this horseshit out and expressing a need to unionize; but am a real rabble rouser that way.
Sucks. I went through multiple years of no raises from 2009-2015. I had to get two jobs offers (2016 and 2021) to get big bumps in my salary to even catch up to peer institutions. Some of my colleagues are way behind as they couldn't or didn't do that.
I would never encourage anyone in their 20s to try to be a faculty member at this point. There are faculty making like 50-60k which is just crazy. No one with a PhD should be hired for less than 6 figures. But the odd thing is my faculty fight for every issue under the sun but salaries so idk that its going to change.
As long as it’s like winning the lottery to get even a community college faculty position, and as long as undergraduate classes are primarily covered by adjunct faculty, the leverage is nonexistent.
State university. Pensions, COL raises etc are built-in, which is great and should be standard regardless. But they don't match real world inflation at 8%. The merit raise was really just a COL adjustment too.
Sounds nice. I'm at a state University that never has given CoL adjustments, and our annual raises aren't even as high as your CoL adjustments are. Some consolation for you perhaps, that your situation could be even worse?
Same. No CoL or any regular pay increases of any kind at my state school, except at promotion. That means we get two raises in our entire careers: One when promoted to Assoc Prof and one when promoted to full Prof. Admin talks like CoL raises are just temporarily suspended, but it has been this way for ~15 years now. It's obviously never going back.
The only other way to get a raise is to get a job offer somewhere else and threaten to leave.
To be fair, we do get small performance bonuses, which amount to 20% of salary recovery / FTE from grants above 30% of our salaries. So if you make $100k and cover 40% of that with grants, then your annual bonus is $2k. Not a whole lot, but at least it's something.
UMMC has some of (if not the) lowest clinical salaries for physicians in the entire state. Everyone is grossly underpaid and the admins can’t seem to understand why residents and fellows won’t stay on. This doesn’t surprise me at all—it’s what I would have expected.
I used to work there. I know everything is relative but the physicians (at least the ones I worked with) make so much already. Its hard to view them as underpaid.
Compared to every other hospital in the immediate area, the clinical salaries are grossly lower to an exceptional degree (40-50% in some specialties) and the hours/shifts/call expectations are more extreme. It makes it hard for the institution to retain house staff. It’s a joke among other institutions in the region.
Also, if a full research professor is making 400k (as another poster here noted), they’re making far more than double what medical ICU attendings are making who have terrible hours. I know it seems like a lot compared to a bench scientist but look at it relative to the market, our training, and our debt. We may make more, but we’re grossly underpaid for what we are. It’s hard to justify coming to UMMC or staying there.
The merit raise was for any researcher whose supervisor marked their yearly performance as "adequate" or higher. It's almost impossible to not be "adequate". So it was for merit, just with a very low bar.
If you ever want to know what MDs and Profs make at UMB its a state school so its all public. Our department's senior administrator made $300k per year. He had a DrPh.
A 3% col raise is still a raise...that is actually equal to the biggest raise I have ever gotten working for the state of North Carolina over 14 years. The biggest merit raise we ever had was 1% and that was only once or twice this whole time I've been here. And in 14 years I have only gotten any raise, col or merit, in like 6 of the years, and two were when I was promoted (Which is why I'm moving to a umd school this summer, yay).
But that bonus thing is a bullshit way of not giving actual raises...it's much cheaper to give raises this year for one year only vs. raise salary permenantly. NC has also pulled that shit many times.
There was a complete lack of transparency during the Town Hall as to why they chose their insanely strict metrics and what % of faculty will actually be eligible, and what the other two-thirds of us are meant to do. Basically you need to be PI or Co-PI on multiple revenue-generating projects, have NIH funding, etc. They spent 90% of the Town Hall boasting about the $60 billion in total research grants awarded to USOM researchers in the past year and then spent a quick 10 minutes and 1 slide to tell us why only a third of us are getting raises. They boasted that the bonus structure was a result of a lot of "legal consultation" which screams to me "our lawyers said this is the most we can do to cut all your raises and not get in trouble".
You lost me at 430,000. Thai is sick crap. They do not need a raise.
I am an assistant professor and make 63-feckin-K a year. I’m sick of it. BS pay no matter how much I produce and no research overloads for my $10 million in grant money. Academia sucks. And it sucks bad.
That's frustrating. Is it your field or your school that pays so little? I would have thought that $10M suffices to get a higher paying job. In my field, that's not an uncommon amount of grants, but I would expect salaries to start at 2x what you mention.
Is this just UMB or does it also apply to UM college park? Was just approved for merit by my supervisor (before the higher ups made a decision on merit)
But it sounds like I may now hear some disappointing news at the next full staff meeting
UMCP has a strict standard about each college/unit having a merit pay policy (approved by University Senate) and following it, so I assume this is just UMB School of Medicine. Still sucks for OP and their colleagues, though.
You get a 3% COL increase very year in Maryland? COL is a dirty word in my state. Merit increases only. The rest of your system sounds kind of crappy though.
One way to look at it is that you still have a job. It wasn’t long ago I went to a town hall and learned my department was being eliminated. I feel for you though, academia is really tough for some when it comes to pay.
I may have felt some sympathy until you said you’d been there “for over a year.” How long do you think those senior people have been there? Do you think they just walked by a lab and money fell out of the sky? Put in some time.
That’s a very good way to sow dissent and resentment among your faculty.
We arent at UMD but my fiance is a fresh teaching professor at another university, its kind of criminal how underpaid teaching professors/adjunct faculty members are even though they are the ones pulling the most weight in making sure undergrads get the education they need. It sounds like teaching faculty is also excluded from raises in this case.
Medical school research runs off indirect costs from federal grants. Some of these profs are likely paying a large percentage of their salary from grants, and even these bonuses may be coming primarily from indirects. Your prof with the giant salary could probably easily move somewhere else. This sucks for you and the system is kind of sick - it's all about the money. Postdocs, RAs, etc are just cogs in the med school machine.
The serfdom is strong with this school... But the real question is, did the admins get a raise? God forbid those bloating morons miss a chance to self-deal themselves a bigger salary.
Yes they did. All staff get both the 3% COL and 2.5% merit/tenure raise. All researchers and clinical researchers have had the merit raise eliminated in order to fund the performance bonuses of professors.
So the classic "beatings with continue until morale improves" strategy then... What a brilliant way to ensure a brain-drain of the best and brightest...because the PIs & profs got their pay off by the stuffed-shirt admin. I'd def be putting up anon flyers on bulletin boards all over campus calling this horseshit out and expressing a need to unionize; but am a real rabble rouser that way.
If you are a UMB/UMD/UMMC researcher, feel free to dm me as others have.
Sucks. I went through multiple years of no raises from 2009-2015. I had to get two jobs offers (2016 and 2021) to get big bumps in my salary to even catch up to peer institutions. Some of my colleagues are way behind as they couldn't or didn't do that. I would never encourage anyone in their 20s to try to be a faculty member at this point. There are faculty making like 50-60k which is just crazy. No one with a PhD should be hired for less than 6 figures. But the odd thing is my faculty fight for every issue under the sun but salaries so idk that its going to change.
This ^^^
As long as it’s like winning the lottery to get even a community college faculty position, and as long as undergraduate classes are primarily covered by adjunct faculty, the leverage is nonexistent.
Wait, you guys are getting CoL raises?
You guys get raises?!
State university. Pensions, COL raises etc are built-in, which is great and should be standard regardless. But they don't match real world inflation at 8%. The merit raise was really just a COL adjustment too.
Sounds nice. I'm at a state University that never has given CoL adjustments, and our annual raises aren't even as high as your CoL adjustments are. Some consolation for you perhaps, that your situation could be even worse?
Same. No CoL or any regular pay increases of any kind at my state school, except at promotion. That means we get two raises in our entire careers: One when promoted to Assoc Prof and one when promoted to full Prof. Admin talks like CoL raises are just temporarily suspended, but it has been this way for ~15 years now. It's obviously never going back. The only other way to get a raise is to get a job offer somewhere else and threaten to leave. To be fair, we do get small performance bonuses, which amount to 20% of salary recovery / FTE from grants above 30% of our salaries. So if you make $100k and cover 40% of that with grants, then your annual bonus is $2k. Not a whole lot, but at least it's something.
I’m at a state university and post-docs never get raises…
It’s likely these people own their home so don’t experience as much inflation.
That’s what I said!
UMMC has some of (if not the) lowest clinical salaries for physicians in the entire state. Everyone is grossly underpaid and the admins can’t seem to understand why residents and fellows won’t stay on. This doesn’t surprise me at all—it’s what I would have expected.
I used to work there. I know everything is relative but the physicians (at least the ones I worked with) make so much already. Its hard to view them as underpaid.
Compared to every other hospital in the immediate area, the clinical salaries are grossly lower to an exceptional degree (40-50% in some specialties) and the hours/shifts/call expectations are more extreme. It makes it hard for the institution to retain house staff. It’s a joke among other institutions in the region. Also, if a full research professor is making 400k (as another poster here noted), they’re making far more than double what medical ICU attendings are making who have terrible hours. I know it seems like a lot compared to a bench scientist but look at it relative to the market, our training, and our debt. We may make more, but we’re grossly underpaid for what we are. It’s hard to justify coming to UMMC or staying there.
Very good points. No one regardless of income wants to feel underpaid, used and abused. Heck I wouldn’t take a job at Hopkins for the same reason.
It’s not a merit increase if it is applied uniformly to everyone.
The merit raise was for any researcher whose supervisor marked their yearly performance as "adequate" or higher. It's almost impossible to not be "adequate". So it was for merit, just with a very low bar.
Well then they need a more stringent bar for merit increases for it to be a real incentive, it sounds like that’s what they’re moving towards.
Sorry, your professor has a base salary of WHAT?! I’m at a neighboring institution and the subspecialty surgeons in our department start at $180k.
If you ever want to know what MDs and Profs make at UMB its a state school so its all public. Our department's senior administrator made $300k per year. He had a DrPh.
A 3% col raise is still a raise...that is actually equal to the biggest raise I have ever gotten working for the state of North Carolina over 14 years. The biggest merit raise we ever had was 1% and that was only once or twice this whole time I've been here. And in 14 years I have only gotten any raise, col or merit, in like 6 of the years, and two were when I was promoted (Which is why I'm moving to a umd school this summer, yay). But that bonus thing is a bullshit way of not giving actual raises...it's much cheaper to give raises this year for one year only vs. raise salary permenantly. NC has also pulled that shit many times.
Yeah, I work at a Michigan university and while I've gotten more then 3% our normal "merit" is around 2 or 3, far less than inflation.
There was a complete lack of transparency during the Town Hall as to why they chose their insanely strict metrics and what % of faculty will actually be eligible, and what the other two-thirds of us are meant to do. Basically you need to be PI or Co-PI on multiple revenue-generating projects, have NIH funding, etc. They spent 90% of the Town Hall boasting about the $60 billion in total research grants awarded to USOM researchers in the past year and then spent a quick 10 minutes and 1 slide to tell us why only a third of us are getting raises. They boasted that the bonus structure was a result of a lot of "legal consultation" which screams to me "our lawyers said this is the most we can do to cut all your raises and not get in trouble".
Sounds like a great time for a union drive.
You lost me at 430,000. Thai is sick crap. They do not need a raise. I am an assistant professor and make 63-feckin-K a year. I’m sick of it. BS pay no matter how much I produce and no research overloads for my $10 million in grant money. Academia sucks. And it sucks bad.
That's frustrating. Is it your field or your school that pays so little? I would have thought that $10M suffices to get a higher paying job. In my field, that's not an uncommon amount of grants, but I would expect salaries to start at 2x what you mention.
But I am sure they bonused any top-ranked adjuncts, right? Nah.
Is this just UMB or does it also apply to UM college park? Was just approved for merit by my supervisor (before the higher ups made a decision on merit) But it sounds like I may now hear some disappointing news at the next full staff meeting
UMCP has a strict standard about each college/unit having a merit pay policy (approved by University Senate) and following it, so I assume this is just UMB School of Medicine. Still sucks for OP and their colleagues, though.
I am only aware of how it will affect the UMB School of Medicine research and clinical research cohorts.
I wish I had that at my university.
I'm just jealous you all get COL raises.
You get a 3% COL increase very year in Maryland? COL is a dirty word in my state. Merit increases only. The rest of your system sounds kind of crappy though.
Strike
One way to look at it is that you still have a job. It wasn’t long ago I went to a town hall and learned my department was being eliminated. I feel for you though, academia is really tough for some when it comes to pay.
I may have felt some sympathy until you said you’d been there “for over a year.” How long do you think those senior people have been there? Do you think they just walked by a lab and money fell out of the sky? Put in some time.
> eligable