Stand Firm has published a graph of the average faculty salaries for various educational institutions of the Missouri Synod. You can look at it on his blog and I am most grateful for what he has done. I did not put this together and do not have a clue how the numbers were crunched. Even if they are off but a little, there is a disturbing obvious problem. St. Louis compensates its faculty better than Ft. Wayne. There should be some equity here. We would expect that the seminaries of our Church would be similar if not exactly the same (housing costs might vary by local cost of living issues). If we are to take these numbers at face value, then the Synod through its elected boards which govern the two institutions is being selective in compensation and that is not a good thing. Perhaps some of it is due to funds available. Perhaps some of it is for other reasons. As an alumnus of Ft. Wayne I believe that the faculty there deserves equity with their colleagues in St. Louis. It is not right.
So what is there to be done? Let us give Ft. Wayne the financial support to make good on this inequity! Job descriptions are probably fairly similar as are teaching loads. The only reasonable difference should be cost of living and I do not believe that cost of living could account for more than $20K per year in difference. We cannot allow this to stand.
According to the graph below, again borrowed from Stand Firm, only Concordia Ann Arbor and Selma compensate their faculty at a lower rate than Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne. Again, most disconcerting!
3 comments:
Do both seminary faculties have the same credentials and experience on average? Basically, if one faculty has longer average teaching(and other) experience and more extensive scholarship, then it is apples to oranges. I don't know. Just asking.
The Excel data indicate that the salary difference between the two seminaries started to increase in 1996 (coincidentally the year of President Barry's CTS Visitation Report), and dramatically after 2001.
Were there a significant number of senior professors retired and junior faculty replacements hired at CTS during this time?
If there was a turnover at CTS, there has also been one at CS in the past couple of years yet the graph shows no plateau but an ever rising increase.
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