Market forces are responsible for discrepancies between professors' salaries in different departments at the College according to James Wright, dean of the faculty.
"We pay competitive market salaries for these faculty - and there can be some variation among fields, largely based on supply of faculty and how the competition is defined," Wright said. "In areas where private sector industries are also recruiting, it can be more expensive," he said.
The College will spend approximately $25.5 million this year on Arts and Sciences faculty salaries and benefits, Wright said, adding that this represents only about 20 percent of the College-only budget, the part allocated only for undergraduates.
Professors who teach in fields which offer employment options outside of teaching, such as computer science, make significantly more than those who teach, for example, in the humanities said Chair of the Economics department Jack Menge.
"You must pay more for a computer scientist than a religion professor because everyone else is paying them more," Menge said. "A computer scientist has all sorts of options in government and industry."
But this sort of salary discrepancy is common throughout the country, said Robert Henricks, chair of the religion department.
"As for discrepancies between departments, it may not be fair, in terms of workload, that people in the sciences and in departments like economics receive higher salaries than people in the humanities, but it is a fact of life across the country," Henricks said.
"The reason: they can be employed in business and industry where they will be paid very well for their services. Most of us in the humanities don't have that option," he said.
Wright said the College does not keep statistics on average salary by department, but that discrepancies do exist between departments.
"We don't keep statistics on departmental salary because they would not be very meaningful. Seniority is a much more important variable in explaining salary differences than is departmental affiliation," he said.
He said the salary variations within a department are "based on experience as well as on market factors having to do with certain intra-departmental specialties."
English Professor Tom Luxon said this salary gap is not fair, but salaries are not determined by fairness,
"I think that people with similar responsibilities should be paid the same. But market forces have nothing to do with fairness. The world isn't fair, it's competitive," he said.
But Wright said he thinks the salary differences between departments are overestimated but would not provide specific numbers.
"One of the most important factors that leads to variation in initial hiring has to do with experience - years since receiving the terminal degree," he said.
Wright said the College is making an effort to diminish salary gaps at the assistant professor level.
"Within the limits of continuing dictates and the constraints of our compensation budget, we do seek to correct these initial variations," he said.
"We look for ways to increase salaries up to the higher levels. As people become more senior, department, area of specialization, or other market factors that may have influenced starting salaries become less consequential," Wright said.
Menge said that it is not practical to pay all professors the same salary as professors are paid in the humanities.
"If you were to pay everyone what you pay all the philosophers, you get lousy computer scientists," Menge said.
He said that it would not make sense to pay humanities professors more than other colleges do.
"We're trying to maintain excellence in all our departments, and to do that it costs more in some than in others," Menge said.
Menge is the chair of the Arts and Sciences sub-committee on priorities and the College Priorities Advisory Committee which advise the Dean of Faculty; and the President and the Provost respectively on the total compensation pool budgeted for faculty salaries.
"We want to compete against Harvard, Duke and Wisconsin, but to do so we don't have to pay higher salaries than they pay," he said.
Menge said the Committee of the Faculty is responsible for advising the Dean of the Faculty as to the level of the College's compensation relative to the other schools in the College's comparison group, a collection of other schools, including all the Ivy League schools, that the College compares itself with when examining salary levels.
The College Priorities Advisory Committee is responsible to the Dean, the Provost and the President for providing the overview to insure that College priorities, such as faculty compensation, are correctly reflected in the annual budget.
Annual salary increases could be based on the median percentage increase per year at other schools in Dartmouth's comparison group, Menge stated.
But Menge said the formula would only determine the total compensation pool. The Dean of the Faculty is the only one who decides how to apportion the pool.
Economics Professor David Blanchflower explained the justification for the salary gap.
"If you pay everyone the same, the best people will be paid less than they're worth and the worse people will be paid more than they're worth," he said.
Because market forces determine salaries, Blanchflower said, salaries could significantly change as the skills valued by the market change.
"Values change through time so the subjects in high demand may change," he said.
The market has not always determined professors' salaries, but it has been about 75 years since the salaries were more egalitarian, Menge said.
"Seventy-five years ago liberal arts college teaching was a way of life. Because it was the particular lifestyle that was the important variable, most professors' salaries tended to be very similar," he said.
