THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 2, 1995 TAG: 9507020047
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 190 lines
More than two dozen faculty members, including three current or former department chairmen, have left Old Dominion University for higher-paying jobs within the past year, a university study says.
At least 10 got increases exceeding $10,000 a year, at schools from Kentucky to Arizona.
ODU leaders said the study verifies the long-held fear of college officials across Virginia: that the double whammy of college budget cuts and infinitesimal pay raises will drive away top-notch professors.
``The major concern of faculty is that the Commonwealth of Virginia is not supportive of higher education,'' said Jo Ann Gora, the provost of Old Dominion. ``We all want to be recognized for what we accomplish, and more and more faculty feel they're not being valued for what they contribute.''
Parents and students suffer, too, if ODU can't hold on to dedicated teachers, Gora said. ``They have a right to feel that we should be able to attract and retain the best and brightest, that it's not a swinging door.''
Twenty-five professors either left ODU last summer or will leave this summer for more lucrative jobs, according to the study, which President James V. Koch presented to board members at a meeting last week. ODU has about 600 full-time faculty members.
The report is the first by any school in Virginia to gauge the extent of faculty turnover since the budget reductions, Richmond officials said.
ODU's study did not compare the numbers of professors leaving now with departures in the mid-1980s, before the state began cutting college aid. But administrators believe that today they are losing more - and better - professors.
``These are people who are keepers,'' said David R. Hager, associate vice president for academic affairs, who compiled the study. ``They're not the ones who shop around from institution to institution.''
The higher-profile departures include:
Helen M. Eigenberg, chairwoman of the sociology and criminal justice department, who left last week to become professor of criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky University. Eigenberg, who joined ODU in 1988, will get a raise of more than $15,000 - from $44,500 at ODU to $60,000.
Gregory Frazer, who left last summer as chairman of ODU's School of Community Health Professions and Physical Therapy to lead the health services administration department at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Frazer had been at ODU since 1986. His annual salary went from $44,700 to $69,000, but now he works a full year instead of nine months.
Mary Ann Tetreault, a professor and former chairwoman of political science. Tetreault, who had been at Old Dominion since 1979, left last summer for Iowa State University, which offered her $60,000 a year. She had been getting $49,000 at ODU.
All three said in interviews last week that the salary issue, together with other belt-tightening measures, led to their departures. ``It really came down to a matter of resources,'' Frazer said. ``Apparently, my talents were appreciated, and they were willing to give me a better deal.''
Since 1990, Virginia has given average faculty raises ranging from zero to 3.6 percent, trailing the national average in all but one year. The state is still tops in the South in average salaries for four-year public colleges and above the national average, according to the Southern Regional Education Board.
But the salary gap between Virginia and the nation as a whole has narrowed considerably. In 1990, Virginia's average faculty salary was $4,000 higher; in 1994, the last year for which national data are available, the state's average was less than $1,000 higher - $49,134, compared with the nation's $48,200.
That is not good enough, said some state officials. ``Our intent is not to be average or slightly above average,'' said Peter Blake, a senior analyst for the State Council of Higher Education, ``but to be among the most competitive universities in the country.''
The council has targeted faculty salaries in an early draft of budget recommendations to Gov. George F. Allen for 1996-97.
``The state,'' it said in a report last month, ``should renew its commitment to nationally competitive faculty salaries. . . . Virginia's colleges and universities already are losing some of their best faculty to institutions in states that are providing better support to higher education.''
Virginia's secretary of education, Beverly Sgro, said she has not yet seen a ``brain drain'' across the state, but the Allen administration is worried about the stagnant salaries. The ODU report, in fact, was triggered by a request from Allen, during a recent meeting with college presidents, for information on faculty turnover.
``We're concerned, and we want to be sure that we remain competitive,'' Sgro said. ``But I can't give you any promises of what we're going to do.''
For some professors, the issue goes beyond bigger paychecks.
``It's not completely the higher salary that motivated my leaving,'' said Gregory M. Noronha, an assistant professor of finance moving to Arizona State University West, in Phoenix, this summer. His pay will rise from $58,500 to more than $70,000. ``We have this high degree of uncertainty,'' he said. ``All these continuing budget cuts that don't stop. . . .''
Eigenberg, the criminal justice professor, quickly ticked off her new benefits in Kentucky: A computer lab for criminal justice students. A ``well-maintained'' building with a decent cafeteria. Unlimited money for photocopying and travel. Plenty of secretaries.
Most also spoke of lighter workloads. At ODU, Frazer oversaw six academic programs and taught three courses a semester. In Florida, he is responsible for four programs and one class a semester. Noronha, whose teaching load rose from two to three classes a semester at ODU, will return to two in Phoenix.
It's not that Noronha dislikes teaching. But juggling more classes with ever-present research demands grew more taxing. ``No matter what people say about teaching,'' he said, ``the only thing they reward is research.''
But some professors listed in the ODU report left for reasons unrelated to finances. At least two were denied tenure, Hager said.
Another, Charles E. Jones, a political science professor who headed ODU's Institute for the Study of Minority Issues, became chairman of the African-American studies department at Georgia State University in Atlanta last year. His salary went from $51,000 to $77,000, but Jones said he left because of Old Dominion's lack of commitment to African-American studies. ``They had a chance to build a jewel program . . . but it was never a priority.''
And he doesn't believe it was a budget issue. ODU poured money into its international studies program in the last five years, he said, ``but as long as I've been director of ISME, there has not been an additional dollar.''
Not all colleges see a stampede of professors out the campus gates.
At James Madison University, the College of Arts and Letters has about 30 faculty openings. Only three are because of professors' leaving for higher-paying jobs, said Richard Whitman, the provost of the college.
But at other schools, administrators are still worried. At the College of William and Mary, ``there hasn't been a large exodus, but we feel it's a fragile situation,'' said Gillian T. Cell, the college provost.
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker believes Tech already has ``seen good faculty go who before would have said no.'' J. Greg Ferry counts himself as one.
Ferry, a professor of microbiology, is leaving this summer to become a distinguished professor at Penn State. He is taking 10 graduate students and nearly half a million dollars in grants with him.
He is getting a raise, which he won't discuss, but it wasn't the money or the fancier title that drew him to Penn State. It was the chance to escape the petty politics and sour morale that he says were spawned by the cuts.
The dour atmosphere lurks right outside his office. ``You go to the hall and want to talk about your latest research or your newest graduate student. But you start griping and you complain. There's just constant complaining.''
Tech is merging departments, offering buyouts to more than 100 professors. ``At Penn State,'' Ferry said, ``they're expanding; the future is bright.''
College officials said the progress they made in boosting salaries in the '80s, when Virginia professors sometimes got 10 percent annual raises, has been virtually erased in the cinched '90s.
Even more revealing than overall state salary averages, they said, are the ``peer rankings'' of individual colleges. For every state-supported school, the state has chosen 24 similar U.S. universities to track salary trends.
With the healthy raises of the late '80s, most colleges in the state were pulled up to the top 40 percent of their peer groups. Now, nearly all Virginia schools are in the bottom halves of their groups. (Virginia's overall salary average is still higher than the country's because the national average, unlike the peer groups, includes lower-quality schools, said Blake, the analyst with the State Council of Higher Education.)
ODU, with a $46,300 average salary, ranks 19th out of 25, between the University of South Florida and the University of Wyoming. The University of Virginia is in the middle of its pack, behind such schools as Duke, Vanderbilt and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. William and Mary is in the bottom third. ``No organization or business can afford to be that non-competitive,'' said Cell, W&M's provost.
A 2.25 percent average increase for 1995-96, which takes effect in Virginia in December, won't help much, said Hager, the associate vice president at ODU. ``At two-and-a-quarter percent, you can't do much; that's not even cost of living. You can't recognize merit very well.''
Hager describes faculty raises as ``unfunded mandates'': The General Assembly mandates the percentage, but puts up less than half the money to finance it. For the December raise, the state will give ODU about $512,000, but the university will have to find an extra $645,000, officials estimate. With a small endowment and restrictions on tuition increases, there is no way ODU can go beyond that to offer larger raises, Hager said.
The departing professors said the state, like an unsupervised child at a china cabinet, has unthinkingly shattered one of its prize possessions.
``It's not like I want to leave; I owe a lot to Virginia,'' said Noronha, who got his M.B.A. and doctorate at Virginia Tech. ``But I don't understand what the state is trying to do with higher education.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Graphics
ADRIANA LIBREROS/Staff
HOW ODU FARES
SOURCE: State Council of Higher Education
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES PROFESSORS SALARIES by CNB