While average faculty salaries across the country are up 3.1 percent this academic year, real salary levels actually fell 0.3 percent when adjusted for inflation, according to a recent report, which also found that UC Davis faculty salaries generally have kept pace with inflation.

At UC Davis, annual salaries for full professors rose 3.6 percent to $107,000, for associate professors 2 percent to $70,200 and for assistant professors 3.9 percent to $63,100. The 2005 inflation rate was 3.5 percent.

Nationwide, the average annual salary for a full professor is just under $95,000. Full professors at private doctoral universities make the most, on average: $131,292. Assistant professors at community colleges earn an average of $47,046.

The data come from the American Association of University Professors survey of more than 1,400 institutions. Released in April, the report revealed that UC Davis is ranked around the middle in the 10-campus UC system. Full professors at Berkeley, UCLA, Irvine, San Diego and Santa Barbara earn more on average than those at Davis, which outpaces San Francisco, Riverside and, presumably, Merced, though no figures were available for that campus's first year.

The report, titled "The Devaluing of Education," stressed that average faculty salaries across the country are falling due to insufficient investment in higher education. It also noted that the disparity in salaries between public and private research institutions is growing.

Barbara Horwitz, UC Davis vice provost for academic personnel, said the report was "what I would expect" for UC Davis when faculty demographics, cost-of-living and recruitment issues were taken into account. She noted that the highest average pay for full professors in the UC system occurs at UC Berkeley and UCLA, which are located in more expensive urban areas.

It is also true, Horwitz said, that "UC salary scales have not kept up with the competition" and have bred some inequity among longtime and newer faculty. Consequently, the campus is developing a plan to begin to address those inequities, Horwitz said. The Academic Senate and the deans are currently providing feedback on the plan, which might include as much as $3 million for salary compression efforts and take effect as soon as July 1.

"This is just a first step," she said. "We plan to continue to work on salary compression issues."

Horwitz described the faculty demographics at UC Davis as having "bulges" at the more senior and junior ends. "We simply have fewer faculty in the middle of their careers," she said, "and this distribution pattern could contribute to some of the campus differences in average faculty salary."

Dan Simmons, chair of the UC Davis Academic Senate, said faculty pay is an important issue throughout the UC system.

"Sadly, these data demonstrate how far behind faculty salaries at UC have fallen behind comparable and lesser institutions," said Simmons, a professor of law. "The data also demonstrate that UC Davis faculty salaries are falling behind relative to other UC campuses. This issue must be rectified if we are to remain a competitive research university."

Charles Nash, UC Davis professor emeritus of chemistry and a leader in the Council of UC Faculty Associations, said the cost-of-living factor concerns him. "Making $100,000 in Davis is probably equivalent to making $67,000 in Corvallis, Oregon," he said. "It's a difficult situation for the professors and the university. Since the 1980s Davis has become increasingly unaffordable."

On other fronts, the study found that among full-time faculty across the country, women earn about 80 percent of what men are paid. For example, male full professors earned $97,642, or 12.2 percent more than female full professors. And male associate professors made $68,990, or 6.6 percent more than female associate professors.

Horwitz explained that at the assistant and associate professor ranks, "we see no difference in salaries between men and women in a given discipline."

However, she noted, the average salaries in the full professor rank are higher for men than for women. "This primarily reflects the fact that there are more men at the higher professorial steps due largely to the longer period of time that these men have been on campus."

Horwitz said the campus has increased its hiring of women in recent years. As they move to the higher salary steps, the "disparities should narrow," she said.

The gap between public and private faculty salaries also continues to widen. The overall private faculty salary was $97,434, compared with $76,361 for the overall public salary. At Stanford University, a private school, associate professors earned $106,100 while the same professorial category at UC Berkeley (the highest-paying UC campus) garnered $81,900.

The report noted that during the past 20 years, average faculty salaries have increased just 0.25 percent when adjusted for inflation.