Salary Equity Study: Virginia Tech, Spring 2004

Abstract

Virginia Tech recently received funding from NSF under the auspices of Advance to promote the participation of women faculty in science and engineering. As a grant recipient, the university is required to investigate equity issues and, in particular, salary equity, as evaluated here. Models to assess salary equity were constructed by the Office of Institutional Research using data available in the University’s database and multiple regression techniques. Regressions followed a methodology recommended by NSF and developed by AAUP (Paychecks: A Guide to Conducting Salary Equity Studies for Higher Education Faculty, by Lois Haignere, AAUP, 2002). This report summarizes the findings of the study conducted and discusses which factors significantly affected the salary of tenured and tenure-track faculty in January, 2004, at Virginia Tech. The report proceeds with an explanation of the variables considered in the analysis, a description of the population involved in the study, a summary of the models generated in the analysis, an interpretation of the results, and some known short-comings of the report dealing with data quality issues.