Highlights from CUPA-HR 2021 Administrators in Higher Education Annual Report

Source: CUPA-HR

Authors: Jacqueline Bichsel, Sarah Nadel-Hawthorne, Melissa Fuesting, and Anthony Schmidt

Recently, CUPA-HR released the results of a survey that includes 47,985 administrators in 202 positions in higher education institutions. The survey captured the voices of senior administrators from a total of 1,053 institutions.

The key findings of the report include:

• The overall median annual salary for administrators increased only 0.36 percent between 2019-20 and 2020-21, which was lower than the increase in median salary of faculty, professionals, or staff.
• The size of the administrator workforce remained almost the same as the previous year.
• The number of women and racial and ethnic minorities in administrative positions also remained the same as the previous year, suggesting that layoffs during a pandemic may not have greatly impacted these groups overall. However, the gap is mostly found in Deans and Associate/Assistant Deans.
• Overall, women are still paid less than men and are more represented in lower-paying positions.
• The executive perks of presidents were impacted by the pandemic, with fewer receiving cars, club memberships, or housing subsidies in 2020-21.

To read the full report, please click here.

—Haelim Chun