Does MSU Administration Deserve 80% Larger Raises Than Faculty?
Graph of cumulative increases in average executive administration and tenure faculty salaries, alongside inflation, over 2016-2025.
The UTSF Negotiating Team is working hard at the bargaining table to ensure faculty receive the compensation we have earned and deserve. Once bargaining concludes, we will share details of the tentative agreement, which requires a full membership vote to become final.
In the spirit of transparency, we want to highlight one of the many reasons why this fight is so critical. We focus here on data for tenure system faculty raises as a clear example of the egregious nature of MSU’s treatment of faculty. The data – obtained from MSU through FOIA – reveals a gross discrepancy between the trajectory of administration salaries and tenure system faculty salaries.
The reality of salary raises during the last ten years (2016–2025) indicates:
MSU Executive Administration: Average salaries increased by 43.47% (beating inflation by 7.98 percentage points).
Cumulative Inflation: Rose by 35.49%.
Tenure System Faculty: Average salaries increased by just 24.04% (falling 11.45 percentage points behind inflation).
Put plainly: MSU administration salaries have grown 80.82% faster than tenure system faculty salaries. While administrators have outpaced inflation, our faculty’s spending power has significantly eroded.
The Missing 8%: Where Did Our Raises Go?
You might wonder: How is faculty growth only at 24% when MSU supposedly allocated yearly raise pools totaling 32.5% (24.5% “merit” + 8% “equity-and-excellence”) over this same period?
When pressed by our Negotiating Team, MSU negotiators could not provide a concrete reconciliation for this discrepancy. However, they did make a stunning admission: The 8% equity-and-excellence pool was never actually exclusively distributed to tenure system faculty.
Instead, the administration admitted that allocated faculty funds may have been used, in part or in whole, for purposes unrelated to tenure system faculty raises. Administration explicitly noted that this occurred because tenure system faculty were not part of a unionized bargaining unit, leaving the administration free to divert our compensation elsewhere — without accountability.
We suspect this diversion of funds is exactly what has happened: our actual salary growth of 24.04% almost exactly mirrors the 24.5% merit pool but seemingly excludes the additional 8% we would expect had the equity-and-excellence allocation gone completely to tenure system faculty.
In other words, without a union, our raises were treated as optional and secondary to other needs. With a union, raises for tenure system faculty will be legally binding. If you are ready to stand against these outrageous practices and secure a fair contract, please join us today and help protect faculty compensation!
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Do you think UTSF is a step towards positive change at MSU? Encourage your colleagues to join the union and attend the membership meeting — send them to this link to join: https://mymea.org/msu-utsf/apply/#/
