Two-year long salary freeze ends

Boston University faculty and staff will receive merit salary increases averaging 3.5 percent this semester, the first raises in two years, President ad interim Aram Chobanian said Friday.

The increases go into effect starting in January and should hit faculty and staff paychecks starting in February, Provost Dennis Berkey said in an email Wednesday. Chobanian first publicly announced that faculty and staff will receive increases in a letter to the community on the BU website over winter break.

Chobanian said in a phone interview that salary increases were made a main concern this year because it had been two years since salaries were increased.

“I think, first of all, it was a priority change,” he said. “It was a recognition of the fact that the faculty had not received raises for two years.”

Faculty and staff salaries have been frozen since January 2002 as administrators struggled to keep the budget balanced while funding several large construction projects and dealing with a downturn in the economy. Other colleges, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have had to deal with similar financial situations.

Administrators will make budget cuts in other areas to offset the salary increases, Chobanian said, though he declined to name specific areas that will be targeted. Berkey said the budget situation “remains challenging,” but credited Chobanian with making the raises a priority.

“President Chobanian felt that we could not ask the faculty and staff to continue their critically important functions for another year without the recognition and reward that come with salary increases,” Berkey said.

Faculty Council Chairman Herbert Voigt praised the decision, calling it a “wonderful gesture on the part of the university.” After faculty spent two years “contributing to the welfare of the university” by going without the raises, the salary increases became necessary in 2004 to keep BU competitive with colleges and universities throughout the country, Voigt said. Chobanian also said competition was one of the reasons the increases were necessary.

Though Voigt said he has not heard of faculty leaving because of salary issues, the potential jumping ship would “increase exponentially” if faculty and staff were forced to weather the situation for one more year.

“If we’re going to be attracting the best and the brightest to our faculty, we’ve got to be competitive,” he said. “One of the ways you do that is to offer reasonable expectation of salary increases with meritorious performance.”

Professor David Mayers, the Political Science Department chairman, said the salary increases will also help faculty and staff morale. Though Mayers said he did not hear outright complaining about the lack of raises, there was grumbling.

“Both faculty and staff will be very much heartened by raises,” he said. “There are few things more demoralizing than going without pay raises. The faculty never took vows of poverty, and these raises will help a great deal.”

Berkey said BU’s large building program, which includes the nearly complete student recreation center and arena on the John Hancock Student Village site, graduate student housing across from the School of Management on Commonwealth Avenue and the Life Sciences and Engineering building on Cummington Street, will continue to strain the budget. The building program was a main way then-Chancellor John Silber justified the salary freeze at a faculty assembly meeting last spring.

While the university should work on improving facilities on campus, Mayers said it is more important to make sure the people who work inside the buildings feel appreciated.

“It’s fine to invest in buildings, and those are crucial, and certainly the physical plant at BU needs improving,” he said. “More important than that, however, is investing in people – people who inhabit classrooms have to feel they’re not falling behind economically. They have to feel they’re appreciated by the institution.”