The Salary Scoop An Examination of Faculty Compensation at Choate
By Karthik Kasaraneni ‘07
News Associate Editor
A school’s compensation program includes the salaries and various benefits that it gives to faculty. Faculty is more or less content with the program and there have been no major complaints.
“It was much more of an issue a few years ago than it is now,” said Mr. James Stanley, chair of the Faculty Committee, to which faculty members can voice their concerns, “There was budget tightening a couple of years back and compensation was frozen for a year. That was problematic and since then the school has gotten back on a more regular track of providing raises.” He did, however, concede that any employee of any corporation would not mind being compensated more than they are currently.
Mr. John C. Burditt ’70, Vice President of Finance echoed the sentiment, “Basically, we’re in okay shape.”
Choate in Middle of the Pack
Important information about a school’s financial programs, including faculty compensation, can be gained via comparison with similar institutions. Each year, a collection of roughly 40 independent day and boarding schools from throughout Connecticut gets together to share this vital financial information. However, the data are only for internal use and specifics cannot be shared publicly because of mutual agreements among all the schools.
“The consortium of schools runs a set of surveys each year,” said Burditt during a November interview, “The schools share financial data in much more detail than what is normally found in financial statements. Each year, a school volunteers to be the consolidator of each particular survey, and issues a report that provides the data from all the schools.”
This year, Choate is taking over from Kent as the compiler of the survey on faculty salaries for the first time. The school will continue to do this until it decides to stop. This survey includes data on faculty salaries combined with retirement benefits. A school’s ranking once all the data has been compiled is indicative, to some extent, of how well compensated that school’s faculty is, especially in regards to its peer institutions.
“Generally our philosophy is to be roughly near the middle of the pack,” said Mr. Burditt.
Mr. Stephen Farrell, Dean of Faculty agreed, saying, “For financial compensation, the trustees have set a goal of our being in the middle, an ambitious one in light of the size of our endowment compared to the schools with which we compete and compare ourselves most directly,” He added, “They have authorized adjustments when necessary to keep us in that position.”
Small Endowment Inhibits Raises
Historically, Choate and its seven or eight peer schools have been at the top of the list of forty schools as far as faculty salaries and retirement benefits are concerned. Choate has stayed roughly in the middle of these eight peers, which has often been quite difficult to maintain due to the fact that Choate has the smallest endowment per student of the group. This unfortunate characteristic coupled with the necessity of private schools to subsidize each student’s education has a ripple effect across the entire budget that does not present as much of an issue at wealthier schools.
Unique Salary System
Salary and retirement benefit are, no doubt, major components of faculty compensation. Choate is unique in how it pays faculty in that faculty salaries are based on a faculty member’s number of years of experience, number of years in a dorm, stipends for coaching and other extracurricular assignments, graduate degrees, etc., said Mr. Farrell.
“The more you do, the more you get paid, the less you do, the less you get,” explained Mr. Burditt. “That’s pretty unusual, not too many schools do that,” he added.
Earlier this fall, the 2004-2005 pay scale was posted on the Choate website. It detailed the exact compensation for the faculty. As of last year, a teacher with no experience, for instance, earned a base salary of $18,912; a teacher with 10 years of experience earned $29,166; a teacher with 20 years, $43,121; and, at the top of the scale, a teacher with 49 years, $63,814.
Those with Masters degrees received an extra $812, while a MPhil was good for $1,071. A Ph. D. qualified for $1,193.
Faculty also earn a stipend based on dorm service time. Faculty living in a dorm earned from $4,062 to $7,988 based off of their experience as a house adviser. A teacher who lived in a dorm and had lived in one previously for five years earned an extra $5,371, while that same teacher living in a dorm with 10 years of previous dorm experience earned $7,988.
A faculty member who lived in a private home but previously served in a dorm could have earned anywhere from $126 (for one year of dorm service) to $6,432 (for 15 years of service).
Coaching also has its pay benefits. A varsity coach earned an extra $2,250, while a J.V. coach took in $1,700. Coaching a thirds team was good for $1,575, while running an intramural program earned a teacher $725. Assistant coaches generally earned a few hundred dollars less than head coaches at their same level.
Faculty compensation at Choate, as well as most boarding schools, pales in comparison to what most public schools have to offer. According to a 2004 study by the American Federation of Teachers, the average teacher salary in Connecticut for the 2003-2004 school year, when data was most recently available, was $56,516 -- the highest of any state. The average entry-level salary was $34,462 -- ninth in the nation. The average salary for schoolteachers across the United States was $46,597. In addition to monetary compensation, a school like Choate also offers room and board, however, so the wide salary gap can be misleading.
Good Pension Plan
On top of a faculty member’s salary, an extra fifteen percent goes into a non-taxable pension fund each month. The money in the pension fund is then managed and invested by TIAA-CREF, a non-profit organization which, as stated on its website, provides long-term financial solutions for those in the academic, medical, cultural, and research fields.
“Fifteen percent, that’s the highest of any of our peer schools,” said Mr. Burditt regarding the pension contribution. This large pension contribution has not gone unnoticed by the faculty.
“The school, in general, is very generous in the area of retirement benefits,” said Mr. James Stanley, chair of the Faculty Committee. Another perk for some faculty members is Choate’s policy to pay for faculty children’s education.
“We have the best tuition grant policy,” said Mr. Burditt, “When a child goes to another school [Choate subsidized] up to our day tuition.”
The day student tuition for Choate in the 2005-06 academic year was $25,680.
The System of Sabbaticals
As for sabbaticals, the school provides the faculty member with an $8,000 stipend to support his or her expenses during the term off, according to Mr. Burditt.
Nevertheless, Mr. Burditt said, “It’s one of the areas over time in which we would like to move up because some of our peer schools have sabbaticals that are more frequent than [Choate does].”
Currently, a faculty member is eligible for a sabbatical every ten years.
According to Mr. Farrell, “Each year 10 sabbaticals (one term in length) are granted. Faculty receive time off from all duties and miscellaneous stipend as well. If they live in a dorm, however, and are unable or choose not to relinquish their housing, they will have to perform dorm duty in most cases.”
“Unlike our peer schools, we do not currently require professional development to take place during the sabbatical,” added Mr. Farrell.
Healthcare: Possible Area of Concern
Another major component of faculty compensation is health care. Choate buys into a healthcare policy with the forty Connecticut schools that participate in the financial surveys.
“We buy our insurance together with them—identical plans. What’s different is how much of that insurance premium the school pays versus how much the employees pay,” said Mr. Burditt.
Currently, Choate’s policy is to pay 60% of the premium for faculty members with a family and 90% of the premium for single faculty members. The lower percentage for families reflects the fact that the premium is larger since the plan covers the entire family. The average school contribution amongst Choate’s peers is 66%, but there is a very wide range.
However, there is much concern about the future of the healthcare program.
“Costs are going up so fast that the whole structure of how we provide health insurance probably is going to be changing over the next few years,” said Burditt.
Stanley agreed, saying that there has always been concern amongst the faculty about the rising costs of healthcare.
Other than healthcare, the faculty has neither voiced much concern about the current state of the compensation program nor looked into having anything about it changed.
“I have not heard anything that people are pushing for to have changed in the future. The only small area that I’ve heard anything about is that the pay that people get for coaching a varsity team hasn’t changed in a while,” said Stanley. However, he stressed that this was certainly not a major point of contention.
Faculty Housing Takes Center Stage
The Faculty Committee had planned to look at the compensation program this year, but instead chose to focus on faculty housing, a more urgent issue to many of the faculty, said Mr. Farrell.
“Where we most trail other schools right now is in the quality of our faculty housing, which is a significant component of the overall compensation package. Our faculty housing is very uneven in quality, largely because over the years we have inherited or purchased so many buildings adjacent to the campus that don’t always meet our needs. Nevertheless, this is the area of compensation that the Headmaster and Trustees are most focused on addressing: we are building three new high quality homes on the upper campus, and the two new dorms we are close to building will have eight quality apartments of various sizes,” said Farrell.
Without adequate housing, it would be difficult to expect faculty to agree to live on campus. However, faculty housing is not guaranteed to all faculty members and is not considered a benefit. Faculty members who must live on campus must contribute to residential life and live in a dormitory for about fifteen years. They get in return free housing, food, utilities, and full use of Choate’s other facilities. About ninety percent of Choate’s faculty lives on campus in the average year.
“Living on campus is a requirement for those who do it. We can’t run a boarding school without having a lot of faculty living on campus both in and out of dorms. Living in a house is a requirement, but it has some clear financial benefits as well,” said Burditt.
In the long run, Choate plans to provide even more faculty housing by converting and renovating some of its smallest dorms. However, this cannot be done until the two new dormitories are built behind Quantrell and the proper funds are gathered. Three new upper campus homes along Rosemary Lane are targeted for completion this summer. Many years down the road, the option remains open to relocate all the tennis courts to upper campus in order to fit new dormitories, complete with faculty housing, where the current Hunt Tennis Center is located, said Mr. Farrell.
In the end, despite focus on student and faculty housing and the imminent capital campaign, faculty compensation continues to be an area of work in the eyes of many. For some, being in the middle among peer schools in salaries will not seem commensurate to a school of Choate’s prestige.
“I think we always want to be aware of how we compare to other schools and that’s something the administration looks at. And as we go into the next campaign, that’ll be something on everyone’s mind,” concluded Ms. Katie Jewett, another member of the Faculty Committee who is a French teacher in Spencer House.
