A Model of Individual Accounting Faculty Salaries

Abstract

ABSTRACT: While much has been written about how to successfully manage an academic accounting career, to date, research has not considered how accounting academics can manage their career to impact their salary. The current study utilizes publicly available individual salary information for over 1,200 tenure-track faculty at over 100 of the largest accounting programs in U.S. public universities. Using this salary data, we create a model of accounting faculty salary using individual and institutional variables for top-ranked doctoral, other doctoral, and non-doctoral programs. Our results offer additional insights into accredited public university accounting faculty salaries beyond the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) publications, which aggregate by public/private schools and accredited/non-accredited programs. We find that Brigham Young University (BYU) 20 faculty research ranking, a financial teaching/research emphasis, being a department chair, and having a named business school can be positively associated with salary, although the specific influence varies by type of program. There is generally a U-shaped relationship between salary and academic rank, but a negative relationship with length of employment at an institution and cost of living. A systems teaching/research emphasis is negatively associated with salary at other doctoral programs. We do not find that salary is associated with gender.