Salary Market Equity at the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries: A Case Study Follow-up

Abstract

During the 1995–1996 academic year, the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries received market equity funds to increase librarian salaries to the median Association of American University librarian salary. One stipulation of the university administration required that the market equity funds be distributed over four years rather than in a single year. In an earlier article, the authors predicted that, as result of spreading the increase over four years, salaries of libraries faculty would only reach the 1996–1997 mean in 2000–2001. This follow-up study analyzes the results of distributing the equity funds over the four years between 1995–1996 and 2000–2001. It finds that during that time, the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries rose from the bottom quartile of its comparison group to the top quartile when ranked by median salary, suggesting that spreading the equity over four years did not significantly impact the final salaries. Detailed analysis, however, reveals that although the overall salary pool rose in its comparison group, many individual librarians’ salaries did not reach market. This study concludes that the increase in overall ranking was due to a fundamental change in the profile of the faculty rather than to the application of market equity funds. The failure of some salaries to increase to market can likely be attributed to changes in the market rate of each position classification. Further, although the application of market equity might have been improved had the distances between the market and the librarians’ salaries been recalculated each of the four years, internal and external factors may have made that impractical.