Cumulative increases in average executive-administration and tenure-system faculty salaries, alongside inflation, from 2016 through 2025.
The UTSF Negotiating Team has been working to ensure faculty receive the compensation their work merits. Any tentative agreement reached at the table must be shared with members and approved through a full membership vote before it becomes final.
As part of that work, UTSF reviewed a decade of salary information obtained from MSU through a Freedom of Information Act request. The data show a substantial difference between the salary trajectory of executive administrators and tenure-system faculty.
Ten years of salary growth
Between 2016 and 2025:
- Average salaries for MSU executive administrators increased by 43.47%, exceeding cumulative inflation by 7.98 percentage points.
- Cumulative inflation rose by 35.49%.
- Average salaries for tenure-system faculty increased by 24.04%, falling 11.45 percentage points behind inflation.
Executive-administration salaries therefore grew 80.82% faster than tenure-system faculty salaries. Administrators gained purchasing power during the period while faculty purchasing power declined.
The missing 8%
MSU’s announced annual raise pools over this period totaled 32.5%: 24.5% described as merit funding and another 8% described as equity-and-excellence funding. That total is difficult to reconcile with actual faculty salary growth of roughly 24%.
When the negotiating team asked MSU to account for the difference, university negotiators did not provide a concrete reconciliation. They acknowledged that money associated with the equity-and-excellence pool was not reserved exclusively for tenure-system faculty. Funds identified with faculty compensation may therefore have been used for other purposes.
The 24.04% growth in actual faculty salaries closely tracks the 24.5% merit total, while the additional 8% is largely absent from the outcome. UTSF believes this is precisely why enforceable agreements and transparent accounting matter.
Without collective bargaining, announced raise pools could be treated as flexible administrative commitments. With a union, compensation terms can be written into a legally binding agreement.
Join UTSF to help protect faculty compensation. Members can also contact the union to volunteer with bargaining, membership, or communications work.