UFF-USF

All USF salary data are public records, and last year, USF closed off the public-access on-campus username for GEMS, we were told because the auditor said that username could be a back-door path to private information. The chapter then decided to occasionally draw down the data and make it public, which would serve the public interest without endangering the private information USF has a legitimate interest in protecting. Below are links to Excel files with appointment and salary data for faculty and academic/professional hires from USF’s GEMS personnel data system. The third file is a “new hire” database, which includes 9-month faculty who can be “rehired” in the summer and “rehired” each August.

Faculty appointment data from April 4 2008
Academic and professional appointment data from April 4 2008
New hires and rehires July 1 2007 through April 4 2008 (includes 9-month faculty “rehires” for summer and each fall)

In 2000, Los Angeles prosecutor Richard Ceballos reported to his superior in the District Attorney’s office that the Los Angeles Sherriff’s Department had relied on an inaccurate affidavit to obtain a search warrant. There was sound, fury, and office politics, and subsequently Ceballos was reassigned, transferred, and denied a promotion. He sued, and the case – Garcetti v. Ceballos – was resolved by a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the majority ruled that Ceballos did not enjoy First Amendment protection for statements he made as part of his official duties.

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In the parking lot this morning, I met an assistant professor I know well who told me that he’s leaving USF. He’s going to a public university in another state where he’ll be paid a good chunk more than what he’s paid here (at a place that is definitely not the flagship university), and where he’ll get credit towards tenure for the three years he spent at USF.

I asked him if he was worried about selling his house. He said that the salary differential was about equal to his mortgage payments here (he’s in a small house), and as soon as he sells the house, even if it’s in a year or more, he’ll get the sale price and also an instant bump in effective take-home pay. USF couldn’t match the salary, and that is consistent with the administration’s behavior in the past (which is to match offers very, very rarely).

He said he was leaving because he saw the state “sinking into a hole,” and while we talk up the status of USF, “the pay is far below the rhetoric of Research I.” That certainly is true: according to AAUP statistics, USF salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors are all in the fourth quintile of Research I universities.

So I wished him well and said that while we’d miss him, I certainly understood why he’s leaving. I just hope the legislature understands, too.

Follow-up: Within minutes of writing this entry, I received an e-mail from another colleague: I’m also leaving USF, and what you wrote … could have been a conversation with me.