A national analysis of faculty salary and benefits in public community colleges, academic year 2003--2004

This study provides a detailed description of full-time faculty salary and fringe benefits in US public community colleges by state and by 2005 Carnegie basic classification type for the academic year 2003-2004. This classification is used to analyze data from the National Center for Education Statistics' Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System (IPEDS). Further analysis clusters states into the following groupings: states with/without collective bargaining agreements, states with/without local appropriations, large megastates versus non-megastates (using the methodology developed by Grapevine at Illinois State University), and the impact of California on the nation's salaries and fringe benefits. The analysis showed high level of variation of salaries paid by the type of community college (rural, suburban, and urban serving) in the US. The nation's average salary for full-time faculty was ;This study includes recommendations for further research, including a recommendation that a quantitative statistical analysis be undertaken to show statistical significance in salaries and fringe benefits among collective and non-collective bargaining states, a study addressing the faculty and leadership challenges that community colleges will be facing soon should be done, and that a similar study be done that includes tribal colleges.