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The past year has seen a lot of belt tightening and budget cuts for universities all over the country. The effects of the economic meltdown continue to haunt professors, especially the Tennessee professors and their salaries.

The year 2009 saw the pay-checks of faculty worst hit in the last fifty years, according to an American Association of University Professor’s report. The salary increase across the nation was even lesser than the inflation at 1.2 percent. Funding was majorly cropped by the States which led to a logical wage freezing by universities. Universities also tried to manage budget cuts by bringing in low wage and part time staffs and buying out senior faculty.

According to Coleman McGinnis, a Tennessee State University, political science retired professor and Tennessee Conference of the AAUP’s government relations director, Tennessee is at the absolute bottom of faculty salaries. 

He also said that there is a general misconception among the public that university professors enjoy high salaries and have to do relatively lesser work. There is a general assumption by people that all is rosy for professors and they lead a highly comfortable life include life time jobs after tenure completion.

The reality however, is completely different, he said. There are many professors who are forced to juggle their committee assignments, student advising and research with four to five courses in a single semester. Reduced staffing due to budget cuts have overburdened professors beyond their capacities as class sizes have increased. Professors have to endure all this with the same or lesser salaries than before.

Future for Tennessee professors is definitely bleak. The last increase in paycheck towards cost of living hike was two years ago and it may well take another couple of years for the next increase, according to TBR Business and Finance Vice Chancellor, Dale Sims.

He said that most of the Middle Tennessee community colleges and public universities are overseen by the TBR. He also said that he realizes the value of providing quality faculty for students and TBR will continue to look for ways and means to remain competitive in global education platform.

In order to achieve this however, it is necessary for Tennessee to be strong enough to survive the current global meltdown which seems to be all set to cut finances for at least the next couple of years. He said that there is a 9% cut for higher education by the government in the 2011 budget.
According to an AAUP report, no previous recession has hit public and private universities so hard before.

As such there was a plan by Tennessee to cut budget allocation for higher education by 20% allowing the gap to be filled by Federal stimulus. By the year 2012, the state will be forced to affect the cuts even as the stimulus money will run out. There are clear indications of the same already with many schools cutting budges, programs and staffs.

The past year has seen voluntary buyouts of more than 650 staffs in the Board of Regents system in Tennessee.