ACC full-time faculty pay ranked first among Texas community colleges

The Texas Community College Association (TCCTA) will be completing their yearly faculty salary survey this month.

ACC has utilized TCCTA's salary scale for the past three years, and has always been ranked among the top three community colleges with the highest faculty salaries in Texas.

ACC instructor Terry Thomas submitted a document to the ACC board of trustees in February on behalf of the faculty senate which stated that TCCTA's average salary calculations were not necessarily an accurate measure of comparison.

"A ranking based on averages is easily distorted by the large number of long-term faculty at ACC," wrote Thomas.

"The TCCTA use of quartiles gives a very limited comparison of salaries at the Texas community colleges. The survey ignores salary comparisons of most faculty with graduate hours beyond an MA. This penalizes ACC faculty because most ACC faculty have hours beyond an MA."

Before using TCCTA's six-point scale, ACC used a 12-sector comparison grid, a method that the Faculty Senate, according to the document, would like to revert back to.

"The Faculty Senate wants to use the more inclusive, 12-sector comparison grid," wrote Thomas.

But Gerry Tucker, Vice President of Human Resources at ACC, says the transition from a six-point to a 12-point scale has not made a significant difference.

"In terms of what we're doing, we have not changed our methodology," said Tucker.

"We try to make sure that, overall, our salaries are comparable. What we're guaranteeing is that in each of the sectors, we'll be in the top three."

TCCTA, which has been conducting surveys for 34 years, gathers data by first asking colleges to break the faculty down by their credentials, meaning faculty members with bachelor's degrees, master's degrees and terminal degrees are placed into separate groups. Within those groups, TCCTA asks them to indicate the lowest and highest salary, and then divides the difference by four.

"That method gives you a good picture of where people are in their compensation. It allows you to see, effectively, a weighted average of the salaries," said Richard Moore, executive director of TCCTA.

Examples of both the previous 12-sector grid and the current six-point scale are available online through ACC's human resources website.

Currently, there are 50 community college districts in the state, all of which use TCCTA's salary scale.

ACC was ranked number one last year, with 490 full-time faculty members and an average salary of $62,895, according to TCCTA's 2008-09 survey.

Nevertheless, the faculty senate still asserts that ACC's utilization of TCCTA's data to measure faculty salaries remains an inaccurate method.

"It doesn't take that long to acquire and formulate the comparative salary data," Thomas wrote. "What does take a significant amount of time over several calendar months every year is the debate between the Senate and the administration over the methodology that will be used to compare salaries."  

_{*Data for graphs provided by the Texas Tribune. For more public employee salary information go to texastribune.org.}