Faculty and staff baseline real wages have declined by nearly 40% since 2001 because inflation has caused our dollars to have less buying power. Most of this decline has happened under President Cordano’s leadership because her administration has not given regular cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) like previous administrations did. As a result, faculty and staff are facing financial challenges.
In this figure, the dark blue line represents real wages, starting at 100% in 2001 and declining to 60.8% by FY 2024. Green bars show the COLAs or GPIs for each fiscal year, while red bars show inflation for each fiscal year. Annual COLAs should counteract inflation and maintain real wages at a constant level. This was the practice during I. King Jordan’s administration. We encourage you to calculate how inflation has affected your own wages, following our primer at the end of this letter2 and by using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ online inflation calculator at www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm.
The Gallaudet AAUP chapter has analyzed how inflation has impacted the real wages of our faculty and staff.1 Because inflation reduces the buying power of a dollar, when we compare earning power over the years we need to index for inflation. “Real wages” is the term economists use to account for inflation when comparing the real buying power of wages over time.
The federal government recognizes the impact of inflation and gives annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) to federal employees and Social Security recipients. Even Gallaudet’s retirees in the CSRS and FERS systems receive COLAs for their pensions. Before 2017, Gallaudet addressed inflation by giving annual COLAs to all employees.
The decision to not provide regular COLAs amidst high inflation has hurt our faculty and staff’s buying power, leading to a decline in real wages over time. This decline follows an exponential decay trend. We urge the Board of Trustees, responsible for overseeing employee policies, and the Gallaudet administration to immediately correct this shortfall in faculty and staff salaries. A critical step is reinstating annual COLAs linked to inflation. In the long term, Gallaudet must restore and sustain competitive salaries to motivate, retain, and recruit the bilingual faculty and staff members who draw students to Gallaudet. Without exemplary faculty and robust academic programs, students will not choose Gallaudet.
Our dataset is available below for download.
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The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) defends academic freedom, promotes shared governance, and advances the economic security of faculty. The Gallaudet AAUP chapter is a member of Local 6741 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), AFL-CIO.
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1 Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data were obtained from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, available at www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm. We used inflation between mid-September to mid-September for each fiscal year (FY). Note that during FY 2010, we experienced negative inflation (deflation) of 1.3%, which sometimes happens.
2 Primer: to manually calculate the net % real pay change for a given year, simply add the COLA or GPI (a positive number) with inflation (usually a negative number) for that year. For example, in 2001, the COLA was 3% and inflation was -3.5%. Adding these numbers together gives us a net % real pay change of -0.5%. However, to calculate over multiple years, the math becomes more complicated. To do so, convert percentages to a decimal, add 1 to each year’s net % real pay change, multiply these together, subtract 1 from this product, and then convert this figure back into a percentage. For example, the net % real pay change for 2001 was -0.5% and for 2002 it was 0.4%. Therefore, the net % real pay change for 2001-2002 is calculated as (1 + -0.05)(1 + 0.04) – 1 = (0.95)(1.04) – 1 = 0.988 – 1 = -0.012 = -1.2%.
Gallaudet AAUP 