In a recent post on the National Industry Liaison Group (NILG) blog, Valentín Estévez examines two significant topics impacting higher education institutions: faculty compensation and admissions decisions.
Dr. Estévez isolates key themes in each topic and provides best practices for assessing compliance and ensuring institutions are ready to respond to outside inquiries. Below is a summary of the author’s findings.
Faculty compensation is much more complex than rank and years of service
External investigations often start with the assumption that faculty members within the same rank are directly comparable; however, this is an oversimplification. Compensation can vary significantly due to factors including:
- Field of study and external labor market conditions
- Differences in research expectations and scholarly output
- Professional school versus academic department compensation structures
- Lateral hires recruited from competing institutions
Admissions decisions involve far more than test scores
Many admissions-related bias claims focus on differences in test scores between admitted students. But these analyses can be misleading and incomplete because admissions decisions typically consider a broad range of qualitative and quantitative factors. For example:
- Are comparisons being made between admitted students and the full applicant pool?
- What other relevant factors were considered in the decisions?
- Are there systemic performance differences between the admitted students?
Dr. Estévez concludes that proactively evaluating decisions at higher education institutions is the best way to ensure efficient processes and prompt and comprehensive responses to third-party inquiries.
