Nicholls President Stephen Hulbert received a pay raise in January, while faculty members received a pay raise in August 2003. In a press release, the Board of Supervisors for the University of Louisiana (UL) System stated that success in accreditation efforts, stricter financial management and continued increases in faculty pay made this a very productive year for the UL System.
Hulbert received a 4.3 percent pay raise equaling $6,500, bringing his annual salary to $158,500. His salary is the sixth highest out of the eight presidents in the UL System. University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s president makes the highest salary in the system, $228,700, while McNeese State University’s president is the lowest paid with a salary of $153,700.
Nicholls faculty salaries, according to the Southern Regional Education Board statistics, are 5.2 percent below their peers. Faculty salaries at Nicholls range from an average of $62,245 for professors to an average of $30,899 for instructors.
Faculty members receive a pay raise annually, but according to Larry Howell, interim vice president for academic affairs, there was a time span when faculty was not receiving any raises. “But the last five or six, maybe even eight (years), there have been raises for faculty,” he said.
All faculty members employed by Nicholls for the previous calendar year were eligible to receive the pay raise last August.
Faculty members are evaluated each calendar year and most raises are based on merit, according to Howell. “A portion of it was across the board and then there were monies for merit and monies for equity,” he said.
Howell explains that the money is distributed to the deans of each college. The amount is based on the number of student credit hours taught in that college, the number of faculty members and the budget of the college. The deans decide how to distribute the money within their college.
“The average pay raise was not much,” Howell said. “We wish it could have been more, but it was 2.2 percent.” The faculty’s salary as a whole is close to that of the average faculty in schools like Nicholls. “We make sure that our faculty is close, and they are very close,” he said.
The highest paid professor at Nicholls is in the college of business administration and is paid $120,000. The lowest paid instructor at Nicholls is in the college of arts and sciences and is paid $18,000.
State money is often a source for faculty pay raises, but last years raises were not state funded. Most of the money came from the academic excellence fee, which students began paying in the fall of 2003.
Louisiana legislation in Act 1132 authorized universities in the UL System to collect a $10-per-credit-hour fee to be used for faculty pay and other academic improvements.
Students pay $10 per credit hour up to, but not exceeding, $120 per semester.
