37, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 58-60 To the Editor Search

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IN THE spring of 2004, the ADFL Executive Committee conducted an online survey of department chairs’ compensation. The idea for this survey originated in an extended discussion of compensation on the ADFL chairs’ electronic discussion list in the fall of 2003, and the survey itself was initiated and organized by David Goldberg, associate director of Foreign Language Programs and ADFL. The survey aimed to provide information that would help chairs negotiate compensation packages more effectively by documenting the types of support and compensation available to chairs in the ADFL community. In this issue of the ADFL Bulletin, we provide the answers, in aggregate form, to some of the questions in the survey.

The total number of responses to the survey was 211. In order to determine whether the respondents represented the ADFL membership as a whole, we compared them with the entire ADFL membership by type of institution (table 1).

The percentages in each category are very close, differing at most by slightly more than 1%. The respondents therefore represent all ADFL members at each institutional level. It should be noted that ADFL membership is not entirely representative of the general population of chairs in the MLA chairs’ file: the file contains a significantly larger percentage of departments in AA institutions and a smaller percentage of departments in PhD institutions.

The graphs offered here deal with the central question of the survey: What is the compensation that faculty members receive when they become chairs? Figure 1 shows the types of compensation and the percentage of chairs who receive each type. The number of respondents in each category is given at the bottom of each bar graph (see N= ). Most chairs receive an annual stipend (70.6%); all other choices resulted in a less than 15% response. (Percentages sum to amounts greater than 100 in figure 1 and 3 because chairs could give more than one answer.) The amount of chairs’ stipends is given in figure 2. Stipends vary widely, from less than $1,000 to more than $15,000, with a fairly even spread in the middle range.

Chairs also reported that they receive support from secretaries, assistant or associate chairs, and student aides. Figure 3 shows that the most common form of assistance by far is secretarial help that is not exclusively for the chair but shared by the department as a whole (64.0% of respondents). In second place is assistance by student aides (35.1%), and all other types of assistance were reported by less than 20% of chairs.

Approximately half the chairs teach one course, and about a third teach two (fig. 4). But a small number of chairs reported that they taught as many as four or five.

When asked, “How would you rate your compensation package?,” most chairs (143 out of 211 answering) said that it was average (fig. 5). Since the dominant part of the compensation package is the annual stipend, and since some chairs who entered comments reported that their stipend was a fixed percentage of their salary, it may be that many see their compensation as average because the terms are the same for all chairs at their institution. The amount of the stipend varies, of course, given the difference in chairs’ salaries.

We collected a considerable amount of data in the chairs’ compensation survey, and the results of the data analysis will be presented in several short articles. In the second article, forthcoming in the next ADFL Bulletin, I will extend the discussion to chairs’ compensation in relation to gender, as well as compensation and gender to rank.

Note

I am grateful to David Goldberg for his careful reading of this article and his helpful comments on it.

Table 1 Survey Respondents Compared with Entire ADFL Membership

Fig. 1 Compensation as Chair (N=211)

Fig. 2 Annual Stipend for Chair (N=171)

Fig. 3 Other Assistance for Chair (N=211)

Fig. 4 Number of Courses Taught by Chair during the 2004 Spring Term (N=201)

Fig. 5 How Would You Rate Your Compensation Package? (N=211)

© 2005 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.

ADFL Bulletin 37, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 58-60

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