PROVOST: SOUTHEAST CAN'T AFFORD PAY GUARANTEES

Southeast Missouri State University can't afford to be locked into a guaranteed annual salary hike for faculty, Provost Charles Kupchella said Wednesday.

Speaking to the Faculty Senate, Kupchella said the "basic flaw" of the current faculty merit system is that it guarantees about a 6 percent annual increase in faculty salaries forever.

Kupchella said that given tight budgets "it's just not possible."

"Somehow, we've got to allow for compensation of faculty that doesn't lock the institution into a specific amount of money," he said.

The merit plan, set up three years ago, provides an across-the-board pay raise for faculty equal to the Consumer Price Index or 3 percent, whichever is greater, plus $1,000 in merit pay for eligible faculty.

The Budget Review Committee recently requested that the Faculty Senate lower its salary request to an across-the-board hike of 2 percent plus merit pay.

About 280 of the school's 400 faculty members have applied for merit pay this year, officials have said.

School administrators have said that scaled-down raises are necessary to help balance the budget without having to dramatically increase student fees.

Terry Sutton, Faculty Senate chairman, said officials have indicated that reducing the across-the-board pay hike by 1 percent would save the university about $212,000.

The Faculty Senate last week decided against scaling back its salary request.

Sutton said the existing merit pay plan does provide that in the case of insufficient funding, the merit pay award for a faculty member would be carried over to the next fiscal year.

University administrators have talked of eliminating across-the-board pay hikes and moving to a new merit system in which there would be individual pay raises, all based on merit.

Already some employee groups have moved to 100 percent merit pay, the provost said.

The question, he said, has been raised in budget discussions as to when the faculty will move to such a pay system.

Kupchella said that the merit pay policy adopted by the Board of Regents in 1991 specifically mentioned increasing faculty salaries in "varying amounts."

Under the current merit pay plan, that's not the case, he said.

But faculty senators noted that the regents had signed off on the concept of merit pay, if not the details.