Every student that attends college pays for the education they are receiving. Every student will also complain at one point of their college career about a professor, and the majority of them make a statement along the lines of “I’m paying for this”. While many students make this statement, the vast majority of them do not bother to research where their money is actually going. If those students did research they would know that the University of Maryland system publishes public documents that state every employee in the schools system and their salary. A simple Google would find the students this list. This list contains the names of the 46,000 employees, their title, their department, the campus they work on and the date they started working with the University of Maryland school system. This list does not only include professors, but it includes student workers, police officers and even custodial staff.
When examining the data I decided to examine three different schools across Maryland. I examined Salisbury State University, Bowie State University and the beloved Frostburg State University. All three of these schools are state schools and are relatively cheap schools to attend if you reside in Maryland. None of the three schools have tuition of over $7,400. I chose these three schools because they are extremely similar in just about every aspect. The only real difference I could find between the schools was their location. Each of the schools has a defined English department, athletic department and a police department. These are the three departments I decided to compare and contrast.
When researching the English department there was no clear answer as to which school was paying English department employee’s more. This is a factor I found in all departments. I believe the reasoning for this to be that each of the schools is a state school with about the same budget to work with. At Frostburg State University the highest paid employee in the English department earns $95,313 and the lowest paid employee earns $1,500. At Salisbury the highest paid employee in the English department makes $87,088 while the lowest paid employee had zero earnings. Bowie State University has its highest paid employee in the English department at $109,713. Bowie’s lowest paid employee is also at zero earnings. The zero earnings could be because of several factors. Everything from missing data to new employees could be factors.
The Athletic and police department at each school showed interesting numbers as well. At Frostburg State University the highest paid employee in the Athletics department earned $88,944 while the lowest paid employee earned $40. Frostburg was the only school of the three that used regular students in their data. This lowest paid employee was a regular student, but nonetheless they are an employee of the University of Maryland school system. Bowie State University’s highest paid employee in the athletics department earned $109,996 while the lowest paid employee earned $0. Again, this could be due to missing data, but the actual factors are unknown to us. Salisbury State University’s highest paid employee in the athletics department earned $112,174 while the lowest paid employee earned $0. The police department, sadly, has some of the lowest numbers among the departments. At Frostburg State University the highest paid employee in the Police department earned $80, 156 while the lowest paid employee earned $1,572. At Bowie State University the highest paid employee in the police department earned $72,471 while the lowest paid employee earned $7,800. Lastly, at Salisbury State University the highest paid employee in the police department earned $78,935 while the lowest paid employee earned $0.
In conclusion, if more students did the research they would know where the money they are spending is going. The data is non-biased, just numbers. Personal opinions may be made about the data. Each student has their own ideas about how their money should be spent, and this is an insight to where the student’s money is going.
Ashley, your comparison would be more telling if you looked only at full-time salaries. That would weed out student workers, retirees, most adjuncts, etc.
ReplyDeleteYou also need to tell us what the average full-time salaries are, as opposed to only the highest and lowest ones; and how many full-time employees each department has.
Without that supporting information, your Salisbury athletics numbers, for example, could be explained by a department containing only two employees -- one of whom makes $112,174, while the other makes nothing.