More legislative news on D16Dixie College business professor Phil Lee thinks the day may come when he'll have to seek employment at another college, perhaps in Arizona, or leave teaching.
The former business department chairman earns slightly more than $24,000 annually after teaching 13 years at Dixie.Last year, the assistant professor of business, who has a master's degree, in
terviewed for a private-industry job that would have tripled his salary. Motivated by a love of teaching and students, he turned it down.
But Lee and his wife, Roxie, who stays at home to rear their five children, age 1 to 11, find it difficult to make ends meet. She sews the children's clothes. Their newest car is 14 years old. They never go to the movies or out to dinner.
"I think about it quite often," he says of other employment.
He isn't alone.
Joe Peterson, assistant professor of English and philosophy, came to Dixie with 13 years teaching experience. Seven years ago, Dixie paid him a starting salary of $23,000. Now, after 20 years in the classroom, he earns $27,600.
To boost the family budget, his wife, Becky, works part time for the Washington County School District. He spends every summer fighting wildfires for the Bureau of Land Management. He earns between $8,000 and $12,000 in three months. But the extra money has a down side.
"It takes me away from professional development and directly affects my ability to stay current and give my students the best," he said of his job as a firefighter.
Summers spent on the fireline could be better used to develop computer software for his composition class or to attend a philosophy seminar in Chicago.
Married at 19 and a college dropout, Delora Hunt was a housewife in her early 40s with six children when she went back to school. She eventually earned her bachelor's and master's degrees. Now, after 12 years at Dixie, the assistant professor of business has a salary of $25,000.
She's glad the family can rely on her husband's pension.
"I feel frustrated. I'm too old to get a job anywhere else," she says. Lee, Peterson and Hunt and their Dixie College colleagues are Utah's most poorly paid faculty. Their salaries are $10,000 lower - or 28 percent below - the average salary of their peers at comparable out-of-state institutions. The legislative analyst's office says that adjusted for cost-of-living differences, Dixie salaries are still 25 percent below peer institutions.
"Faculty salaries at Dixie College are a disaster," Dixie President Douglas Alder says.
While Dixie may have the lowest salaries, the problem isn't confined to St. George's two-year school. Salaries at Utah's five community colleges range from 20 percent to 28 percent below those received by comparable educators in other states.
In recognition of the problem, the state Board of Regents is pushing for $617,000 in "catch-up" funds for the community college faculties in addition to the regular across-the-board pay raise. It would mean an additional 5 percent at Dixie, 3 percent for Salt Lake Community College and College of Eastern Utah, and 1 percent for Utah Valley Community College and Snow College.
The governor has $462,000 in his budget recommendation for the community college catch-up. The Joint Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee seems sympathetic, although it hasn't made any fiscal recommendations yet.
The faculty members aren't optimistic. They have good reason. For years, legislators have given all state workers, including college professors, the same pay-raise percentage. Past attempts for salary catch-up funds have fallen on deaf ears.
Sen. LeRay McAllister, R-Orem, co-chairman of the powerful Executive Appropriations committee, which hammers out the budget, doesn't sound encouraging. "I'm not sure whether we'll have the funds to do it or not," he says.
Dixie College faculty members say the across-the-board pay raises have put them further and further behind. The universities, with larger budgets and thus more flexibility, have raided other internal budgets to boost faculty salaries.
Peterson questions how public-school teachers end up with larger salaries than community college professors. If he taught for the Washington County School District, his base pay, based on his experience and master's degree, would be $30,800. When career ladder money is added in, it would total $33,121 - or $5,521 more than he makes at Dixie.
Concerning salary equity, Hunt only has to look at her foreign-born daughter-in-law, who is an English-as-a-second-language aide without a college degree and who earns $20,000 annually in Wendover, Nev.