I HEARD THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY. The U of I is losing faculty.

Without higher pay and better perks, the University of Illinois will continue to lose talented faculty to other institutions, officials say.

In a discussion with the Board of Trustees Thursday, officials said professors are being lured from the university for more lucrative and higher profile positions elsewhere, including other public institutions, private schools such as Northwestern and the University of Chicago and Ivy Leagues.

"Salary issues are a pretty significant factor when it comes to other institutions coming in and raiding our top faculty," said Tom Hardy, university spokesman.

More than 130 top faculty have left the UI's three campuses in Champaign-Urbana, Chicago and Springfield for other schools in the last two years. About 70 percent of those left the flagship campus for other public schools, and at least another 13 went to Ivy League institutions.

About half who got offers from other schools stayed, officials said, but only after UI sweetened their salaries. Deans said they need more resources to get more professors to stay.

"There are too many instances of our department heads and chairs trying to fight a winning battle without the necessary ammunition," said UI President Joseph White.

Officials said it also isn't just about money: other schools can offer professors perks like research assistants. UI also needs to step up its profile, improve laboratories and other facilities, and boost the number of endowed positions.

A Chicago Tribune article provides additional background.

Like a minor league ball club feeding the majors, the University of Illinois will continue to lose top professors to the nation's elite universities unless it can boost pay and benefits, officials said Thursday.

More specifically,

Still, that's not enough, said Sarah Mangelsdorf, dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

She's had faculty members leave in recent years for the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University, among others, lured by higher salaries and benefits such as travel stipends and research assistants. The perk she offers to attract faculty members is $1,000--to cover moving
expenses.

"That's not really a great recruiting tool," Mangelsdorf said. "I'm tired of being in the minor leagues ... We don't want to be known as the place that hires great people and when they make their name, they are recruited elsewhere.

"What's more, she said, budget constraints have left her unable to hire more faculty members even as student enrollment has increased. The result is larger class sizes, with the faculty-student ratio in the U. of I. system at 21-to-1, up from 18-to-1 a decade ago. The ratio at Northwestern University is 14-to-1, while at the University of Michigan, it's 15-to-1.

White said Thursday's discussion was the first step in a push for greater faculty pay, which could include asking the state for help, an unlikely prospect as funding from Springfield increased modestly last year, after years of cuts.

The dean's frustration is probably enhanced by the efforts the university has made to exploit the excess demand for prestige degrees. With Illinois residents facing tougher enrollment hurdles at Illinois, it doesn't do the recruiters much good to tell potential Coasties that they'll face similar academic challenges in Urbana that they'd face at Yale or MIT, and spend less money, when Yale and MIT are raiding away the faculty best equipped to pose those challenges.

A Chicago Sun-Times article notes that not everybody agrees with the university's position.

Some questioned whether professors living in the relatively affordable Champaign-Urbana community should be paid the same as professors at expensive private schools or in bigger cities like Chicago or New York.

"We would oppose any such idea to increase their salaries that much,'' said Jeff Trigg, executive director of the Illinois Taxpayer Education Foundation. "It's a poor excuse to say we need $110,000 salaries because other people have it. We need to be living within our means.''

First, there's the little problem of a compensating differential. Sure, Urbana probably has cheaper housing than Palo Alto or Greater Boston, but faculty members have neither the view of Lake Mendota or the cachet of a Stanford or MIT affiliation. Second, there's the incentive Mr Trigg's attitude sets up (which is depressingly common among college administrators as well.) If faculty members have to demonstrate their marketability in order to elicit better offers, they're halfway out the door already. Not only that, department chairmen, deans, and provosts have to spend time working out counter-offers and setting up searches they might otherwise avoid having to carry out had the university's policy been to treat productive people decently. Third, there's a difference between refusing to pay $150 for a pair of sneakers just because other people have them, and refusing to pay the going rate for a resource that has opportunity costs. I'd like to see Mr Trigg negotiating with a gas station. "I don't want to pay $2.25 for gasoline just because everybody else does." OK, you don't pay it and I won't sell it.