A new study of faculty salaries at the University of Michigan revealed no statistically significant difference between the salaries of men and women faculty members once key factors are taken into account.
The study, commissioned by Provost Laurie McCauley in 2024 and released this week, analyzed salary data for 2,174 tenured and tenure-track faculty members across the Ann Arbor campus, excluding the Medical School.
Read the study
“These findings represent meaningful progress in the university’s long-standing commitment to gender equity,” McCauley said. “I am grateful to Dr. Lori Pierce for making this topic a matter of continued focus during her time as vice provost of academic and faculty affairs and chair of the study’s faculty advisory committee.”
The study reveals substantial improvement from the university’s last analysis in 2012. The “raw” gender gap in salaries has decreased from about 14.8% to 12.3%. More significantly, after controlling for relevant factors, the adjusted gender gap is now less than 1% and is not statistically significant.
The research also highlighted demographic shifts in faculty composition over the past decade. The size of the faculty grew from 1,955 in the 2011 data to 2,174 in 2024. This resulted from an increase in the number of women faculty from 635 to 872, with the number of men decreasing slightly from 1,320 to 1,302.
The research team was led by Linda Tesar, the Alan V. Deardorff Collegiate Professor of Economics and professor of economics, and Basit Zafar, professor of economics, with support from Kenneth Hofmeister, a Ph.D. student in economics, all in LSA.
The research team was supported by staff members from the Office of the Provost, University Human Resources, and Michigan Medicine.
The study follows the university’s pioneering history in addressing gender equity. In 1971, Michigan became the first university in the nation to establish an action plan to address gender pay parity, following a federal complaint. Since then, U-M has conducted analyses of equity in faculty salaries on a periodic basis.
The full study, which excluded high-level administrators and focused on base compensation rather than additional pay for administrative roles or summer appointments, was overseen by an advisory committee comprising faculty and academic administrators from across the university.
