Salary study begins at WCU

This story actually quite some time. I wanted to make sure that I did it correctly with as much time to dedicate to it as possible... so I finally finished it during the first summer issue of The Western Carolinian... Here it is as first published in The Western Carolinian.

"Western Carolina University is conducting a salary study to examine whether or not the university is in compliance with federal regulations concerning gender equity and how WCU compares to its peer universities.
Henry Wong and his staff at the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity Programs along with the WCU Legal Office are undertaking the technical side of the study.
“My office … has the lead role to conduct the study as we will follow the Department of Labor guidelines for determining salary equity under the Equal Opportunity Commission,” said Wong. “I am hopeful that there are no significant differences in pay between male and female employees. However, I will not know that until I start analyzing the data and conduct interviews. My role is to complete the study and present the results to the Chancellor and Executive Council.”

The study, which will take an estimated two years to complete, was Chancellor David Belcher’s idea. He noticed that it had been a significant amount of time since the last study in 1996.
“It’s always good to benchmark,” said Belcher, “how we stack up in salary issues against other institutions.
“It’s important for our faculty,” he continued. “They’re the backbone of our university. It’s important to take care of them. We have a responsibility to take care of our people.”
For some time, there have been no raises in salary due to the budget crisis. Belcher explained that the study will provide information in how to handle salary increases in preparation for when there is money again. He continued to comment that the study will “set ourselves up to make wise distributions and decisions” in the future.
While Wong and his team are making sure federal regulations are met, Belcher speculated that the faculty will be the driving force if issues or concerns arise from the results of the study, such as gender inequalities.
Catherine Carter, associate professor in the English department and director of English education, made speculative comments about her guess to the outcome of the survey.
“While there are probably pockets of greater equality and lesser equality, what I’d expect a careful study to find is that in general, women at WCU and in the UNC system earn less than men with comparable qualifications, years of service, academic ranks and expertise,” Carter said. “Because that’s what was suggested by the last data I could find on salaries of male versus female WCU employees from the 2005 Factbook, and because that is normal in the U.S.
“In general, and when you control for things like qualifications, years of service and so on, American women make about 76 cents on American men’s dollar,” Carter continued. “It would be fairly surprising for a single institution to be a whole lot different from this norm, unless or until it makes very thoughtful efforts to be.” "

Read the rest of the story at The Western Carolinian's website HERE!

The Old Student Union building very early in the morning