I’m sure all faculty and staff were gratified to hear President Adams highlight in the State of the University speech on Thursday the need to address stagnant salaries.

How bad has it become? In the past four years, faculty and staff have received no raises. In 2009-2010, we also were docked six days’ pay due to furloughs (costing me, for example, an extra $2,400).

JAMES HAMILTON

What puts on the squeeze even more is steadily rising costs. For example, I’m paying close to one and one-half times more for the same health insurance and $60 more a year for campus parking.

In addition, while assistant-professor salaries have had to stay competitive in order to attract new faculty, the comparative decline in salaries for tenured faculty has been nothing short of drastic.

For example, the University pays its associate professors an average of only 105 percent of the average paid to assistant professors. This ranks at the very bottom of other SEC institutions and what the University identifies as its comparator peer institutions.

What this means is that those at the associate professor rank at the University, myself included, are underpaid an average of almost $8,000 (see accompanying chart).

As gratifying as President Adams’s mention was, little time exists in such a speech to explain why addressing stagnant salaries is increasingly not simply important, but also a dire problem that affects faculty, staff, students and the entire state.

We know the direct reason for stagnant salaries. The university system — along with other state agencies — has shouldered a heavy burden during the current economic downturn. It’s only fair that the sacrifice and responsibility should be shared broadly.

Just like employees and businesses in the private sector, faculty and staff at the University have done increasingly more with increasingly fewer resources, achieving greater efficiency and productivity by some measures.

The economic downturn offers a reason why salaries have been stagnant, but it doesn’t make clear why it’s a problem that needs immediate and robust attention.

In the State of the University speech, President Adams inferred that the problem is that faculty and staff may be enticed to leave by higher salaries elsewhere. Though this is true in some cases, another less-acknowledged reason makes this problem one relevant not just for faculty and staff, but for each student and everyone in this state as well.

For faculty, stagnant salaries create an increasing need to teach extra classes as a way simply to keep one’s financial head above water. And teaching extra classes requires extra time for course design and preparation, in-class instruction, one-on-one meetings and mentoring, grading, and so on.

The problem with this is the time to prepare and teach extra classes can only be taken from time to conduct research. And it’s the decrease in time for research that directly affects students in classrooms. Research provides the core of an up-to-date, cutting-edge education that adapts to and addresses ever-changing needs and challenges in society.

With less research comes less cutting-edge education — at a time when citizens of this state and nation need it more than ever to meet the challenges of today. Stagnant salaries cut deeply into faculty’s ability to generate the new knowledge University students and citizens of this state deserve and need.

I know there’s no magic, instant solution to this problem, and I realize it shares a very crowded plate with many other pressing needs. I also respect all the efforts of President Adams, Provost Morehead and other University and USG administration to address it.

But this problem must become more generally recognized and acknowledged. It directly affects not only the individual futures of each of our students, but also the future of all citizens of the state of Georgia.

— Dr. James Hamilton is an associate professor of advertising and public relations at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication