Policy Implications

Higher education institutions are not going to level resources, change their public/private

status, or become HBCUs or women’s colleges in the name of pay equity; however,

policy interventions can be attuned to those institutional variations. Currently in the U.S.,

federal and state policy proposals on pay equity in the overall labor force focus on salary

transparency, compensation panels, paid leave, minimum wage, legal ramifications, and

enforcement efforts (American Association of University Women, 2016; United States

Office of Personnel Management, 2014; White House Office of the Press Secretary,

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federal government workforce offer policy proposals that may be more in line with what

higher education institutions can undertake—more so than minimum wage or new legal

guidelines. OPM (2014) recommends closing the gender pay gap by enhancing starting-

salary transparency and paying greater attention to salary-setting discretion or flexibility.

Within higher education, institutions and professional associations have implemented or

proposed salary committees, negotiation training, salary ratios and caps, and programs to

aid in the recruitment, retention, and promotion of women and minority faculty. While

this dissertation did not evaluate the effectiveness of any policy in resolving pay

disparities, the results provide insight into several of these policies.

Although it is generally thought that public institutions have greater pay equity,

the results here do not robustly support that argument. It is notable, then, that the federal

recommendations have recognized the need for additional salary transparency within the

federal government, even as prominent policy proposals focus on the need for private

sector salary transparency (e.g. Paycheck Fairness Act). The results here support the need

for attention to pay equity in both public and private settings. Policies within the public

setting need to address the disparities among native-born and foreign-born faculty, in

particular, as the nativity gap is higher in public than in private institutions, greater as

federal funding reliance increases, and pronounced in multiple Carnegie-classification

institutional types. It is worth noting, though, that the reward structures at public and

private institutions vary with regards to productivity and discipline. Thus, transparency

alone will likely not bring public and private institutions in line with one another in that

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Public administration scholars have long debated the benefits and drawbacks of

managerial flexibility (see, for example, Friedrich and Finer in Stillman II, 2010), but the

results here suggest that institutions need, at a minimum, to recognize how flexibilities

are used and whether those flexibilities benefit certain groups. Pay-setting flexibility in OPM’s recommendations is a similar concept to the discretionary authority modeled in this dissertation in that managers go beyond salary scales. OPM recommends that federal

agencies regularly review their pay-setting flexibilities to identify whether they use these

flexibilities more often for certain groups. Likewise, higher education institutions could

review the discretionary authority available to department heads and the use of that

discretion for faculty salaries by gender and race. Additionally, as higher education

institutions adopt more flexible budgetary models such as resource-centered budgeting

and shift additional authority to departments, administrators should be attuned to whether

such flexibilities will influence pay gaps. Beyond that level of awareness and data

collection, some institutions have moved to using salary committees, which expands

faculty involvement in salary-setting. Future research could explore the reward systems

under a committee structure versus an autonomous department head to identify how

outcomes vary.

Many of the existing policies and programs in STEM address how to attract

women and underrepresented minorities into STEM overall and male-dominated STEM

fields, in particular, and how to ensure those groups persist and advance. According to

the results in this dissertation, the issue of persistence and advancement will be key in

resolving the salary gap over time. Years of experience overwhelmingly explains pay

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underrepresented minorities are younger in PhD years. Further, the payoff for each

additional year is significantly less for URM faculty compared to white and Asian faculty

(Appendix A.7). The salary benefit of administrative experience is also substantial, thus

institutional efforts to advance women and minorities into leadership positions will

likewise diminish the total salary gap. In terms of recruitment, the National Research

Council (2010) recommends search committee strategies that can increase female

applicants and hires, such as women serving on and chairing the search committee.

Spousal hiring is another recruitment strategy on which the data shed light. Forty percent

of women in this survey are married to an academic, while 20 percent of male faculty

have an academic partner. Thus, spousal hiring policies may be more important to female

academics’ mobility. These policies deserve further research in light of women’s lower

mobility and higher returns from mobility. Finally, stop-the-clock policies are also related

to retention and promotion, and the results here show that such policies are not harming women’s salary, but are detrimental to male faculty salaries. As noted earlier, future research should explore this impact for male faculty, as well as the impact of such

policies across institutional settings.