The Aluacha Balaclava College Problem

Background:

Aluacha Balaclava College has just hired a new Provost. Problems with faculty compensation at the college forced the former Provost to resign, so the new Provost needs to make the institution of a fair and reasonable compensation system her first priority. As a first step in this process, she has hired your team as consultants to design a compensation system that reflects the following circumstances and principles.

There are four faculty ranks: Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor, in ascending order. Faculty with Ph.D. degrees are hired at the rank of Assistant Professor. Faculty who are working on a Ph.D. are hired at the rank of Instructor and promoted automatically to Assistant Professor upon completion of their degrees. Faculty may apply for promotion from Associate Professor to Professor after serving at the rank of Associate for seven or more years. The promotion decisions are made by the Provost with recommendations from a faculty committee and are not your concern.

Faculty salaries are for the ten-month period September through June. Raises are always effective beginning in September. The total amount of money available for raises varies from year to year and generally is not known until March for the following year.

The starting salary this year for an Instructor with no prior teaching experience was $17,000 and for and Assistant Professor was $32,000. Faculty can receive credit, upon hire, for as much as seven years of teaching experience at other institutions.