2024 NSHE Employment and Salary Trends
The NFA obtains public employee data for NSHE faculty and classified staff through public records requests annually. New employment and salary data as of November 2024 are compared here with the prior year.[1]
Highlights:
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Continuing employees benefited from the 11% COLA as of 7/1/2024 for Classified staff and 10/1/2024 for faculty. NFA pushed hard for approval by the Board of Regents of the 11% COLA for faculty.
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There were no merit raises for academic or administrative faculty. Merit awards this year were waived by the Board of Regents when they approved the 11% COLA. Classified staff are eligible for up to nine annual 3%-5% step increases within a compensation grade. Classified employees in some collective bargaining units received higher COLAs.
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Excluding clinical faculty and DRI [2], the number of academic faculty increased by 12 to 3181 (0.4%), the number of administrative faculty increased by 231 to 4139 (5.9%), and the number of classified staff decreased by 422 to 2446 (−14.3%). These represent filled positions as of 10/31/2024 versus 10/31/2023. There appears to be a pattern of replacing classified positions with administrative faculty positions.
|
Category
|
Total as of 10/31/2024
|
Continuing, same position title
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Continuing, new position title
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New employees
|
Percent Continuing
|
|
Academic Faculty
|
3520
|
2788
|
406
|
326
|
91%
|
|
Administrative Faculty
|
4192
|
2889
|
602
|
701
|
83%
|
|
Classified
|
2587
|
1900
|
260
|
427
|
83%
|
|
Total
|
10299
|
7577
|
1268
|
1454
|
85%
|
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For continuing employees with no change in position title, the average individual salary increase (including COLAs, step increases, and ad hoc adjustments) between 10/31/2023 and 10/31/2024 was 10.8% for academic faculty, 10.5% for administrative faculty, and 13.3% for classified staff. [1,2]
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For continuing employees with a change in position (e.g., promotion in rank, job change, or new title), the average individual salary increase was 17.2% for academic faculty, 22.8% for administrative faculty, and 21.9% for classified staff. These percentages include individuals who switched to a different employee category. [1,2]
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The number of executives (Executive and Administrative Faculty Range E) employed rose from 307 to 325, a 5.9% increase, representing net new positions and filled vacancies from the prior year. GBC added four executives, TMCC added three, UNLV added four, and the System added eight. UNR was down three executive positions, a result of vacancies as of 11/1/2024. [3]
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SB375 of the 2023 session appropriated $10 million per year in one-time funds to expand nursing instruction programs. This funding is not reflected in large increases in full-time nursing faculty and staff between 11/2023 and 11/2024 (these data do not include part-time temporary instructors). At the UNR Orvis School of Nursing, a new dean was hired with a base salary of $395,000 and about a dozen continuing faculty received raises of 50% in addition to the 11% COLAs. NSHE is requesting the continuation of the SB375 funding for the next biennium.
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Despite the historically large COLAs for faculty of 12% on 7/1/2023 and 11% on 10/1/2024, net take-home pay as funded by the legislature is still 16.4% below FY2009 after accounting for inflation, retirement contributions, COLAs and funded merit raises, as shown in the following chart.
Sources: NSHE Public Records Requests. Analysis by NFA 12/2024
[1] Continuing employees are identified by email addresses; individuals who changed their email address for any reason including a name change or change of institution are treated as new employees. Individuals who were terminated from faculty or classified positions but rehired on a Letter of Appointment or other category disappear from the Workday records obtained here. Because of these and other limitations of the public records, totals may not add up exactly compared with our 2023 summary report. NFA would welcome similar analyses by NSHE human resources personnel where individuals can be properly tracked through unique identifiers.
[2] Clinical faculty and DRI are excluded from comparisons because of their different ranks and compensation structures from the seven educational institutions, as well as the high prevalence of external funding.
[3] UNR’s General Counsel and Vice President for Legal Affairs retired in October 2024. A new General Counsel was appointed in December 2024, without the Vice President title. As NFA previously pointed out, the previous General Counsel was promoted to Vice President without a full search and consultation with faculty as required by UNR Bylaws 3.6.3.
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