Hispanic professors at UT are demanding equal pay and equal opportunities
AUSTIN, Texas (KEYE) -- Hispanic professors at the University of Texas at Austin are on the offensive asking for equal pay and equal opportunities.
The professors say they have many examples of how Hispanics are underpaid and underutilized.
Friday afternoon at the state capitol eight full time professors presented the Hispanic Equity Report. They say it illustrates serious inequities at UT in terms of pay, leadership, recruitment and retention.
The salary study by race or ethnicity of all employees at UT shows Hispanics had the lowest median salary in 2017 at $42,000 and again in 2019 at $47,000.
One specific example the report shows is that Hispanic full professors make an average of $25,000 a year less than their white counterparts. And they say that’s just the beginning of the disparities.
Hispanics who get rejected from tenure at UT often have longer resumes than white professors who do get accepted for tenure.
The committee of eight professors is asking UT to invest $2.3 million each year to achieve better equity in compensation. They also want UT to appoint more Hispanics to positions of departmental and university leadership.
UT released the following statement:
Over the past year, the university has been working to address many of the issues of faculty equity echoed by this independent report. Executive Vice President and Provost Maurie McInnis has committed the university to understanding the source of the disparity in salaries described in the report. The provost has also asked the deans to review and report about their processes and outcomes in leadership selection, to improve transparency into these processes and to consider equity in the selection of leaders. As the provost wrote the authors of the report, “We are focused on taking real action, action that will lead to sustained change, and that requires real care and a deliberate approach.”
There is more detail on UT’s faculty equity initiatives online at https://provost.utexas.edu/news/update-faculty-equity-initiatives.
