The Intersection of Institutional and Worker Hierarchies: Understanding Factors Related to Non-Instructional Staff Salaries Over Time

Research on higher education institution (HEI) employees neglects an essential group--non-instructional staff. Literature on HEI workers and their salaries focuses primarily on faculty and administrators. Furthermore, the literature that does focus on staff salaries neglects variation within this gr...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Review of higher education 2021, Vol.44 (4), p.447-492
Main Authors: Riffe, Karley A, Barringer, Sondra N
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic Advising
College faculty
College presidents
Comparable Worth
Compensation
Context
Educational Resources
Employees
Environmental aspects
Environmental Influences
Faculty Promotion
Higher Education
Individual Characteristics
Institutional Characteristics
Institutions
Labor Market
Literature Reviews
Marital Status
Neoliberalism
Nonprofit organizations
Occupational structure
Occupations
Outcomes of Education
Presidents
Productivity
Professional development
Roles
Salaries
School Personnel
School Size
Sociology
Student Personnel Services
Tenure
Unions
Universities
Wages
Wages & salaries
Women Faculty
Work Environment
Workers
Working conditions
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Research on higher education institution (HEI) employees neglects an essential group--non-instructional staff. Literature on HEI workers and their salaries focuses primarily on faculty and administrators. Furthermore, the literature that does focus on staff salaries neglects variation within this group as well as the role of institutional and environmental factors in determining staff salaries. Drawing on prior work in higher education and sociology, we address this gap and argue that salaries should vary across institutions and occupations based on institutional context, occupational structure, and environmental factors. Consequently, we analyzed staff salaries at public and private four-year U.S. HEIs (2012-2017) to understand salary variation across institutions and occupational groups. We used multilevel regression models to assess how both overall staff salaries and occupation-specific staff salaries differed within and across institutions, and how they changed over time. Our analyses show that HEIs with more resources, students, staff unions, and elite status pay higher staff salaries compared to others on average. Additionally, there were significant differences in how institutional and environmental factors were related to salaries across different staff occupations. The relationship among institutional context, occupational structure, and environmental factors, and staff salaries is clear, as is the potential for institutional practices that better support this often-overlooked sector of the academic workforce.
ISSN:0162-5748
1090-7009
1090-7009
DOI:10.1353/rhe.2021.0009