Sent on behalf of Kimberly van Noort and Matthew S. Brody:
To: Chief Academic Officers
As you know, the System Office has been working on developing a system-wide faculty salary analysis tool (FacSAT) that will provide information on the competitiveness of faculty compensation to various bodies, including the Board of Governors, the Faculty Assembly, and the North Carolina General Assembly. Ultimately, the purpose of this tool is to provide more standardized metrics on faculty salary competitiveness across the University System in comparison to relevant labor markets and to support future funding requests to address faculty labor market and salary compression.
The accuracy of these metrics depends on various data elements submitted by constituent institutions to the System Office for the Human Resources Data Mart. One of the more critical data elements is the faculty classification of instructional programs (CIP) code, which is used to derive faculty discipline for purposes of compensation comparisons.
We recently asked each institution to complete a brief survey that identified how every institution maintains and reports CIP code to the Human Resources Data Mart. The results of that survey confirmed that this reporting is inconsistent from institution to institution, with some reporting the CIP code of the faculty member’s highest earned degree (which is also carried in a separate Data Mart field specifically intended for that purpose), while others are reporting the CIP code based on either the faculty member’s home department or the discipline in which the faculty member spends the majority of their time conducting teaching or research. Given requests for System-wide faculty compensation data by the Board of Governors, there is some urgency to addressing this inconsistency. Therefore, we are asking for your assistance with the following two action items.
First, as an interim measure, we will very shortly provide your Institutional Research (IR) Office with a list of all of your permanent (benefits-eligible) faculty members as reported by HR Data Mart. We will ask that your IR Office return this file to the System Office with an accurate CIP code associated with each faculty member’s area of primary teaching or research. If for whatever reason, your IR Office does not presently have an accurate way to produce that information given limitations with current data sources, then as a temporary measure, the CIP code associated with the faculty member’s home department can be provided. While the former is preferred, we will offer the latter as an option given the rapid turnaround time that will be associated with this data request. There will be a very short two-week turnaround time associated with this request once released in order to have adequate time to prepare for an upcoming BOG presentation. You do not need to take any action on this request right now, but specific instructions will be sent to your IR Director. We apologize in advance for the short turnaround time of this request and appreciate your assistance.
Secondly, no later than October 1, 2020, the System Office will require that each institution submit via existing fields in the Human Resources Data Mart two CIP codes with the following definitions:
CIP for Highest Degree: Report the six-digit CIP code associated with the faculty member’s highest degree. If the faculty member has multiple advanced degrees, report the CIP code for the degree most relevant to the faculty member’s principal area of teaching, research, and/or service.
CIP for Primary Faculty Discipline: Report the four-digit CIP code associated with the faculty member’s primary faculty rank/appointment. If the faculty member holds multiple ranks/appointments, then the discipline that represents where the majority of the faculty member’s teaching, research, and/or public service is performed should be used.
We appreciate your support and that of your IR and/or Human Resources teams to address this critical reporting need. If you have questions on this matter, please do not hesitate to reach out to either of us. If your IR or Human Resources team members have questions, they may contact either of the following System Office contacts: Diane Marian, Interim Vice President for Data and Analytics, or Keith Dupuis, Director for Compensation Programs.