On Sept. 10 the Kenyon chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a membership association of faculty and academic professionals, hosted its first official event of the year. The meet and greet on the first floor of Oden Hall brought faculty together to share thoughts about current concerns and answer questions from attendees. 

According to Associate Professor of Sociology Marci Cottingham, the current chair of the Kenyon chapter of the AAUP, top concerns included faculty pay, lack of communication from administrators and shared governance between the faculty and administration. Professor of English Rosemary O’Neill, who is also the Kenyon AAUP chapter’s founding president as well as the College’s chair of the faculty, said that recent benefit cuts announced by Kenyon have hit early- and mid-career faculty especially hard. According to Kenyon’s AAUP, reducing benefits and the amount of funding available for faculty on sabbatical has amounted to an overall pay cut for those making less than $80,000.

Faculty pay at Kenyon has long been below other private baccalaureate college averages. According to the AAUP, Kenyon professors are paid almost 20% less than their peers, but this does not hold true for administrators. 

O’Neill said one thing she hears about a lot from faculty is the cost of living. “When I talk to people as faculty chair, they worry about, you know, ‘Do they have money to put their kids in summer camp?’ ‘Are they going to be able to stay at this job if they don’t get a certain merit increase, get tenure? [Can they afford] gas for their cars?’” O’Neill explained. “The middle class lifestyle that we used to be able to ensure for people is just becoming more and more precarious, or harder to achieve.”

According to O’Neill, Kenyon last brought faculty salaries to be in line with its peer institutions in 2012. Since then, however, the College has been giving approximately 2% raises which can fall below the rate of inflation, causing Kenyon to fall behind national averages. 

There have also been a number of benefit cuts, several of which were made without prior notice. Previously guaranteed funding for faculty going on sabbatical is now competitive. Contributions to the tax-advantaged health savings account for faculty in retirement were reduced by $1,600 per faculty member. According to Cottingham, who cited the closure of the Center for Innovative Pedagogy as an example, the lack of communication from the administration is part of the problem.

“The whole idea of shared governance is not just that the administration needs to better communicate with us — although that would be helpful — but that there needs to be a much clearer path for faculty to voice their concerns, especially when it comes to the quality of teaching that we do here on campus,” Cottingham explained. “And right now, there’s a sense that the current structure that we have for shared governance is insufficient.”

The Collegian reached out to Vice President for Finance Todd Burson, but he did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Bringing faculty salaries closer to the levels of Kenyon’s peers would require additional resources at a time when demographic trends have put pressure on higher education nationwide. Audited financial records from the 2026 fiscal year will likely be released in October, at which point the picture could become clearer.

Follow up:

After the publication of the Oct. 1 issue of the Collegian, two members of Kenyon’s administrative cabinet, Provost Dianna Shandy and Vice President for Finance Todd Burson, followed-up to questions initially asked for the article “Kenyon faculty pay lags behind peer institutions, says AAUP.” They provided precise numbers for the benefit cuts mentioned in the article. 

The Kenyon chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a membership association of academic professionals and faculty, offered up grievances against the handling of faculty benefits and pay raises, both this year and in previous years. According to the Kenyon AAUP, the latest reduction in benefits amounts to a pay cut for faculty making less than $80,000.  The Kenyon AAUP chair and Associate Professor of Sociology Marci Cottingham said in an interview, “The administration needs to better communicate with us — although that would be helpful — but that there needs to be a much clearer path for faculty to voice their concerns.”

One of the instances of poor communication cited in the previous article were the changes to the sabbatical supplemental funding:  “There have also been a number of benefit cuts, several of which were made without prior notice. Previously guaranteed funding for faculty going on sabbatical is now competitive.”

In an email to the Collegian, Burson drew attention to the college’s accordance with Section 4.4 of the faculty handbook, which states, “Should it happen that policy or budgetary considerations may result in denials of, or competition for, sabbatical supplements, the Faculty Development Committee will reassume its role of evaluating proposals.” 

When asked about the savings behind the benefit cuts, Burson also explained that recent staff reductions and the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program, an early faculty retirement program, will result in an estimated savings of $6 million dollars.

Shared governance between the administration and faculty, one of the major issues Cottingham addressed in her interview, is a prominent concern of the AAUP. Shandy’s wrote in her email, “Cabinet has been actively working on the faculty salary initiative. I have been working closely with Vice President for Finance Todd Burson to validate the underlying data and establish comparative benchmarks. Professor [of Physics] Tom Giblin, [Resource Allocation Subcommittee], and [Professor of English and Creative Writing] Rosemary O’Neill, in her role as Faculty Senate chair, have been exceptionally helpful in this effort.”

The Collegian emailed O’Neill, the founding president and a current member of the Kenyon AAUP chapter, for a response. O’Neill, who serves as the chair of the faculty, offered a technical correction, writing that there is no faculty senate, but rather a faculty meeting. She added, “It’s great to see the President, the Provost, and other members of cabinet giving the issue of fair compensation for faculty serious attention. Our hope is that the Faculty Salary Philosophy we are working on can serve as a guide into the future to help the administration provide the competitive faculty compensation that is appropriate to Kenyon as a top liberal arts college.”