Salaries and perks in academic hiring

In Texas, a law school dean has recently resigned amidst issues of pay equity: Univ. of Texas law school dean resigns after pay battle.

Earlier, he wrote a very illuminating letter about how competitive offers involve housing loans as well as salary.
"Common to the compensation packages offered by other schools to the candidates that we have undertaken to recruit have been non-salary commitments with substantial financial entailments.  We, too, have frequently included non-salary commitments, in the form of one-time loans. These have been accompanied with a promise on our part to defray the costs of repaying the loan in annual installments of five or seven years, provided that the recipient of the loan remains on our faculty.  Typically, these loans are aimed at the purchase of a home, and have helped to settle our new colleagues and their families in Austin.  In exchange for these loans, I have asked and received from the recipients a moral commitment to remain members of our community for at least five years. "

I've written before about how money often factors into whether a transaction is viewed as repugnant. That discussion is often about whether money is explicitly part of the transaction or not. But pay equity is an issue that touches on repugnance as it relates to income inequality, etc.


HT: Kim Krawiec at FL