Newsflash: Unionized Faculty Get Paid More Than Non-Union Faculty

The evidence is in: Faculty who belong to unions get paid more than faculty who do not. 

This union advantage is especially large at two-year institutions, where union faculty earned an average $19,000 more in 2025 than their non-unionized peers in the very same states—and an average $30,000 more than two-year faculty who work in states without collective bargaining, according to the 2026 NEA Faculty Salary Report, which was released today.

That union faculty get paid more than non-union faculty is not at all surprising to NEA Higher Ed members. “No kidding!” says Michael Ferlise, president of the Hudson County Community College in New Jersey, with a laugh.

The new report, which is prepared annually for NEA by ASA Research, is a deep analysis of faculty salary trends and includes average salaries, by rank, at every public institution in the U.S. (The highest average salary? It’s paid at the University of California Los Angeles. The lowest average salary? Check out NEA’s online institutional listing to find exactly where it is. Hint: It’s in a state where lawmakers won’t allow faculty to collectively bargain.)

The report also shows that male faculty continue to be paid more, on average, than women. And it highlights the continuing issue at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) where, on average, faculty were paid 75 percent ($79,192) of what faculty at other institutions were paid in 2024-2025 ($106,215). 

Here are five key findings from the report.

#1: Despite slight increases in 2026, faculty are feeling the pinch. 

Average full-time faculty salaries in 2024-2025 increased 3.6 percent over 2023-2024 to $105,657. With a 2.6 percent inflation rate, this translates into a modest 1 percent increase in faculty purchasing power. 

Despite this small gain, faculty’s purchasing power is significantly lower today (5.9 percent) than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

#2: The Union Difference is Real—and Really Powerful

At Hudson County Community College, in 2025, contract negotiations did not start well. Administrators wanted to talk percentage raises—and the numbers coming out of their mouths were very, very low, recalls Ferlise. “I thought I was going to end my presidency with the [worst] contract in the world!” says Ferlise, who was first elected in 2018 and will step down later this year. 

For years, Ferlise and his team have been building an active and assertive union, with continuously engaged members. They also have been building a good relationship with the college president, praising his collaborative spirit. This has paid off: Tell somebody they’re a great collaborator and they tend to act like one, says Ferlise. Build a union with visible muscle and often you don’t have to flex it. 

At the table, Ferlise decided to stop talk about percentages and start talking about parity and equity. It worked: the union won a new 15-year salary schedule with regular steps, which is now embedded in their collective bargaining agreement. While these kinds of schedules or “salary guides” are common in K12, they’re rarer in higher ed—and Hudson had never had one. 

Through this salary guide, minimum salaries went up significantly, from $55,000 to $60,000 for instructors (9%) and from $75,000 to $85,599 for full professors (14.13%). On top of that, faculty also won annual raises of around 3 percent a year. By 2028, some union members will see their pay increase by as much as 28 percent.

“We got many of these things because we’re well organized and my members are smart, but also because we can work with administration,” says Ferlise. He also notes that the union came to the table prepared. 

The Minnesota State College Faculty (MSCF) union, which represents faculty at the state’s 26 public two-year technical and community colleges, also settled a new contract last year. Here, too, the landscape did not seem promising at first. “We were keenly aware of a 10-year decline in student enrollment,” notes MSCF President Kevin Lindstrom. “We also knew that money coming from the state legislature to the [Minn. state college] system actually went backwards in this biennium.”

These challenges are real, and they are the biggest plot point for administrators who want to spin a narrative of no-money, no-raises. But they’re not the whole story, Lindstrom points out.

“There are good things, too. Our colleges, with rare exception, are in great shape financially,” he points out. Union leaders made sure the system’s trustees heard the other side of the story. “We have a group of trustees who really do care deeply about the system and really do what to do the right thing and want to be fully informed. They’re willing to listen to [union members],” says Lindstrom. 

In the end, MSCF bargained for every member to “step” each year, which amounts to $2,059 per year for three years. It was a satisfactory settlement, he says, which was complemented by some significant non-salary items, including tuition waivers for MSCF faculty children at state university. 

Even in Iowa, which severely curtailed the collective bargaining rights of faculty in 2017, unions still matter. “I tell people this is your voice on campus,” says Mark Zabawa, a chemistry professor at Iowa Lakes Community College who also serves as a council chair for the Iowa State Education Association. 

Today, because of the 2017 law, the only mandatory topic for Iowa’s faculty unions to bargain is salary, but “collective bargaining still gives you space to voice priorities…and it’s the most important communication we have with administration,” says Zabawa. At Iowa Lakes, the union recently won 7 percent raises over two years.

Generally, the reports show that faculty in states with strong unions get paid more. Indeed, in 2025, the highest-paid public college and university faculty taught in California and New Jersey. Meanwhile, the lowest-paid faculty teach in Arkansas. (Check out the report for the full ranking of states.) 

#3: The HBCU Pay Penalty Isn’t Getting Smaller

In 2023 and 2024, HBCU faculty made 75 percent of the earnings of faculty at non-HBCU institutions. In 2025, those numbers didn’t budge a bit.

Last week, the faculty union at Florida A&M University—the only public four-year HBCU in the state—ratified a new collective bargaining agreement after 64 months at the bargaining table.

“Yes, we started bargaining in January 2022!” says United Faculty of Florida-FAMU President Samique March-Dallas, an associate professor of finance. “It has been a long, arduous journey.”

Their persistence has paid off. The new contract, which was ratified last week, provides “significant raises,” March Dallas notes. In fact, they are the largest raises she has seen in her 15 years at FAMU. 

Their approach was innovative. The highest-paid FAMU faculty (mostly in business, engineering, and allied health departments) received $6,750 raises; the middle tier of faculty (mostly in the sciences) received $5,750 raises; meanwhile, the third tier (mostly in the humanities) received $4,500 raises. For the lowest paid faculty, this amounted to raises of 7 percent to 9 percent; for the highest paid, it’s more like 4.5-6 percent. 

While large, these raises do not erase the gulf between salaries paid to FAMU faculty and those paid to faculty at other research institutions in the state. 

#4: Women Still Paid Less Than Men

In 2025, on average, women in academe were paid 86 percent of men’s wages. This differed significantly, however, based on rank and institutional type. The gap was smallest at two-year institutions, where women were paid 98 percent of men’s wages; it’s largest at research universities, where women’s pay is 84 percent of men’s. 

The gender gap is exacerbated, the report’s authors note, because women are more often employed at lower-paying institutions, like community colleges. They’re also over-represented in lower-paying ranks (like assistant professor) and under-represented in the highest-paying rank: just 36 percent of “professors” are women. 

Pay also varies by academic discipline. The average pay for an engineering professor at a four-year college in 2025? It was $120,000. 

Compare that to the average pay for an education professor at a four-year college in 2025: $78,000.

#5: Grad Assistants Still Have It Hard

The average stipend paid to graduate employees—who teach undergraduate classes, conduct research, and work in labs—was $23,889 in 2024-2025.

At the University of Rhode Island (URI), grad employees have been unionized since 2001. Their top issues? Pay, of course. A living wage in South Kingston, R.I., for a single person, is $54,000. Meanwhile, grad employees get paid around $25,000, says Lane Demaske, president of the URI-Graduate Assistant United (URI-GAU). “I’m lucky that I have parents who can pay for my groceries. Not everybody does,” notes Demaske. 

The second big issue is housing. Very few properties are available for rent in coastal Rhode Island and, when available, an average one-bedroom costs about $20,000 a year. This recently has become a crisis as, this summer, the university is demolishing its on-campus “graduate village” and evicting 121 graduate students, their young children, and their partners. Supporters can sign URI-GAU’s petition, asking the university to help those employees.