More than ever before, faculty are accepting new positions with international competitors, like the University of Singapore, Toronto, British Columbia, and the University of Tokyo. Private and international operations are considerably more flexible in the way faculty can operate. As daunting as it is to retain faculty, attracting new faculty of the highest quality has become almost more difficult. Doing so exacerbates the obvious salary differentials with current colleagues, who then put themselves on the market for competitive responses. A vicious circle.
Many faculty have faculty spouses.
For 2000-2001, the University hired 17 academic couples, up from 5 just the year before. The special Recruitment and Retention Fund provided the required flexibility of funds to assist in structuring family employment situations, but this reality of the workplace creates a need for even greater resources into the future. In sum, thanks, in part, to the Recruitment and Retention Fund, while the gap between the University of Washington average faculty salary has decreased slightly from that of its peer comparison groups over the last biennium, however the gap is still significant. And the gap between the salaries of our finest faculty and the private universities and industries which compete for them is of greater enormity. It is essential for the University to be able to respond to our faculty interest in external offers if we are to retain our best faculty.