For years, educators have expressed concerns in public presentations, petitions and rallies about an important issue: compensation.

Since 2023, a university committee has reviewed these concerns and made recommendations on how to address issues related to salary, pension and pay transparency.

President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 released a report to faculty Tuesday on actions Brown plans to take to rework faculty compensation. She also acknowledged faculty concerns, many of which were compiled by the Task Force for Faculty Compensation.

In February, the compensation task force shared preliminary recommendations to restructure faculty salaries and benefits. The committee hired a consultant who ranked Brown eleventh out of twenty peer institutions for faculty compensation.

Paxson emphasized the importance of considering the university’s past practices when setting faculty compensation.

“We must be competitive within our peer group,” she said, adding that compensation “must reflect the quality of their teaching, research and service,” the three factors the university uses in evaluating faculty performance.

She emphasized that teacher compensation should reflect changes in the cost of living and the financial health of the university. She also wanted to provide more transparency about the compensation process, addressing a concern raised by many teachers.

The university plans to restructure its current compensation structure and add a “base pool” that Paxson said is “intended to be a salary increase.”

“It will reflect changes in the cost of living, and it will be a base amount that all teachers can expect,” she said.

This will be done through a University Resource Committee vote on the division of the salary pool into three components: the base pool, the merit pool and the PRE pool.

Previously, the salary pool consisted of only the merit and PRE pools. The merit pool consists of performance-based pay increases, and the PRE pool includes increases related to promotions, retention and equity. Faculty members can still expect compensation from the merit or PRE pool on top of the base pool, if applicable.

The compensation task force previously recommended a one-time 5% salary increase for all faculty. But Paxson said the university does not have the financial resources for this change.

“An immediate one-time increase in compensation for all teachers is not possible,” she wrote on Wednesday in the Today@Brown post about teacher compensation. “Not only would it increase Brown’s current budget deficit, it would also be inconsistent with Brown’s goal of providing competitive compensation.”

Paxson presented another pay structure reform aimed at teachers whose salaries are “at risk of falling behind.” These are often “long-serving, high-performing faculty who have not solicited outside offers.”

To solve this, she proposed a Faculty Market Adjustment Fund, which starting this year would “supplement the basic compensation of certain faculty whose compensation has fallen behind.” Approximately $2.5 million is available for the Faculty Market Adjustment Fund for FY 26. Specific criteria for receiving this fund must be determined by the Provost and Deans.

“We’re trying to be able to have a big impact on a number of faculty if it works well, and we think there are a lot of people who deserve this reward,” she said.

She hopes the budget will allow this “bubble” to continue year after year. “Especially as we hire new faculty at competitive salaries, we need to place Brown in the top half of that distribution,” she added.

The provost and dean of faculty will also continue to research compensation to help improve transparency. During this process, the dean of faculty will work with “faculty deans” to examine research faculty salaries, and the provost will convene a working group of department chairs to develop best practices for performance evaluations.