Faculty Pay Initiatives
Background
To align our actions with our commitments and to comply with new requirements mandated by Massachusetts law, we embarked on three interrelated efforts this year: 1) a university-wide Faculty Compensation Philosophy; 2) the Faculty Range Transparency initiative; and 3) a Faculty Market Analysis.
Faculty Compensation Philosophy
Overview
Faculty members play a vital role in advancing the university’s mission. As such, Tufts University is committed to attracting, retaining, and motivating highly qualified and talented faculty. We strive to provide competitive and equitable compensation that reflects an individual’s contributions and performance.
Guiding Principles
- Tufts strives to attract and retain top-tier faculty by offering competitive pay and benefits.
- Tufts’ compensation programs are designed to be competitive with the market to attract and retain faculty talent.
- By providing equitable compensation, Tufts ensures that faculty are paid commensurately for their experience, expertise, responsibilities, and performance.
- Tufts’ approach to compensation is based upon a framework of transparency and adherence to applicable regulatory compliance.
Faculty Range Transparency
About Range Transparency
On July 31, 2024, Massachusetts passed An Act Relative to Salary Range Transparency. There are two primary requirements for compliance: (1) employers must include position salary ranges on postings for open roles and (2) employers must disclose an employee’s salary range when requested. The deadline to adhere to the new law is October 29, 2025. In anticipation of this law being passed, HR began publishing ranges in staff job postings in March 2023 and displaying ranges for an individual staff employee’s position under Payroll and Compensation in the Employee Self-Service section of eServe in July 2024. The next phase in becoming fully compliant with the law is faculty range transparency.
Faculty Market Analysis
About the Market Analysis
Recognizing and rewarding our faculty is a university priority. To support this priority, the Provost's Office launched a project to review compensation for full-time faculty across the university who are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA).
Beginning in 2024, Tufts University engaged Willis Towers Watson (WTW) to conduct a comprehensive faculty compensation study to assess the market competitiveness of its base salaries for full-time faculty not covered by a CBA.
The Faculty Market Analysis compared individual faculty salaries to market benchmarks to ensure we pay faculty competitively as determined by a range of factors including, but not limited to, discipline, experience, performance, and tenure status.