The University's preliminary fiscal year 2006 budget includes an increase of approximately $400,000 for arts and sciences faculty salaries as well as a boost of about $300,000 for arts and sciences graduate student stipends.Both boosts are intended to bring salaries and stipends in line with the averages listed by the American Association of Universities, Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said. The increase for faculty is the second in a series of three similar boosts, while the increase for stipends is the first of two. 3.5 percent of the increase in faculty salaries will be set aside to award professors with merit-based raises.

Jaffe said the faculty salary increases are separate from the administration's integrated planning initiative, which is focused on how to spend an increase to the overall annual budget of $15 million by 2012. The stipend increases, however, are part of the initiative and will come from that additional revenue.

He said that the salary increases were worked into existing budgetary parameters, which include a total of $260.3 million in operating expenses for fiscal year 2006. That figure includes $67.6 million for all faculty and staff salaries.

Jaffe, who announced the University's intention to pursue these two increases at a faculty meeting March 3, said that not all faculty members would receive a raise, and that the university's goal was to have all Brandeis salaries somewhere in the middle of all 60 schools in the AAU.

Jaffe used a statistical analysis last year to determine whether salaries in each department and faculty position were above, below or at the AAU median, which reflects the significant salary differences across disciplines

Jaffe said he determined that it would cost the university close to $1 million annually to bring salaries to the appropriate level. As a result, the Board of Trustees decided last year to increase the salaries over the course of three years. This is the second year of that process. Last year there was a $300,000 increase in the salary budget for arts and sciences faculty.

Looking at each faculty member individually, Jaffe said he decided whether they should be paid at the AAU benchmark, whether they were so valuable that they should be paid above the benchmark, or whether they were not performing up to their potential and should be paid below the benchmark.

In the course of this analysis, he realized that Ph.D. stipends in some areas of the university also do not meet the AAU averages.

"This is a little different because in Ph.D. programs, each program competes with a different set of other schools," Jaffe said. "You compare the chemistry department to Boston College and you compare the history department to someone else."

Despite this, Jaffe said he was still able to obtain information on how Brandeis' Ph.D. programs pay in comparison to their competitors.

Jaffe said that the Board of Trustees decided this year to phase in stipend increases over the course of two years with this being the first.

Accompanying the $400,000 increase to salaries is a $100,000 increase in fringe benefits for faculty. Jaffe explained that when the university increases a professor's salary, they also must increase their contribution to that professor's retirement fund and that the budget for fringe benefits covers these increases.

According to Jaffe, while information on Ph.D. stipends is easy to obtain from schools looking to attract students, finding salary levels at other schools is more difficult. He said that Brandies belongs to AAU, which hosts the "AAU Data Exchange," in which participation is voluntary. Member-schools must share data about their finances, but they are also able to research average salaries at other member-institutions.