UHCL staff and faculty receive merit raises for fiscal year 2022

The University of Houston System’s Board of Regents approved the Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22) budget Aug. 26. This budget includes merit raises – raises to an employee’s salary awarded to staff and faculty based on their annual employee evaluations – at UHCL for the first time since 2015 under former UHCL President William Staples. 

In previous years, UHCL could not give merit raises to staff and faculty because of budgetary issues regarding central funds to the university and a decline in enrollment. As UHCL has grown, the state has appropriated more state funding for central funds. Increased enrollment also provides more designated tuition money to the central funds, said Vice President of Administration and Finance Mark Denney.

Denney explained that in the FY21 budget, merit raises of up to 2.5% were originally planned and proposed. However, the raises were ultimately not included after a request from UH System to put the raises on hold because of economic uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2.5% merit raises proposed in the FY21 budget rolled over into the FY22 budget in the form of an almost doubled 4.9% maximum merit increase. This means staff and faculty at UHCL could see up to a 4.9% increase in their salary based on their latest annual evaluation and merit eligibility.

“I hope that staff and faculty were happy to receive merit,” Denney said. “It was overdue, so a lot of times when you fix a problem that was overdue, yes there is appreciation that you fixed it, but there is still angst that it was overdue.”

Denney noted that merit raises should be more consistent from now on.

“I fully intend to have merit increases every year going forward,” Denney said. “If you do them every year they can be small, reasonable amounts.”

The impact of employees going without merit

Denney also explained that a lack of raises can contribute to higher turnover for employees.

“One of the challenges we’re having right now across the university are our turnover rates in mid-level managers and junior-career level faculty who are leaving the university,” said Denney. “They’re saying, ‘I can get paid better at another institution,’ and they’re doing that. It’s not horrible, the rates, but they are a lot higher than what we would expect.”

Faculty Senate leadership said a multi-year gap in merit raises can be detrimental to faculty retention.

“Every year you’re not giving merit, you’re ultimately impacting the lifetime earnings of a faculty member, their retirement, everything,” said Elizabeth Beavers, former Faculty Senate president and associate professor of education. “So when you do play catch-up, and do a market analysis, it’s good and we should, but that doesn’t compensate for years of less pay and your lifetime earnings.”

Esther Herrera, president of the University Staff Association agreed with this sentiment.

“I do think it does impact a specific time if there is no ongoing evaluation of pay rate vs. market, if there is not that continuous review, and there is no merit pay either, especially in a time where an institution is going through a lot of change and moments of growth, it is important to go back and celebrate that job well done and when it is possible, to go back and to reward through pay,” Herrera said.

How does merit work?

The process of merit determination is slightly different depending on the department an employee works in and whether they are faculty or staff. Supervisors determine how merit is awarded within their own departments and gain final approval from the vice presidents for each division. The president and all VPs are also eligible for merit raises, but they do not always receive them.

For staff, a merit raise is based on an employee’s annual evaluation. These evaluations are performed by employees’ supervisors. 

“[Merit] is appreciation and recognition of hard work,” said Christine Walther, Faculty Senate president-elect and associate professor of psychology. “Merit is based on our annual reviews, which look at our teaching, our service and our scholarship. It’s the combination of those characteristics…taking all of your responsibilities and everything you’re doing on campus into account so it’s a nice way of acknowledging how hard our faculty are working.”

For faculty, the process is similar. Faculty submit an annual report including details of their teaching, service (involvement in their college or field) and scholarship (research or publication). Department and program chairs within the colleges assess faculty based on their annual report, among other documents, and create an annual review. These annual reviews are the basis for merit eligibility and raises for all faculty.

“[Merit] is an appreciation of the faculty who are doing work at the institution,” said Paul Withey, Faculty Senate president and associate professor of physics. “We love our students, we like teaching our classes and we like to see [students] graduate from their degree programs, and we’ve gone a number of years without a pay raise, so it is a measure of appreciation coming from the administration.”

The cost of pivoting online

UHCL’s Faculty Senate conducted a survey in summer and fall of 2020. The survey results concluded that faculty respondents spent an average of $508 of their personal money to fulfill the teaching and learning mission of UHCL since spring 2020.

When Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) money was granted to UHCL, faculty and staff across all divisions were prompted to create proposals of how HEERF money could be used at the institution. Faculty Senate leadership advocated for a one-time payment, among other ideas, to help cover these costs in a proposal to the provost and vice president of academic affairs. However, it could not be resolved and did not make it past that stage.

“We were advocating as early as a year ago for some type of one-time stipend and even cited practices happening not just in our public schools but across other institutions of higher education and what they were doing as recognition for all of the above and beyond unpaid labor that faculty put into transitioning in the spring, working through the summer unpaid and into the fall,” Beavers said.

UH and one-time merit payments

The University of Houston (UH) typically includes merit raises of 2 to 2.5% in the budget for each fiscal year.

July 8, the UH System Board of Regents called a special meeting to vote on a resolution for UH employees to receive a one-time merit payment of  $1,000 or 1.5% of one’s salary, depending on which is greater.

“The Board of Regents has approved this one-time merit payment in recognition of meritorious performance during the global pandemic,” said UH President and UH System Chancellor Renu Khator in a statement announcing the payment.

The payment was given to employees because like UHCL, UH did not include merit raises in its FY21 budget. UH also included merit raises in the budget for FY22. 

Merit in the future

Faculty Senate leadership explained that continuous merit raises moving forward could be enough to satisfy faculty.

“I know there is an effort to include a merit increase each year so that we don’t fall behind,” Withey said. “I think a lot of faculty are feeling that if that can get put in place, that can cover. Part of it is that we hadn’t gotten any salary increase and then we had to use some of our own funds in order to teach.”

Staff leadership agreed that merit raises are representative of appreciation for a job well done by university employees.

“I really hope that merit pay this time around has served as encouragement,” Herrera said. “For those that received it, that it served as celebration for a job well done, for those that were ineligible this year for whatever reason, that it gives them something to look forward to in the upcoming years as UHCL tries to make this an ongoing, annual thing.”