All University of California employees’ pay and benefits from 2020 were published on Sept. 28 by the California State Controller, revealing that UC Santa Barbara professors made a median yearly salary of $157,312 — on average, $129,713 more than lecturers. Departments in UCSB’s College of Engineering also paid their professors and lecturers the most out of all UCSB departments.
Unlike the State Controller’s website, the UC has published employee pay from 2020 which also includes the names of non-student employees.
The median number of undergraduate courses taught by lecturers at UCSB in 2020 was six courses, with lecturers earning a median salary of $56,681. UCSB professors taught a median number of three undergraduate courses in 2020, earning a median salary of $157,312.
Five of the College of Engineering’s (CoE) six undergraduate academic departments — along with the Engineering Sciences program — made up the six departments at UCSB with the highest professor and lecturer average gross pay in 2020. The materials department in the CoE had the highest professor and lecturer average gross pay at $267,515.
The only CoE department that wasn’t in the top 10 departments by gross pay was the Technology Management Program which — due to these courses being taught almost entirely by lecturers instead of professors — was the department with the fourth-lowest average gross pay at $65,138 in 2020.
The subject areas with the lowest average gross pay were the College of Creative Studies music courses at $60,835, Korean courses at $37,840 and Latin American and Iberian Studies courses at $19,811.
UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang was the fourth-lowest paid chancellor of the 10 UCs, earning $428,873, with UC Merced Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz paid the lowest amount of all chancellors at $285,327.
The highest-earning employee in the entire UC was Chip Kelly, the football head coach for UC Los Angeles, receiving $4,313,333 in 2020 after receiving $4,013,333 in “other pay” on top of his $300,000 regular salary.
UCLA paid the highest median professor salary out of all the UCs in 2020 at $227,300 and the third-lowest median lecturer salary at $15,112. Conversely, UC Merced paid the lowest median professor salary at $124,948 and the highest lecturer median salary at $63,788.
The median lecturer salary at UCSB in 2020 was the third highest of all UCs at $39,3330. The median associate professor salary at UCSB was $120,700 — the lowest of all UCs — and the median professor salary was $169,043, the sixth highest of all UCs.
A version of this article appeared on p. 2 of the Oct. 21, 2021 print edition of the Daily Nexus
