On Dec. 5, Oberlin faculty received an email notifying them that this year’s base raise to their salaries would be 1 percent. For many, the news came as a disappointment. While the College points to financial constraints, several professors reported widespread discontent among faculty and argue that, as compared to the current rate of inflation, the raise is an effective cut for salaries.

Over the past decade, salary increases have remained low, outside of a bump in 2024, putting Oberlin on the low end of average faculty salaries compared to many similar institutions. Since 2016, faculty salaries have seen base increases ranging between 0 and 3 percent. Meanwhile, in the last 10 years, inflation has averaged around 3 percent, with a low of 1.2 in 2020 and a high of 7 in 2021. The U.S. inflation rate currently stands at 2.4 percent.

“Getting the announcement that there was a 1 percent salary increase was kind of like a glass of cold water thrown in the face,” Robert S. Danforth Professor of Politics Steve Crowley said. “Given that our salaries have lagged inflation for several years now, I was expecting a raise at least at the cost of living.”

Professor of Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature Claire Solomon expressed similar sentiments.

“The administration’s priorities are clear in their actions,” Solomon said. “By giving a quote-unquote raise that is effectively a pay cut, because it’s far below the rate of inflation, they are showing that faculty well-being and faculty retention is not a priority.”

According to the American Association of University Professors’ Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, average salary percent raises for all ranks of faculty at over 800 U.S. colleges and universities have been consistently higher than Oberlin’s over the past decade by 1–3 percentage points, except for 2021 and 2024. 

President Carmen Twillie Ambar acknowledged concerns from faculty in an email to the Review.

“As tough as this decision was, it was grounded in responsible financial leadership — not indifference,” Ambar wrote. “… Like many colleges and universities, we’re navigating rising costs in areas largely outside our control — healthcare, utilities, compliance, and technology — while working to preserve jobs, protect our academic programs, and safeguard Oberlin’s long-term financial stability. This moment requires us to balance those competing pressures in a volatile higher education environment. Our responsibility is to sustain Oberlin’s mission and secure its future.”

The issue of faculty pay is not a new one for Oberlin. In 2013, following a decline in Oberlin’s comparative position of faculty salaries to its peer schools, the Board of Trustees passed a resolution committing to raise faculty salaries to reach at least the median of the “Sweet 16” peer group — top-ranked liberal arts colleges such as Amherst College, Williams College, and Wesleyan University that Oberlin has historically compared itself against — and to establish faculty salaries as a “strategic indicator of success.” After following through on this pledge over the next three years, and incorporating the “commitments to achieve competitive faculty compensation” into the College’s 2016–21 Strategic Plan, the College found itself in a structural deficit. In the face of this financial strain, all non-union salaries were frozen, with 0 percent base increases in 2017 and 2018, and a 2 percent raise in 2019.

In 2021, General Faculty presented a motion to the Board of Trustees calling for the College to recommit to its 2013 compensation resolution and to offer better healthcare plan options, after the College announced the summer before that all faculty and non-unionized staff would be moved to a Consumer-Driven Healthcare Plan. This motion, which faculty voted 82 percent in favor of, was rejected by the Board in March 2022.

However, following a salary study, the Board authorized an additional $3 million in “salary adjustments,” according to Ambar, and in 2024 and 2025, faculty received additional compensation, averaging $7,550 per person in 2024 and $2,066 per person in 2025.

Oberlin is not unique in its financial struggles. Across the country, colleges and universities have been grappling with financial crises, consolidating programs, initiating layoffs, and lowering acceptance rates for graduate applicants. According to Inside Higher Ed, in 2025, at least 16 nonprofit colleges announced closures, continuing a trend of rising closures and mergers in the face of financial difficulties.

“Our ability to provide ever-stronger compensation is not an Oberlin challenge — it is an industry one,” Ambar wrote. “The data [from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources] is clear: nationally, faculty salaries haven’t kept pace with inflation for nearly a decade.”

Ambar also pointed to shortcomings of comparing Oberlin’s faculty salaries to other institutions.

“Data across institutions is always difficult to compare because colleges and universities use different methodologies,” Ambar wrote. “For example, some peer institutions include tenure and promotion increases within their reported raise percentages, which can make annual increases appear larger than they really are. We report our annual raise figures separately and don’t combine them with those promotion-related increases.”

Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand, who has published several op-eds over the years about faculty salaries and has been touted by many professors as a key figure in the push for faculty pay, acknowledged the financial limitations the College faces but pointed to the fact that the College finds the resources to fund other projects and positions. This has included an increase in executive compensation as a percentage of our budget from 1.3 percent to 1.8 percent between 2018–2024, during which time Ormand pointed out that compensation for all other employment categories dropped from about 30 percent to about 23 percent. Several faculty also pointed to the fact that in the 2023-24 financial year, Ambar received nearly $1.5 million from the College (“Tax Forms Show Oberlin Compensated President Ambar Nearly $1.5 Million,” The Oberlin Review, Oct. 3, 2025). This was partially due to a deferred compensation of $554,146 that added to her base pay of $618,090, which is comparable to, and even a little below, the salary of presidents at other liberal arts colleges.

“It’s not like we’re sitting on a pile of money and it would be easy to give us bigger raises,” Ormand said. “That’s not the case. But we have clearly made budgetary choices such that we do not have money for faculty and staff salaries, because we have spent that money on other things.”

Several faculty members raised concerns about the impact of not raising faculty salaries to a more competitive rate.

“If your pay is getting cut in real terms, then people are going to look for side gigs,” Crowley said. “For tenured faculty, there really isn’t an incentive to continue to be a researcher, a published academic, other than your own interests, and so on. And if you’re squeezing folks financially, and the research output of the faculty declines, that impacts the reputation of the College, among faculty elsewhere and for the public at large.”

Solomon echoed this sentiment. 

“Oberlin has this long tradition of people who want to be here, want to live in the community and participate in events, and don’t just treat it like a nine-to-five and then they go back to their lives,” Solomon said. “There’s a long tradition of faculty here being deeply involved in the culture of the place. But I think that is only sustainable if people make a living.”

Solomon believes that more faculty have not been speaking out due to fear of repercussions, arguing that there are “real material disincentives to speak,” both for those with tenure and without. Solomon emphasized that the risk of speaking out was highest for those without the security of tenure, who are also those most disproportionately affected by the 1 percent raise, since a lot of faculty at Oberlin have contracts that stipulate that they may be fired at will.

“There’s a lot of fear,” Solomon said. “People feel there are no jobs in our fields. And so those of us who have jobs don’t want to lose them, because we feel that if we lose our jobs, we won’t be able to get another one. And I want to make clear that the academic job market is not some neutral assessment of value but is always actively being shaped by political decisions, often made without expertise, and sometimes with overt idiocy, as we saw when DOGE used ChatGPT to cancel NEH grants last year.”

Solomon, who is on the Executive Committee of Oberlin’s branch of the AAUP, said that the organization is intending to have a membership meeting to discuss compensation “as soon as possible.” 

Ormand emphasized the work needed to push for better wages. 

“I have been fighting this fight since 2011, and I’m tired,” Ormand said. “I’m about to retire. Honestly, if it matters to the younger faculty, they’re going to have to get organized.”