Here's a riddle: which profession guarantees that the more years you work, the less you will be paid? The answer is a college professor at a public university.
Decades of budget cuts and financial crisis have left their mark, and while data from program prioritization proved how much NIU faculty was paid less than colleagues at SIU or ISU, the Board of Trustees allocated one million dollars for a scoreboard in the Convention Center and raised the football coach's and university president's salaries instead.
Nevertheless, rather than focus on how demoralizing it is to work year after year and watch your earning power slowly evaporate, I would like to concentrate on the effects that salary compression has had on DeKalb's economic wellbeing.
As the largest employer in the county, the lack of raises has a direct impact on NIU employees' purchasing power. While there is a tendency to see empty storefronts in downtown DeKalb as a problem of parking or a preference to malls, isn't it time to consider the effects of salary compression?
I know that my family has reduced shopping for gifts, entertaining and dining out because our grocery bills and property taxes have gone up while family earnings have remained the same. Maybe it is time the community held NIU accountable for the effects of salary compression. Otherwise, business owners better hope the one-million-dollar scoreboard shops local.
I’m Frances Jaeger and that’s my perspective.
