Salary and Time Transparency

How much do other scholars make, and how much time are they getting covered? Learning the answers to these questions is a rarely discussed benefit of grant writing. When you co-write grants, your collaborators often trust you to see their salaries in budgets. You hear how much time they need covered by the grant (i.e., what percent effort they ask for), and why. When you review grants, you see this information on a bigger scale - across many groups and institutions.

This inside information helps you:

• See market rates for how scholars from different fields and levels are paid. Salaries help you know what might be possible when you negotiate your salary. Deans and chairs have this information - they see internal salaries, negotiate contracts, and usually have decades of experience in higher education. Many factors go into how institutions pay academics, but it doesn’t hurt to be armed with more information.
• Develop a sense of what a reviewer might see as “reasonable.” Often, budgets aren’t supposed to influence reviews. But I’ve seen discussions get sidetracked by people saying someone asked for “too much” or “too little” (e.g., “A junior person needs more time to run a grant this big,” “No way a senior person is actually committing this much time. This is a needless budget drain.”).

But what if you haven’t seen budgets or served as a grant reviewer?

• Find some salary information online. In the U.S., public institutions publish salaries. Here’s GSU’s database. In Australia, most of this information is public and based on stepped scales. Here are UNSW’s salary rates.
• Talk to trusted colleagues. Ask if they might talk with you about salaries and budgets - either generally or specifically. Keep in mind, money is a taboo topic in academia. These conversations are usually rare. Sometimes it helps to ask a more senior colleague if they would review your salary or budget. That lets you lean on their insights without forcing them to reveal personal information.
• Talk to your grants administrator. They’ve seen budgets for your institution or department. Ask if they have thoughts on how reasonable your budget is.
• Look for grant collaborators. Writing with a more senior grant writer is a great way to lean on their expertise. Before you jump into a long writing project with someone, try meeting them for lunch or coffee. See if you like their work approach. Here are some more networking ideas from Dr. Gina Sipley (at minute 8 of the webinar).

For more posts about money and time, see this post on hourly rates. If you know someone who might benefit from today’s newsletter, would you mind forwarding it to them? Thank you, as always, for reading and believing that scholars deserve support for incredible ideas.

Betty

Stay in touch: The Newsletter, Bluesky, and The Grant Writing Guide book.

P.S. Speaking of transparency - I’ve been delayed on newsletter posts. I got sidetracked by a shoulder injury, working on my public scholarship book, and travel.

P.P.S. We went to New Zealand. It was stunning.