After months of delay, the budget numbers are now in. State lawmakers have approved a pay package that boosts UW System faculty and academic staff pay by 2 percent for AY 2007-2008, 2 percent again for AY 2008-2009, and another 1 percent in April 2009. For reference, faculty salaries systemwide are about 8.5 percent behind peer colleges and universities, and academic staff salaries are about 20 percent behind, according to System President Kevin Reilly. Clearly this package will do little to close those gaps. And undoubtedly, there will continue to be handwringing over a brain drain as some of the best and brightest on this campus get recruited away by universities willing to pay substantially more.
Saving the University (so far) from a far more severe haemorrhage of talent is a surprisingly simple fact: Many of us still love the University of Wisconsin and the city of Madison enough to ignore the lure of higher pay.
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