“Poverty” and “wealth” of teachers

Fighting the decile coefficient: the experience of St. Petersburg State University

Vladimir Volokhonsky , host of the author’s blog “SPbSU News - spbgunews.ru ”, continues to follow the topic of low salaries for teachers in universities [1]. We are publishing his new article about what is happening in this regard at St. Petersburg State University.

I’m not an economist and don’t really imagine how widespread this indicator is in the rest of the world, but in our country they really like the “decile coefficient” - the ratio of the incomes of the richest 10% to the poorest 10%, because it hits the point where our society feels pain. The problem for the poor is not so much that they are poor, but that they see how poor they are by comparing themselves to others. As long as I was cutting through dacha puddles on my Orlyonok bicycle, and the family that had an old Moskvich was considered rich, everything was fine. But when I change to a “Ukraine”, and a couple of neighbors change to an “Audi”, some bewilderment begins. But it seems like I’m no longer poor either - a car, an all inclusive vacation... But I just climbed a few steps on the ladder, which has become much longer since my childhood. The poor are about the same, but the rich are no longer just “dacha, car, apartment”, it’s “castle, Bugatti, two-level in the center” and oysters with Bellon sauce.

At university it is not always easy to notice this difference in income - after all, we see each other at work, but not always in everyday life. And we don’t really communicate with colleagues from other faculties. Therefore, the amount of 40 thousand rubles announced a couple of years ago by one of the vice-rectors of St. Petersburg State University. as the average salary of the scientific and teaching staff made a powerful impression on this very staff: “with whom are we being so beautifully averaged?”, colleagues tried to understand. It was assumed that the average was calculated taking into account administrative and managerial personnel, that this amount included all travel expenses of vice-rectors, etc.

The administration of St. Petersburg State University, as part of the development of a policy of information openness, published in 2011 a table with indicators for different faculties, which showed not only the average, but also the incomes of 10% of the “poor” and 10% of the “rich” (repeating this a year later), which created some furor : it turned out that the problem is not only in the mysterious “lawyers”, who, probably, always seemed like aliens to others.

The problem turned out to be that in all faculties the decile coefficient was no less than 5, reaching 12.2 in the record holder - mathematics and mechanics. The most successful representative of the scientific and pedagogical community also worked at mathmech: his average income was 478 thousand rubles. per month (looking ahead - over the year they increased to 664 thousand). I think that an income of a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year would be the envy of most Nobel laureates, if I’m not confusing anything. In general, at the university, the “rich” received about 98 thousand rubles. per month, and the “poor” - about 13 thousand. I will immediately note that these incomes include all payments that are characterized as “salary”, “bonus”, “payment under a civil contract”, which go through the university accounting department.

And a few years after his accession, rector Nikolai Kropachev finally accepted the low incomes of the university’s least affluent employees as a problem. For quite a long time, the main motive of management's remarks was that employees should try, then they will receive bonuses for their efforts and their income will increase. But after several years of sharp income growth, which hardly affected the “poor”, the position has changed somewhat, and during April 2011 several decisions were made in this area.

The most widespread of them was an order on additional payments to the lowest paid categories of teachers: their guaranteed salary was supposed to increase to 11 thousand rubles. with approximately 8 thousand young candidates of sciences, bonuses for their degrees were actually doubled, and some of the bonuses of vice-rectors were made dependent on the level of salaries of the “poor”. Information about this work was covered in detail on the official website of St. Petersburg State University, where reports from dean’s meetings are published.

Let's see what happened - what are the changes during the year? [2] Did you manage to do anything? We can immediately say that the vast majority of faculties succeeded. The decile coefficient for the university fell from 7.6 to 6.3, and the salary of the “poor” increased from 13 to 17 thousand rubles, i.e. almost by a third. This result could have been considered amazing if, at about the same time, the sign for hiring employees at McDonald’s had not raised the bar from 20 to 28 thousand rubles. I will consider a university administration to be successful only when the starting salary of an assistant is ahead of the starting salary of a hamburger assembler. Many people can tell me in response that this is a very decent place, and one should compare it not with it, but with “shawarma”. I think let them compare the salaries of vocational school teachers with “shawarma”. Our goal is decent income for teachers, at least to reach McDonald's!

There are many changes in the tables. Let me draw your attention to the real disaster that broke out at the chemistry department: the salary of the “poor” there fell by a quarter, becoming the lowest at the university - just over 11 thousand rubles. Looking at this line, you can see that this was accompanied by an increase in the number of employees by 30 rates. Either these people were hidden a year earlier, or this was a consequence of the campaign against part-time workers (which became the reason for my dismissal from the university): fractional rates were combined to whole ones, and these were precisely the rates of the “poor people”. At the same time, at the Faculty of International Relations, where the number of employees also increased, salaries for all categories also increased, and for the “poor” - by two-thirds. I don’t know the reasons for this success of international affairs. In relative terms, the greatest success is demonstrated by last year’s outsider, the history department: the wages of the “poor” there have doubled.

Below is a graph, the vertical axis of which reflects the salaries of the “rich”, and the horizontal axis - the salaries of the “poor”. The graph does not show the Higher School of Management and the Faculty of Law, since salaries there differ from other faculties by 23 times. Thus, “poor” lawyers earn 34 thousand rubles. per month, and the “poor” managers - 41 thousand.

The graph shows the faculties: 1 - biology-soil, 2 - eastern, 4 - geography and geoecology, 5 - geological, 6 - journalism, 7 - arts, 8 - history, 9 - mathematics and mechanics, 10 - medical, 11 - international relations, 12 - political science, 13 - applied mathematics - management processes, 14 - psychology, 15 - liberal arts and sciences, 16 - sociology, 17 - dentistry and medicine. technologies, 18 - physical, 19 - philological, 20 - philosophical, 21 - chemical, 22 - economic.

In general, we can consider the work of the St. Petersburg State University administration to reduce the decile coefficient a positive example and hope for its continuation. After a certain point, however, there will come a point at which a mechanical increase in minimum wages will begin to lead to incentives for idle people - after all, it will be possible to receive a more or less decent salary, meeting only the minimum requirements. However, for now we can only dream about it.

1. See the article by V. Volokhonsky, published a year ago, “Salaries and hunger strike”: http://trv-science.ru/2011/04/26/zarplata-i-golodovka/

2. Both tables (for 2010 and 2011) see the link http://spbgunews.ru/2012/06/29/zarplaty-prepodavatelej-spbgu-i-nauchnyx-sotrudnikov-po-fakultetam-v-2011