By any measure, hiring activity in the market for business faculty has increased in recent years. This trend continued throughout 2000, as evidenced by results of AACSB’s annual Salary Survey. The percent of faculty reported as new hires in 2000 has grown to 8.82 percent, from 5.6 percent in 1996, for example. On average, each participating school welcomed 4.43 new faculty members in the fall of 2000, which is up from 2.76 in 1996. Among participating business schools, the average number of new faculty members hired directly out of doctoral programs, either as "new doctorates" or "all but dissertation – ABD," grew to 1.35 in 2000, from .89 in 1996, and 1.08 in 1999. To put this into perspective, in the year 2000, 464 schools reported salaries for 625 new doctorates and ABDs. Last year, 462 schools reported salaries for only 498 new doctorates and ABDs.

Growth in hiring activity was not evenly distributed across all fields, however, and appears to reflect shifting enrollment trends and market demands. For example, as shown in Table 1, the percent of new hires accounted for by information systems (CIS/MIS) grew to 17.6 percent in 2000, from 11.1 percent in 1996. On the other hand, the fraction of new hires accounted for by accounting and finance declined to 15.7 percent (from 18.2 percent) and 12.9 percent (from 15.8 percent), respectively, in 2000.

As previously indicated, overall hiring of new doctorates and ABDs grew substantially in 2000. However, they now represent a smaller percentage of all new hires than in 1996, for example. New doctorates and ABDs were 30.4 percent of all new hires in 2000, down from 32.2 percent of all new hires in 1996. "This trend will likely continue as the number of business doctorates conferred and enrollment in doctoral programs in the United States further declines," said Dan LeClair, AACSB’s director of knowledge services.

An analysis of business faculty salaries yields mixed results. While not insignificant, increases in market salaries do not seem to reflect the substantial hiring activity indicated above. To control for potential bias, AACSB separately analyzed the data from 344 business schools that reported faculty salaries in each of the last four years. Results from this analysis are presented in Table 2.

Although growth in average salaries at all ranks has been fairly steady, the analysis shows that increases in overall new doctorate and ABD salaries posted for the current year fell well short of the 1999 gains. Table 4, however, shows much larger increases in some fields/disciplines and smaller gains in other areas. For example, average salaries for new doctorates in accounting increased more than 14 percent. Similar increases were experienced in the economics area. However, average salaries for information systems new doctorates grew more modestly and average salaries for finance new doctorates stayed constant.

Tables 3 and 4 also show average salaries for new hires in each field by rank. While not shown in the table, premiums for new hires were generally smaller in 2000 than in 1999. Last year, and again this year, new doctorate average salaries are higher than the average salaries for associate professor. Top reported salaries were $311,000, $214,600 and $160,000 for professor, associate professor and assistant professor, respectively. The top new doctorate salary reported was $153,000 in the accounting area.

AACSB invited 658 educational members in the United States to participate in this year’s survey. Reflecting the high value placed on the reports created using the survey data, member participation was very strong, 90 percent among accredited institutions and 71 percent overall.

The 464 participating schools provided data on 24,013 business faculty members across all ranks and 28 business fields and 3,690 administrators in 22 positions normally found in business schools. Of the 3,690 administrative salaries reported, 814 were on a nine-month basis, while 2,876 were on a 12-month basis.

In December, all member schools were sent an Executive Summary of the 2000-2001 Salary Survey results.