Using a non-academic offer for leverage?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I am a junior person on the tenure-track at a large-teaching-focused-state school. This school is an area of the US which has very high cost of living and the pay at my institution has not kept pace with inflation.

My question is: Can I use a non-academic job offer to try to get my current institution to give me a raise in salary?

Before I got into philosophy, I had a 10+ year career in a specific business or industry. So, I could get a non-academic job offer. My worry is how my department, dean or administration will receive this. On one line of thought, if they want to keep me, they will make an offer.

On another line of thinking, they may not treat this kind of job offer like they would an academic TT job offer. But I am completely unsure about this.

Another reader submitted the following reply:

[F]rom my experience if you approach the administration at a university/college in the USA with an offer of a job outside the academy they will say "God Bless, and good bye". You are conveying to them that you really are not that interested in the academy and THEIR college. There are, after all, hundreds of hungry adjuncts dying to work for peanuts. They do not need someone who is slumping around for the next 30 years thinking they are unpaid (even if they are).

My sense is that this is probably true of teaching-focused institutions like the OP mentions. However, I'm not sure whether things might be different for R1's, who might want to hold onto 'star faculty.' I realize this is probably an uncommon situation, but do any readers have tips or experience with this issue?

 

Comments

[Sorry]

I don’t think that they would respond with a counter offer. It of course just depends on the particular people, but I think even in the business world, one compares apples to apples, so to speak. We all know that faculty get paid less, but there are many perks—flexible schedule, summers “off”, some research budget. There’s also the notion that they don’t want to hand you over to the “competition”, and that they generally want to be paying their faculty what it takes to retain them. This rationale isn’t operative in a non-academic offer.

So while I think “another reader” is a bit too cynical, I also think they wouldn’t respond well, and you might run the risk of conveying to your administration that your heart is not in academia.

Of course, science and law professors get paid more, partly because they could all work elsewhere for more. But if you are in philosophy, that general claim is not true, you just happen to be a special case.

[I saw it]

Once, a colleague in another department (in the social sciences) was offered a position at a near by competitor college. She approached the administration to ask for a modest raise - $3000. She was an active research, had done service beyond her level, and was a solid teacher. They said NO ... flat no. In certain sectors of higher ed, there is virtually no bargaining. If you get a job you might as well leave.

[SLAC prof.]

I suspect the most important distinction is not between R1 and teaching schools, but between well-to-do schools and less-well-off schools. I am at a very well to do liberal arts college. I know of multiple people who have received substantial raises due to competing offers or even the prospect of a competing offer (i.e. being a finalist for a position). On other hand, I have friends as less well-to-do schools where the policy is basically that retention offers are not a thing. They just let people go.

OP should try to figure out whether their institution gives retention offers. If they do, then I think it's well worth getting an outside offer, even if it's a non-academic offer. My sense is that places that give retention offers don't care what the other option is. They care that the person is entertaining another option.