Ferrum College
PAE-11: Sustainable Compensation

Ferrum College’s lowest paid full-time employees earn at least $0.75/hour above minimum wage and those lowest-paid full-time employees are eligible for benefits that could add up to as much as 35% of their wages. Ferrum College is in a very rural part of a rural county with little employment opportunity within a 15-20 mile radius. Because of our location and lack of employment opportunities, it is difficult to obtain accurate regional pay data for comparison. For the past 9 years, even during the recent economic downturn, the institution has provided across-the-board increases to all employees except for 2 years when small bonuses were given in lieu of increases. These compensation increases have included benchmarking increases for a number of our workforce (25%?). We use higher education-specific salary surveys to assess our faculty/professional/administrative employee pay. We use informal local surveys (acquired through a small local human resources association) to assess our operations employee pay. We use regional law enforcement agency salary information to assess our police department personnel pay. We have only 1 contractor on campus, employing less than 5 regular employees. All operations personnel are employees of Ferrum College.