Business School Faculty Among Top Earners in Higher Ed, Averaging $117K

Business school faculty at four-year U.S. institutions earned an average salary of $117,000 in the 2023-24 academic year, according to the National Education Association’s 2025 Faculty Salary Report, released in February. The report places Business faculty among the highest-paid educators in academia — trailing only their peers in Health professions ($127,000) and Engineering & Architecture ($122,000).

The report — highlighted in the NEA’s accompanying article, Eight Charts that Tell You Everything About Faculty Pay Today — provides a comprehensive analysis of faculty compensation by discipline, institution type, rank, gender, sector, and union status. It reveals a complex pay landscape shaped by both market demand and structural inequality.

It also reveals the lucrative side of B-school employment: Business remains one of the most financially rewarding academic fields, ahead of Social Sciences ($102,000), Physical Sciences ($106,000), and Arts and Humanities ($94,000).

See Poets&Quants’ 2024 list of the best 40 B-school professors under 40.

GRAD ASSISTANTS IN BUSINESS EARN AN AVERAGE OF $21K

At two-year institutions, business faculty salaries drop to an average of $95,000. Still, that’s higher than the average for education and library sciences profs no matter where they teach — whether it’s four-year schools ($80K) or two-year schools ($92K). (The reversal where faculty in Education & Library Science earn slightly more at two-year colleges than at four-year institutions is rare but not unique: Arts, Comms, History & Humanities profs at four-year schools average $94K, while their counterparts at community colleges average $95K — a reflection, the NEA surmises, of workforce alignment in community college systems.)

While full-time faculty in four-year B-schools enjoy six-figure salaries, their graduate assistants continue to contend with much lower compensation — and the financial precarity that results. According to the 2023-24 Graduate Assistant Stipend Survey conducted by Oklahoma State University, graduate assistants in Business Management and Administrative Services earn an average stipend of just $21,000.

However, some business grad students are better off than others, depending on institution, funding structure, and teaching or research load: Stipends range from a high of $74,000 to a low of $2,000.

SALARY GAPS ACROSS DISCIPLINES & INSTITUTIONS

The NEA report shows significant differences across academic disciplines:

• Health faculty: $127K (4-year) | $85K (2-year)
• Engineering & Architecture: $122K (4-year) | $92K (2-year)
• Business: $117K (4-year) | $95K (2-year)
• Education & Library Science: $80K (4-year) | $85K (2-year)

Graduate assistant stipends reflect equally sharp disparities. In high-demand fields like Health, stipends can reach up to $90,000, while in disciplines such as the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education, average stipends often fall below $20,000.

INFLATION ERODES GAINS

Despite increases in nominal salaries, the NEA cautions that real wage growth has been sluggish because of inflation. Faculty purchasing power still lags behind pre-pandemic levels, and wage stagnation is particularly acute among early-career academics and graduate workers.

As universities compete for top faculty talent in high-demand fields like business and engineering, the growing compensation gap between full-time faculty and the graduate assistants who support them raises pressing questions about the long-term sustainability and equity of academic labor.

See the complete report and accompanying analysis from the NEA here.

DON’T MISS WHAT THE DEAN AND TOP-PAID FACULTY EARN AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL