Salaries across the country rose by an average of 1.2 percent for this academic year, lower than last year’s inflation rate of 2.7 percent, according to the study. For Syracuse University professors, the report found their salaries increased even less than that, only .5 percent.

Kal Alston, SU associate provost for academic administration, said the study isn’t much of a cause for alarm on campus.

“These studies are really blunt instruments because all of these institutions that they’re surveying are all really different,” Alston said. “They have different sources of funds. There are different sources of income and different mixes of faculty in their disciplines.”

SU made the decision to freeze salaries for about half of its faculty members for this academic year due to the economic downturn, Alston said. Professors making $50,000 or above were not eligible for raises with the exception of those who had just received tenure or a promotion. The freeze will end following this academic year, and a 2 percent merit-based salary raise program will take its place next year.

Alston also said SU can’t be judged by the national average because the study looks at a multiplicity of schools, ranging from small to large and public to private.

“The reports do concentrate on the big averages,” she said. “That’s like comparing apples to oranges. To me, it doesn’t really say very much.”

John Curtis, director of department research at AAUP, said he agreed that although smaller, private colleges are those that have generally seen their salaries affected more, how greatly they have been affected differs on a case-by-case basis. The economic difficulties are the same across the board, but the reasons they persist and the ways to deal with them can differ, he said.

“One of the main points that we want to get across is that the situation is a little different at each college and university,” he said. “So it’s very important for faculty members and interested members of the community to understand the specific situation at that particular college or university.”

In addition to freezing salaries, SU’s administration decided to fight the recession by cutting $12 million from the administrative units’ budgets. The university’s goal was to cut in the least painful places, meaning that it didn’t want to cut programs, raise tuition or stop searching for new faculty, Alston said.

The university’s strategy has been working, too, Alston said. Enrollment numbers have continued to increase, which Alston said is especially important for SU because it is a tuition-driven institution. The cost of tuition will increase by 4 percent for the coming academic year, the lowest raise at SU in 44 years.

Jeff Stonecash, a political science professor, said he thinks the way SU navigated the rocky economic period is impressive.

“We seem to have gone through this pretty well,” he said. “There are some places where they’ve taken 8 or 10 percent pay cuts, and we didn’t do that. I’m not quite sure how we did it, but we’ve done it.”

The lack of salary increases didn’t upset Stonecash, who said professors are pretty well paid as it is. The average salary for a professor at SU is about $112,500, which is higher than the national average of $109,843, according to the study.

“I think in a time when you have almost one out of five people in the economy who are really hurting, for me to complain about not getting a raise, I find that a little strange,” Stonecash said. “In many ways, I’m surprised we didn’t get a cut.”

Other SU professors said that because professors are essential to any university’s work, they shouldn’t receive salary freezes or cuts.

“The main mission of this institution is teaching, unless I’m missing something, and so your rank and file are professors,” said James Dabrowiak, a chemistry professor. “It’s not the sports organizations or the athletics.”

The trend of low salary increases across the nation, including at SU, is likely to persist into the next few years, as long or longer than the recession lasts, Curtis, of the AAUP, said.

“We usually see higher education lagging behind the rest of the economy by at least a year or two,” Curtis said, “which means that it could easily be another year or two of pretty tough times in higher education.”