Posted on: Tuesday, January 29, 2002

EDITORIAL
Tread carefully with university merit raises

All too often, the best and brightest teachers and researchers at the University of Hawai'i don't receive a financial incentive to stick around until it's too late. By the time those with the hottest prospects are offered retention raises beyond their standard union rates, they're already headed for more generous Mainland pastures.

So an initiative by the UH School of Engineering to reward their best faculty members with merit raises appears to be a good start in plugging the "brain drain."

As higher education writer Beverly Creamer reports, Wai-Fah Chen, the UH dean of engineering, tweaked his internal budget and tapped other reserves to give merit pay to a half-dozen faculty members who shine.

Chen used a meticulous and inclusive method to evaluate his staff, and we hope that others in his position follow his example.

It's important that any evaluation process be careful not to create an academic superstar system. There are many ways to measure excellence: a brilliant teacher of introductory English can be as valuable as a star winner of grants.

Each applicant, then, must be judged within the context of his or her potential and limitations.

If handled poorly, the art of merit raises can lower the morale of many while elevating that of the chosen few. Indeed, that was the concern during contract negotiations last year when Gov. Ben Cayetano offered UH faculty a 9 percent pay increase over two years that would go solely to merit raises.

At the time, Cayetano said that the days of giving raises for the sake of giving raises are over. But critics said that limiting the raise to merit pay would tear the university community apart because many people would receive no raises.

If handled fairly, merit pay can be used to bring UH salaries in line with better-paying Mainland institutions, retain outstanding faculty and generally raise the level of excellence.