New data from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) shows average salaries for full-time faculty fell 0.4% between fall 2024 and fall 2025 after adjusting for inflation—the first real-dollar decline in three years. Real-dollar faculty pay remains down 7.5% cumulatively since fall 2019 to fall 2022. AAUP also reports that continuing faculty saw an inflation-adjusted average increase of 0.7%, highlighting uneven movement across employment categories. The survey includes pay-per-course for part-time faculty, showing wide variation by institution type, and notes that about a third of institutions contribute to part-time retirement plans and 30.6% to part-time medical insurance premiums. The findings raise immediate pressure on universities balancing constrained budgets with competitive compensation, particularly as hiring and retention remain central to academic workforce stability.