In a year when tightening state budgets have all but strangled hiring plans and any wage increase for most university employees, NIU gave 10 faculty members raises totalling more than $70,000 to stay at NIU.

NIU Provost Kendall Baker said the raises were given to faculty to counter job offers made by other universities. Baker said no specific salary figures are available until they are approved at the September Board of Regents meeting.

Because NIU often does not match outside offers dollar for dollar, the process is called a counteroffer, and it is successful in about half of all cases.

This year 20 NIU faculty were made counteroffers. Baker said records from fiscal year 1989 show 13 of 22 faculty members that year decided to stay at NIU after receiving counteroffers totalling about $60,000.

Baker said counteroffers are made only when a faculty member can show a written offer from another institution and a college dean requests help in keeping the faculty member.

“It most definitely does not happen in every instance. Every time a faculty member comes up with an offer, we don’t run to counter it,” he said.

Baker said his office and the college each cover about half the cost of successful counteroffers.

Baker said money for the counteroffers comes from whatever flexible funds his office and the colleges can find without cutting classes or other instructors.

“We’re generally best off trying to keep our best faculty and keep them with students and with the programs they’ve developed. Chances are that it’s probably a whole lot more expensive to replace them than it is to keep them,” he said.

Baker said most of those made outside offers are promising assistant or associate professors who are building their academic reputation at NIU.

“That’s what’s so troubling: the people that are really going to be important in our program in years to come are the ones being given offers,” Baker said.

Although often outbid by other schools, NIU has some bargaining advantages. Faculty who accept outside offers face the prospect of moving their families, interrupting their research and higher costs of living that can devour much of their new salary.