NIU faculty and staff will receive a maximum pay increase of 5 percent this academic year, based on guidelines set by the Board of Regents at its meeting July 21 and 22.

Slightly less than 1 percent of the increments will come from state funds. The rest was generated internally through reallocation and tuition.

Anne Kaplan, executive assistant to the president, said about one-third of the increase will come from tuition dollars while the rest will come from internal reallocations.

NIU Provost J. Carroll Moody said, “We (NIU) are really very pleased with the increments. We’ve been doing everything we can to make NIU salaries more competitive.”

NIU’s raises will be substantially higher than the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. U of I’s faculty and staff only will receive less than the 1 percent raise allocated from the state.

Faculty and staff from Illinois State University at Normal will receive about a 6.5 percent increase. ISU is able to surpass the 5 percent cap placed on raises by the Regents because it did not have a 2.5 percent midyear increment like NIU, which the Regents approved for NIU, ISU and Sangamon State University in Springfield.

The 5 percent raise will give NIU’s faculty and staff a 12 percent raise over a two-year period.

Moody said the faculty raises will be based entirely on merit instead of a flat across-the-board raise.

He said colleges will take into account previous merit evaluations because it has been about four years since NIU faculty received a merit raise.

NIU’s operating staff’s raise will be distributed in two ways. Eighty percent of the raise will be a flat dollar amount. Some of the remaining 20 percent will go to market adjustment raises or raises for people whose salaries are below market value.

The 20 percent also will go to individuals who have taken on additional responsibilities because of cutbacks in personnel. A small portion of the 20 percent will go to individuals with exceptional merit ratings.

NIU’s support professional staff will have two-thirds of its raise distributed across-the-board. One-third will go to market adjustments, personnel who have taken on additional duties and exceptional merit raises.