Another major source of complaints among junior faculty is the financial aspect. Salaries have risen the last several years, making up for the lack of increases during the highly inflationary late '70s, when the University tried to economize by keeping salaries down. But the common perception seems to be that junior faculty feel underpaid. "I don't care how many surveys [Dean of the Faculty Henry] Rosovsky wants to from out, it's just not true" that Harvard salaries match those elsewhere, says one junior professor.

"The senior salaries are among the very best in the country," says an assistant professor in the humanities, while the junior salaries are just middling. More specifically, an associate professor adds, in that category in particular "Harvard comes up real short."

But the University has acknowledged this shortcoming. Spence, for instance, says, "We are rarely the highest-paying institution." But there are a number of non-salary financial handicaps with which junior faculty must struggle. Subsidized housing was a repeated request in. The Crimson's poll. "Housing in Cambridge is outrageous," says one. Some rents, she adds "are about as much as a first-year junior professor takes home."

Harvard ought to pay junior faculty moving expenses, says another assistant professor "the only university I know of that doesn't is Harvard." Mortgages ought to be made available to junior faculty, according to one assistant professor, who was told by the Harvard Credit Union that "we only start giving out loans for people who get such-and-such a salary from Harvard, which I happened to know that year was the minimum salary for a full professor."

Even such picayune matters as secretarial help were mentioned several times. "In addition to teaching one more course each year [than senior faculty in the department] and having to publish, we also have to type up our own letters and course materials and do our own xeroxing," says a junior language teacher.

Harvard offers junior faculty a full semester of paid leave, a feature a couple of those polled praised. But according to one assistant professor. "The leave they give you is rather small. Many other universities would give you two periods of two years."

Another ambiguous feature is "seed money" and other Harvard research funding--some junior professors apparently have no trouble getting these dollars, and others seem to have nothing but trouble.

With all these grievances and gripes, why do junior faculty members come to and stay at Harvard? Some of them seem to feel trapped--they don't particularly want to stay, but they can't get a good job elsewhere until they've been here for seven or eight years. Most of the junior professors polled, though, say that the benefits of the Harvard community outweigh or at least balance the drawbacks--they speak constantly of the resources here, in terms of students, colleagues, libraries, laboratories and prestige.

"I wouldn't go to Ohio State, where they pay more, but it's not so exciting academically," says a social scientist. In an absolute sense, Harvard could use some improvement, adds another, but in a relative it is better than most.

And many junior faculty sound optimistic about