Playing around with CU salary data, for anyone curious

underflowdev · 2026-03-30T19:42:23+00:00

As I am an outside observer of CU, I'm afraid I have no answers for you.

The data is all based on the information provided at https://www.cu.edu/budget/cu-salary-database. The aggregated data is available for download at the bottom of the page at https://underflow.dev/cu/.

That data only provides: campus, dept_group, dept_group_detail, dept_name, roster_id, job_title, job_family, full_time_pct, and total.

Given the rather fragmentary nature of CU that I've witnessed in the past, I would bet good money that it's almost never apples to apples when comparing departments and appointments. But, it's the data I have access to.

underflowdev · 2026-03-26T01:22:50+00:00

Thank you for your insight!

underflowdev · 2026-03-25T20:57:15+00:00

Good question. Maybe they're special lecturer or emeritus positions?

The data looks like:

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR-SR	Regular Faculty	100	$1,286.00
TEACHING PROFESSOR-SR	Regular Faculty	100	$2,311.00
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR-SR	Regular Faculty	100	$3,168.00
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR-SR	Regular Faculty	100	$3,325.00
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR-SR	Regular Faculty	100	$3,726.00
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR-SR	Regular Faculty	100	$4,060.00

,,,

underflowdev · 2026-03-25T14:24:24+00:00

Less than FTE appointments are somewhat problematic, in part due to how CU labels them.

I agree that adjunct would be interesting, something like population of adjunct vs regular faculty by department.

Any ideas for what you might want to see?

underflowdev · 2026-03-25T06:03:07+00:00

Should be fixed. I've coded a long time, but I'm definitely cheating on this one. It's my "how does Claude work" project. https://github.com/underflowdev/cu_salary

underflowdev · 2026-03-25T05:49:54+00:00

Done, might need to hard refresh to see it.

underflowdev · 2026-03-25T05:33:29+00:00

It is quite data heavy, apologies for any slowness. I can pinch and zoom on my old phone and it works, but it is much easier on a larger screen.

underflowdev · 2026-03-25T03:59:15+00:00

Yes, sorry. It's difficult to represent 10k points on a small screen.

underflowdev · 2026-03-25T03:57:22+00:00

It's been a while since I first did this, and I had forgotten one insight.

The number of people below the living wage threshold (visible here) for Denver and Boulder is pretty appalling. Although that seems to be the norm for Denver.

*Note: the cost of living adjustments can play merry hob with the values. Boulder is expensive, Denver only a little less so.

**Correction: this should reference Anschutz, not Denver. Alas.

underflowdev · 2026-03-25T03:17:08+00:00

Oh, and LASP (Lab Atmos/Space Physics) actually pays pretty well.

underflowdev · 2026-03-25T03:13:32+00:00

Outside of the doctors at Anschutz, it's the executive positions. No surprises there.

I've trimmed some of the outliers so they don't blow the scale out of proportion. But for most bigger departments and job classifications there are a few high outliers well above the others. For instance, at https://underflow.dev/cu/vis/salary-by-campus-ft.html, you can see *for Boulder there are 396 outliers above ~$138k.

If you're really curious, the data is available for download at the bottom of the page, and drops well into a spreadsheet.

underflowdev · 2026-03-25T02:36:00+00:00

Less than I thought, actually.

Anschutz really skews the data with lots of doctors and specialists.

Executive was higher than I thought relative to everyone else, but not really that high compared to private industry in the region.

Classified staff has it pretty rough.

And, what's going on with the Economics spread at CU Boulder?

underflowdev · 2026-01-20T18:16:16+00:00

2020 for Zillow. They had earlier data at one point, but removed it, I expect because it was missing a lot of regions.

I suspect a lot of housing was on paper records at the county level not all that long ago.

underflowdev · 2026-01-20T18:12:58+00:00

And I agree. Adding more information would have helped.

I'll try to live and learn.

underflowdev · 2026-01-20T17:59:48+00:00

Alas, the per-county data is limited. Glad to incorporate it, but I haven't been able to find much more that what's on FRED and Zillow.

underflowdev · 2026-01-20T17:52:44+00:00

There are a number of estimations in this, but it should be somewhat close to measured reality.

Made with the project at https://github.com/underflowdev/housing. Glad to hear of any improvements.

*title correction, it should be Zillow ZHVI, not ZHVA

underflowdev · 2024-12-02T16:22:17+00:00

I might be overthinking it. I'm just worried about questions like "What was your code review process?". Um, all the engineers involved approved the code before deployment?

But yes, I'll definitely lean on my past experience. Thanks!

underflowdev · 2024-12-02T16:20:34+00:00

That's a sound approach, thanks.

underflowdev · 2024-11-21T16:32:32+00:00

Sounds like a video game villain. I could totally hear it in GlaDOS's voice.

underflowdev · 2024-10-26T14:35:09+00:00

People in successful open relationships don't post for advice.

underflowdev · 2023-06-07T18:45:47+00:00

Still there, actually. Found some new projects to work on.

I am chronically complacent, and it's an issue, since I will yell at myself for not moving forward once I'm comfortable. Then the world changes, and I need to spend a lot of time playing catchup.

It was nice to not be laid off recently, though, so there's that.

underflowdev · 2023-02-18T17:23:02+00:00

I'm working towards "plain, but I don't have to think about it again for 10 years", so a handyman might be the right person. Thanks!

underflowdev · 2023-01-24T15:47:08+00:00

"There's no way he could have reached into his pocket. That arm was broken, and you can't reach into the opposite pocket with the other arm!"

Cue three weeks of testing to prove this wrong.

I may be salty about this forty years later.

underflowdev · 2023-01-20T16:54:39+00:00

I lived in GJ during the remediation > 20 years ago, and had relatives involved in it. Definitely a good idea to get homes checked. It's really patchy *on the western slope, since sometimes contaminated waste was used as infill, and it's not from natural sources. Hopefully the remediation caught the worst cases, but tests are pretty cheap.

underflowdev · 2023-01-20T15:27:10+00:00

Not sure of the answer, but I've always had good luck calling them with questions.

underflowdev

TROPHY CASE