‘Equal Pay’ At UT-Tyler: Being Generous With Other People’s Money

("Money - Savings" by 401(K) - 2012 via Flickr)

In a roundtable discussion during UT-Tyer’s Fall Convocation, University Chief Business Officer and Executive Vice President Dwayne Morris said, in answering an audience member’s question, that while recent pay increases to faculty and staff are likely the only systemic raises that will happen in the near future, the university will always be monitoring, among other forces, that it gives equal pay to women. 

“We’ll look at to make sure we’re equitable across the organization, always.” He also spoke about being sensitive to market forces to ensure UT-Tyler pay stays competitive to attract talent. 

This use of the term “equitable” (I assume) refers to the idea that men in the workplace often discriminate against female employees because of their sex. It also plays into the Feminist idea of a dominant male patriarchy that, sexually-minded, discriminates against women in professional settings and are the cause of female underrepresentation in chief positions of power, such as executive leadership positions. 

The idea for equitable or “equal pay” for women, while guarded by both state and federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination against females in the workplace, also plays into a Feminist myth known as The Gender Pay Gap. Now, there is a gender pay difference generally across industries between men and women. This part is not the myth. The myth is that gap exists because men oppress women, not because women generally make different life choices and therefore have disparate contributions to the labor market in comparison to men. 

Morris is not the only university leader to prioritize equal pay in employees. UT-Tyler President Kirk Calhoun told student government on March 28 that equal pay for women was one of the first things he got to when he arrived at UT-Tyler. He said, “We wanted to make sure that our female faculty got equal pay with male faculty. That was an issue that we addressed right away.”

Morris’s comments that UT-Tyler has a priority on paying women equally—I assume, equally as their male employees—reveals a priority that undermines meritorious work from both faculty and staff and instead rewards employees, in part, on sex. 

To be sure, UT-Tyler is a public university and has a statutory requirement to ensure it does not discriminate in employee pay on the basis of sex according to both state and federal law. It is right for university leaders to comply with the law. 

However, these laws do not require administrators to abandon a meritorious system. The more university leadership focuses on rewarding employees on the basis of class status (in this case, sex), the less incentive it provides for productivity and excellence in the workplace. 

UT-Tyler must ensure that its interest in statutory compliance and in prohibiting sex discrimination in the workplace does not destroy the compelling force behind workplace productivity: the opportunity for merit-based financial reward. 

For unlike private companies, such as Amazon or Nike, which can do whatever they want with their revenue, UT-Tyler is a public institution and gets its financial revenue, basically, from other people’s money. To attain its revenue, UT-Tyler relies on both legislative appropriations and student tuition. So while Nike's own profits that make Nike rich, it is taxpayer and student money that fund the university. 

Therefore, while it is proper to comply with the law, to doll out money to female employees simply because of their sex is irresponsible and a waste of student and taxpayer money. In other words, touting that the university will prioritize giving “equal pay” to women —that is, equal to their male counterparts—on the basis of their sex, aside from the statutory requirement, amounts to little more than being generous with other people’s money.

This author wonders if administrators would be so generous if the money came out of their own pockets instead of students’ and taxpayers’. 

Giving so-called “equal pay” to women simply because they are women undermines one of the sources of creative energy that produces excellence in employees. Students and taxpayers get less bang for their buck.

The university should abandon this priority and the false, feminist myth around the gender pay gap. The university should reward employees on the basis of their contribution, not their sex. For while statutory compliance is responsible, university executives should not expect to receive praise for rewarding employees on the basis of sex. That amounts to just being generous with other people’s money. 

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Feature Image: "Money - Savings" by 401(K) - 2012 via Flickr

*Editor's Note: Minor edits for flow on September 16, 2025 at 10:22 a.m.