The Association Between Academic Promotion and Lifetime Salary Compensation in Orthopaedic Surgery
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: There are limited studies on the financial implications of promotion for orthopaedic faculty at academic institutions in the United States. This study quantifies the association between academic promotion and financial compensation for orthopaedic faculty. METHODS: Annual salary benchmarks were analyzed from the 2022 Association of American Medical Colleges Faculty Salary Report for faculty at departments of orthopaedic surgery in US medical schools. Primary outcomes were annual and lifetime salary compensation. Financial models for lifetime salary compensation were created using benchmarks for time to promotion in academic surgical careers. Nonparametric tests were used to compare median annual compensation and salary compensation across academic ranks. RESULTS: Of 752 academic orthopaedic faculty, 350 sports medicine surgeons (47%), 144 hand surgeons (19%), 143 trauma surgeons (19%), and 115 spine surgeons (15%) were included in this study. Most were assistant professors (47%), associate professors (28%), and professors (24%). Across each orthopaedic subspecialty, median annual salary increased at higher academic ranks ( P < 0.05). The greatest increase in lifetime salary compensation occurred during the promotion from assistant professor to associate professor (median = $2,265,444, 13% increase), while the lowest impact was observed in the promotion from associate professor to full professor (median = $179,028, 1% increase; P = 0.040). The greatest increase in lifetime salary compensation from assistant professor to associate professor occurred in sports medicine (18% increase, $3,040,752). Spine surgery had the greatest increase in lifetime salary compensation from associate professor to full professor (22% increase, $4,329,198). DISCUSSION: There is notable financial benefit associated with academic promotion in orthopaedic surgery. This financial benefit is greatest from assistant to associate professor. Departmental leaders must be cognizant of these trends to recruit quality talent.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.021 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".