Women holding their own in administrative salaries.

A mid planned furloughs, salary reductions and hiring freezes, data compiled for the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) administrative salary survey might seem irrelevant today.

But the data do reflect how an industry values its employees. The 2009 fiscal year report shows median salary increases for senior administrators have outpaced inflation for the 12th straight year, a 4.0% increase compared with a 3.8% increase in inflation.

Median salaries for female senior administrators continue to lag behind those of males. Of the 103 job titles popular with women, in just 21 jobs (20%) do women earn higher salaries, down from 23 last year.

Salaries for academic deans were most gender equitable. Of the 12 dean positions listed here, women earn more in three: engineering, law and medicine.

The worst gender imbalance is for deans of journalism and mass communication. Female deans earn a median salary of $130,625, while males are paid a median salary of $177,568, a premium of $46,943!

CUPA-HR collected data from 1,329 schools on 77,913 senior administrators in 274 job titles between September 2008 and January 2009.

Next year's data is expected to show smaller salary increases.

Half of this year's respondents expected to hire either "somewhat fewer" or …