Start-up packages are given to new faculty hires. A number of elements can be found in start-up packages, which makes it important to define clearly what is being quantified. Systematic surveys of start-up funds began in earnest around 2000. Examples include surveys conducted by the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1999 and surveys conducted by the Council of Colleges of Arts & Sciences—the New Hires Survey and the 2000 Big 10+ Chemical Engineer-
ing Chairs Survey. Summarizing their data, Ehrenberg and Rizzo (2004) write, “at research universities, these [start-up packages needed to attract new faculty members in the sciences] cost an average of $300,000 to $500,000 for assistant professors and often well over $ 1 million for senior faculty.” A survey of start-up funds conducted by the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) in 2002 found:
At the new assistant professor level, with few exceptions, Carnegie Research I universities provide larger start-up packages than other universities in the sample, and private research universities provide larger start-up packages than public universities. When the departments are broken down into four broad fields, physics/astronomy, biology, chemistry, and engineering, the average reported start-up package for new assistant professors at private Research I universities varied across fields between $337,000 and $475,000. Estimates of the average high-end (most expensive) assistant professor start-up package costs at these institutions varied across fields from $587,000 to $725,000.[64]
The data on start-up funds that is disaggregated by gender has been collected by individual institutions. A 2003 task force report at Princeton University, which collected data from five S&E departments, concluded “in the five departments examined, we found no statistical support for gender differences in start-up space, current space, or start-up financial packages. However, we did detect certain patterns. For example, the largest start-up packages have generally gone to men.” Both the committee’s faculty survey and departmental survey requested data on start-up costs. On the faculty survey, faculty who were tenured or tenure-track and hired after 1996 were asked, “When you were first hired at this institution, how much were you given in start-up funds?” Respondents were asked to break down start-up costs into four categories: equipment, renovation of lab space, staff (e. g., postdocs), and other.