Two current or former faculty members have sued Penn State this semester based on charges of discrimination and unfair wages.

Now, at a recent Faculty Senate meeting, salary charts were released showing the average male professor's salary at University Park, as of fall 2006, is higher than that of their female counterparts.

While this issue is something that the administration should look into, there are several factors that could play into the data and make discrimination appear more prominent. It would be wrong to jump to conclusions and immediately declare that Penn State is basing salary on gender.

There are some fields of higher education that women just haven't been involved with for as long as men. Salary charts might be misleading because men and women have been serving for different amounts of time at different levels of teaching. Traditionally, men hold more jobs than women in areas like engineering or other math and science fields. Only in the last couple decades or so have women begun to gain representation as professors in these areas. Because jobs in engineering and other sciences tend to pay more than those in the liberal arts -- a field where women are arguably greater in number -- data about salaries can be skewed. Salary information is very dependent on the field and how long a person has been in that field.

Even though the salary charts may not reflect a trend of discrimination at Penn State, the information and the lawsuits should be regarded as warning signs. Other factors may have played a part in the discrepancy, but this doesn't mean the data should be ignored. Penn State administration and staff need to sort out the conflicting variables and do a little research. Do other Big Ten schools show numbers similar to ours? Does data indicate that the salary gap between men and women is getting smaller or larger as time goes on? Questions like these must be answered and addressed before Penn State finds another lawsuit on its hands. Officials said because of the way salaries are determined today, newer proffessors' pay increases faster than that of people who have been here longer. If this is the case, then the salary data should be re-evaluated in a few years to see if women are catching up to men. If they aren't, this should be regarded as another warning sign of possible discrimination. The salary charts released at the Faculty Senate meeting may not be cause for immediate alarm, but the number should be investigated further to sort out the extraneous variables from what's really going on.