THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION of University Professors has released its 2013 Salary Survey. The comprehensive look at what colleges and universities across the U.S. pay their faculty includes breakdowns of state-by-state data.

In Michigan, college faculty who teach at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor sit atop the pay chart—tenured professors earn on average $148,700 per year. Associate professors are paid $101,100 per year on average and assistant profs. earn $88,800 per year.

The doctoral institution that pays its faculty the least in the state is Central Michigan University. There, tenured professors earn, on average, $100,000 per year. Assistant profs. at CMU average $67,200, according to the AAUP data.

It’s important to note that at both the University of Michigan as well as Central Michigan University, both institutions employ large numbers  of low-paid non-tenured faculty. Some of those non-tenured faculty work full-time, but the majority of non-tenured faculty hold appointments as part-time or adjunct faculty.

At the University of Michigan, where the non-tenured lecturers are unionized into an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, such faculty are paid per course, and those per course salaries vary wildly.

According to salary data released annually by the University of Michigan, Martin Bienenstock taught at the University of Michigan Law School in 2012 as an Intermittent Lecturer and was paid $1,272,218  for a .03 appointment, or $38,000 per semester for lecturing 1.2 hours per week. Bienenstock is chair of the Business Solutions, Governance, Restructuring & Bankruptcy Department at Prokauer Rose LLP.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the head of the University of Michigan’s 1,200 member lecturers’ union, Bonnie Halloran. In 2012, she was paid $35,277.92 for a .25 appointment, or $8,819 per semester for lecturing 10 hours per week.

Median pay per course for adjunct faculty is $2,700, according to research by AdjunctNation.com. Public institutions in the Southeast pay adjuncts the least, with median pay per course at $2,400 for a four-year college and $1,800 for a community college.

University of Michigan’s tenured professors are not the mostly highly-paid faculty in Academe. Tenured professors at Columbia University earn $212,300 per year.

For the first time in 2012-13, the average full professor’s salary at the best-paying institutions—all private research universities—topped $200,000. Five universities have averages of more than $200,000, while last year’s top average was $198,400 (for Harvard University). This year, Harvard is among those topping $200,000 but fell to fourth, with Columbia University leading the way.

The $148,700 per year average salary for professors at the University of Michigan puts faculty at the school at number 39 on the AAUP’s list of what faculty earn at 1,170 U.S colleges and universities.

The AAUP’s report documents a growing wage gap between public and private colleges. At public institutions, the average salary for a faculty member is $80,578, while at private schools, it’s $99,771.

Critics often target faculty pay as one of the problems in Academe that had led to spiraling tuition costs. Count Vice President Biden among them. When a parent asked Biden this year why college costs keep rising, he cited faculty pay as one culprit.

“Salaries for college professors have escalated significantly,” Mr. Biden said. “They should be good, but they have escalated significantly.”

Over the past three decades, according to another recent AAUP report, tuition has increased at a much faster rate than full-time faculty salaries.