News from The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education at Harvard University

For more information contact: Cathy Trower, Co-Principal Investigator, 617-496-9348, coache@harvard.edu

Study Challenges Assumption that Private Colleges Make Better Faculty Workplaces

Path to tenure clearer, more reasonable to faculty at public institutions

CAMBRIDGE, MA (09/17/2007; 1300)(readMedia)-- Faculty at public colleges and universities rate tenure clarity, the clarity of performance expectations, and the reasonableness of those expectations higher than faculty at private institutions, according to a survey of nearly 7,000 junior faculty members from across the country. Early-career faculty at public institutions also expressed greater satisfaction than those at private institutions with work/life balance. The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), a research project based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, compiled and compared trends between public and private institutions of higher education based on responses from junior faculty members at 77 colleges and universities.

"While private institutions tend to receive higher scores overall from junior faculty, in certain critical areas, the publics are surpassing private institutions," said Dr. Cathy Trower, COACHE Director. "These results challenge the popular belief that faculty at private universities must necessarily be better off than faculty at the publics. Our findings highlight the importance of non-monetary factors that increase the satisfaction and success of junior faculty, such as focusing on making the path to tenure clear and the expectations reasonable. Many public COACHE institutions are viewed as great places to work by their early-career faculty."

Faculty at private universities reported less clarity than those at public institutions with the tenure process and criteria and significantly less clarity on tenure standards. In addition, faculty at private institutions reported significantly less clarity about expectations for their performance as a scholar, a teacher, a campus citizen and a member of the broader community. Furthermore, those faculty at private institutions who indicated the expectations were fairly or very clear felt that the expectations for performance as a scholar, teacher, advisor, colleague and campus citizen were significantly less reasonable than did their peers at public colleges and universities. "Private institutions may learn from what the public institutions are doing right in terms of tenure clarity," said Trower. "Demystifying tenure, by making the standards more clear and the expectations more reasonable, helps to reduce unwanted turnover among tenure-track faculty."

The COACHE survey asked five questions related to professional and personal/family life. While the differences are not statistically significant in all cases, early-career faculty at public colleges and universities rated four out of five work/family dimensions higher than did faculty at private institutions. (The five items were: institutional support for having and raising children; support of departmental colleagues for having and raising children; and satisfaction with the balance between personal and professional time.) Faculty at public institutions reported only less agreement that their institutions do what they can to make having children and the tenure-track compatible; however, junior faculty at private institutions reported significantly lower satisfaction than their counterparts at public institutions with the balance they are able to find in their personal and professional lives. Said Trower, "It should be noted that institutional support for having and raising children, and having a balanced life, are among the lowest rated items in the COACHE survey – at all types of institutions. This should be of primary concern given what we know about the importance of work-family balance to Gen Xers and about the factors affecting the retention and success of academic women, upon whom most childcare responsibilities rest."

In terms of which policies junior faculty consider most important to their success, faculty at public and private institutions strongly diverged in opinion. At private institutions, faculty reported that paid or unpaid research leave, stop-the-clock policies, and childcare were significantly more important to their success than did faculty at public institutions, while faculty at public institutions reported that travel funds, periodic formal reviews with written summaries, professional assistance with obtaining grants and for teaching, and formal mentoring were more important. "Interestingly, when asked which policies mattered most, junior faculty at private institutions named policies that affect the quality of their personal lives, while their counterparts at public institutions cited policies that impact their professional success, particularly through advice and feedback," noted Trower. "It may be the case that some policies are taken as a ‘given’ at the wealthier private institutions."

Overall, of those faculty who deemed a policy as fairly or very important, faculty at public institutions rated eleven policies (out of sixteen) as significantly less effective than did their counterparts at private institutions. Childcare was found to be the least effective policy for faculty at public institutions while for faculty at private institutions, professional assistance in obtaining externally funded grants was the least effective. The two policies that junior faculty at public institutions considered most important – periodic, formal performance reviews and written summaries of those reviews – were also rated more effective at public institutions as compared to private colleges and universities. "It’s a positive sign that those policies most important to junior faculty are viewed as effective by the constituency that most values them," said Trower. “However, there is still much work to be done when it comes to effectively implementing policies and practices in both sectors." Only one policy was rated, on average, better than "fairly effective" by public faculty; their counterparts at private institutions did not, overall, find one policy to meet even that threshold.

Regarding climate, culture and collegiality, results did not differ dramatically between sectors. Junior faculty at public institutions ranked half of the climate-related survey dimensions higher than did faculty at private institutions. Most noticeably, at private colleges and universities, faculty reported significantly less satisfaction than their counterparts at public institutions with the amount of professional interaction they have with other junior colleagues, while faculty at publics, on the other hand, reported significantly less satisfaction with the intellectual vitality of their senior faculty. "Although neither public nor private institutions scored particularly well on any of the variables within the climate section of the survey, they scored relatively equally well, which suggests improvement of the workplace climate should be a priority across the board," noted Trower.

Despite awarding their workplaces higher scores than did their counterparts at private institutions in the survey categories mentioned above, faculty at public institutions expressed less satisfaction overall than did faculty at private institutions with their campuses as places for junior faculty to work, and they were less likely to agree with the statement "If I had to do it over again, I would accept my current position."

About COACHE

Based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and supported by member institutions, COACHE is committed to gathering the peer diagnostic and comparative data academic administrators need to recruit, retain, and develop the cohort most critical to the long-term future of their institutions. For more information, please visit www.coache.org.