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August 3, 2007, 01:15 AM ET
No Satisfaction
The findings of a new study show that female and minority junior faculty members are less satisfied with their campus workplaces than their male and white peers are, Lauren Smith reports today on the Chronicle Web site.
The study by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education, or Coache, a research project at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education that is supported by the Ford Foundation, also found that while junior professors valued institutional policies designed to help them succeed, they were less satisfied with the effectiveness of those policies, though women and minorities rated them more highly than men did, Smith writes:
The survey questioned 6,773 tenure-track faculty members at 77 institutions. ...
On average, not one of the 16 policies or practices evaluated in the survey was rated even “fairly effective” by faculty members. Some of those policies include an upper limit on teaching obligations, an upper limit on committee assignments, and travel funds to present papers or conduct research. On a 5-point scale, with 5 being “very effective” and 1 being “very ineffective,” informal mentoring ranked as the most effective practice at only 3.69, “suggesting much room for improvement,” the report said.
Smith quotes one of the survey’s authors as saying that institutions may need to do more if they hope to attract and retain more women and minority faculty members:
“Just having a policy on the books doesn’t necessarily change the culture and climate on the campus,” said Cathy A. Trower, a Harvard University researcher and one of the survey’s directors. “People experience those policies and practices quite differently.”
The survey also examined the compatibility of the tenure track and raising children, and junior-faculty satisfaction with their work-life balance, and found that young faculty members were pretty dissatisfied with the balance between professional and personal time (their level of satisfaction was a mere 2.78 out of a possible 5 points). Not surprisingly, female faculty members said they were less satisfied with their work-life balance than their male counterparts did.
On Hiring is The Chronicle's blog about the ins and outs of college hiring, with articles and advice from around the Web.
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