III.
Faculty Recruitment and Retention
This
next section examines issues of faculty recruitment and retention
through a series of open and closed-ended survey questions.
According
to two thirds of respondents, faculty recruitment is a problem for their
unit. This perspective is especially common in Science (83% perceive
recruitment as a problem), Education (79%), Veterinary Medicine (76%),
Engineering (75%), the Libraries (75%), and Management (75%) and the
least prevalent in Agriculture (50%) and Consumer and Family Sciences
(55%).
Faculty
retention is perceived to be a problem by 59% of faculty. Three of the
schools where faculty most often agreed recruitment is a problem for
their unit were also the most likely to report that retention is a problem:
Education (74% perceive retention as a problem), Science (70%), and
Management (68%). Seventy two percent of Liberal Arts faculty were also
likely to perceive this as a problem.
As
with the recruitment question, Agriculture (43%) and Consumer and Family
Sciences (36%) faculty were less likely than average to perceive that
retention is an issue for their unit. Additionally, fewer than average
Technology (40%) and Health Sciences faculty (45%) perceived this as
a problem.
The
following summary of responses to open-ended questions about faculty
recruitment and retention offers more insight into this issue.
Four
out of five faculty responded to each of four open-ended questions
regarding recruitment and retention. Unit and/or university prestige
was by far the most often cited positive influence on recruitment,
whereas location and low salary offers were the most frequently cited
negative factors. As for impacts on retention, the most commonly mentioned
positive factors were collegial environment and salary and benefits,
while the most commonly mentioned negative factor was again salary.
Comparing
the factors that faculty believe positively impact recruitment and
retention in their unit, the top four factors – prestige of the unit
and/or the university, salary and benefits, collegial environment,
and quality of faculty members – were the same for both. However,
prestige of the unit and/or the university and quality of faculty
members were most commonly cited as positively influencing recruitment
while collegial environment and salary and benefits were seen as most
important for retention. As for factors negatively influencing recruitment
and retention, faculty believed that location, low salaries, excessive
workloads, and ineffective leadership are the most significant in
both cases.
Responses
to each of the four questions regarding positive and negative impacts
on both recruitment and retention are described more fully on next page.
Click
to continue to Question Responses (Q 10a)
