Survey of Academic Department Chairs: Outlook for Faculty Retention (ISBN No:979-8-88517-096-3 )

122 department chair drawn from more than 100 colleges and universities provide data and commentary, enabling this report’s end users to answer the following kinds of question: Which academic fields have experienced the greatest outflow of tenured faculty in recent years? What kinds of college and universities expect the most problems with faculty retention in the future? What do department size, length of tenure of department chair, and other factors have to do with faculty retention? Do public or private colleges have the greater problem in retaining adjuncts? What about non-tenured faculty? Are trends for retention the same or different for adjuncts and non-tenured faculty than for tenured faculty? How satisfied are department chair with their own situations? How do they perceive the level of competition for new faculty in their fields over the next three years?

Just a few of this 66-page report’s many findings are that:

• A mean of 3.9 tenured faculty in engineering and mathematics left their departments for other offers or professions over the past two years, the highest for all fields in the sample.
• For non-tenured faculty, departures were greater over the past two years from private than public colleges, despite the larger size of the latter.
• Expected increases in competition for new faculty were greatest at high tuition schools, at which more than 61% of respondents felt that competition would increase or significantly increase over the next three years.
• Department chair in allied health, visual arts and performing arts were the three fields most likely to report onerous workloads for department chair.