New Study from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Shows Men and Women Faculty Retained at Same Rate; But Median
Retention Rate for All University Professors Is Only 11
Years
Attracting and retaining the world’s brightest students is
on the mind of every university official. But a new,
unprecedented study in the journal Science suggests
leaders in higher education face an understated, even more
pressing challenge: the retention of professors.
The good news, said
Deborah Kaminski of Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, who led the study, is that men and women faculty
in the areas of science, technology, and engineering are being
retained at the same rate. The one exception is in mathematics
departments, where women faculty depart their jobs
significantly sooner than men.
However, looking at the bigger picture of the study—the
first large-scale longitudinal study on faculty
retention—reveals that faculty members of both genders stay at
a university for a median of 11 years.
“This means if you hire 100 assistant professors tomorrow,
in 11 years only 50 of them will still be at your school,” said
Kaminski, professor in the Department of Mechanical,
Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering (MANE) at Rensselaer.
“This leakage rate is huge, and should be a big red flag to
everyone in higher education. The problem is particularly acute
for research universities, where recruitment is expensive and
competitive startup packages for new faculty members can be
upward of $1 million.”
Findings of the study will be published tomorrow by the
journal Science in the paper “Survival Analysis of
Faculty Retention in Science and Engineering by Gender.”
Co-author of the paper is Cheryl
Geisler, dean of the faculty of art, communication and
technology at Simon Fraser University. The
study was funded by the National Science Foundation ADVANCE
Program.
Kaminski and Geisler tracked the professional progress of
2,966 individual assistant professors hired since 1990 in the
fields of science and engineering at 14 universities in the
United States—including Rensselaer and many Ivy League schools.
With the help of student researchers, Kaminski and Geisler made
digital archives of publicly available university catalogs and
communications to follow the careers of these assistant
professors. The research team noted when the assistant
professors were promoted to associate professor, promoted to
full professor, or departed the university. Discrepancies and
missing data were sought out online or—as a last resort—with
phone calls to the actual professors or their academic
departments. While time intensive, this methodology allowed for
the collection of richer, more accurate data than previous
faculty retention studies, Kaminski said.
The researchers found men and women faculty are retained at
about the same overall rate, except in mathematics, where men
stay for a median of 7.3 years and women for 4.45 years—the
difference of which is statistically significant, Kaminski
said. The study did not investigate the specific reasons why
the tracked faculty members departed their positions.
“On the whole, men and women faculty are being retained at
the same rate. This is great news and an important step toward
the goal of fostering gender diversity in science and
engineering programs across the country. Something is working
well,” Kaminski said. “In the case of mathematics, we’re not
quite sure what’s going on, but we’re convinced it merits a
closer look and further study.”
The overall trend of faculty retention, however, is
worrying, Kaminski said. The median time a faculty member stays
at a university is 10.9 years, which effectively means the
school has to replace half its faculty every 11 years. The
recruiting process is time and cost intensive, and startup
costs for new engineering or science professors can range from
$110,000 to nearly $1.5 million. Additionally, assistant
professors generally teach fewer courses per year, as they’re
expected to spend the bulk of their time writing proposals,
securing grants, and launching their research program, Kaminski
said. This means new faculty members are usually more expensive
to employ for their first few years until they start attracting
research funding.
“We think this study could be an important reference point
to help obviate many practical and financial reasons for why
all universities should arguably be spending more time, energy,
and resources on retaining younger faculty,” Kaminski said.
Overall, at the 14 universities represented in the study,
about 27 percent of faculty members hired into science,
engineering, and mathematics programs are women. This
percentage is on the rise, but is unlikely to reach 50 percent
before 2050, Kaminski said. Even after one half of all faculty
members being hired are women, it will likely take at least
another 40 years before the actual population of science,
engineering, and mathematics professors is 50 percent
women.
Kaminski leads the successful NSF-funded RAMP-UP Program at
Rensselaer, which seeks to foster a university culture and
climate that is supportive of all faculty members.
“I think a balanced, representative university faculty is
very important for our students. We have a shortage in this
country of people who choose to study science and engineering.
To re-fill that pipeline, we need to look at the entire
population. Women are recruited from high schools into science,
engineering, and mathematics programs at a lower rate than men.
To help fix this problem, we need a faculty population that
looks almost identical to the population of our country. The
same is true for recruiting more students from underrepresented
minorities into science and engineering. If we want the United
States to retain its technological leadership into future
generations, we need to make sure the fields of science and
engineering are accessible to everyone,” Kaminski said.
YouTube
video interview with Deborah Kaminski
For additional information on Kaminski’s research at
Rensselaer, visit:
- Faculty Home Page
http://www.eng.rpi.edu/soe/index.php/faculty/154?soeid=kamind - Rensselaer, Other Capital Region Employers Form
Consortium To Recruit and Retain Professionals - $2.7 Million Grant Brings Rensselaer Graduate Students to
Local Classrooms - Rensselaer Announces Initiative To Support Advancement of
Female Academics
