Inside Higher Ed reports today on a new study of junior faculty job satisfaction showing that faculty satisfaction doesn't correlate with institutional prestige:
The collaborative, known as COACHE, last year released aggregate findings from its survey of thousands of faculty members at dozens of participating institutions. That analysis found that junior professors placed increasing importance on issues such as the clarity of tenure policies or the availability of support for balancing work and family life when evaluating their job satisfaction. This week, the project is identifying the institutions in the study that are "exemplary" in six general areas and in global satisfaction. (Institutions that did not do well are having their identities protected by COACHE.)
Five universities and one college were ranked exemplary in four of the seven categories. These institutions are Auburn, Brown, Ohio State and Stanford Universities; Davidson College; and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Two universities (Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia) and two colleges (Goucher and Kenyon Colleges) were outstanding in three categories.
The slant they take is mostly financial-- someone from Auburn notes the difference in housing prices between Alabama and New York City-- but this shouldn't be surprising to anyone who knows anything about the tenure process at Harvard, Yale, and MIT. The funding may be better at the very top places, but some of the things they do to their junior faculty are just insane. It's no surprise to me that faculty are happier a bit lower down on the institutional prestige ladder.
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I was thinking, "wow, is Davidson really that good?"
And then I saw the fine print: "aggregate findings from its survey of thousands of faculty members at dozens of participating institutions"
The top six out of "dozens" (I suspect this means less than a hundred) isn't quite so impressive. I suspect there are "dozens" of liberal arts colleges where faculty are just as happy (or unhappy) as they are at Davidson.
"...but this shouldn't be surprising to anyone who knows anything about the tenure process at Harvard, Yale, and MIT. The funding may be better at the very top places, but some of the things they do to their junior faculty are just insane."
What do they do to their junior faculty at the top places? I ask because that's where I'm aiming to be.
Most top schools don't tenure junior faculty. They hire them for 6 years, deny them tenure, then send them on their way. Often, after they've made their reputation somewhere else, they'll hire them back as tenured faculty.
The reason is that they want superstars, and generally it takes more than 6 years to become a superstar. If you're aiming for a tenured job at an Ivy league school, be prepared to move around a lot for the first 15 years of your career.
Speaking of University of Virgina, I was just there this week delivering a seminar at the medical school. It was amazing how happy all the faculty, post-docs, and students I met with seemed to be. The central campus architecture that was designed by Thomas Jefferson was also amazingly cool.