Minority professors on the tenure track aren’t as satisfied with their academic workplace as their white counterparts are, says a new report.
Native American junior faculty members, for instance, felt that most aspects of the tenure process were less clear than did white faculty members, and they were less satisfied with their institution’s culture.
“Mixing lack of clarity about the tenure process and criteria with dissatisfaction about the workplace culture and climate is not a recipe for success,” said Cathy A. Trower, research director at the group that released the report, the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education, or Coache. It is based at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. The report stems from a Coache survey that measures the attitudes of junior faculty members in several areas, including tenure, the culture of their institution, and policies and practices. More than 8,500 junior faculty members at 96 institutions answered questions for the survey.
On many questions—including one on whether their academic department treats pretenure faculty fairly and equally—Native American faculty members were less positive than their white colleagues. On a five-point scale, with 5 meaning “strongly agree” and 1 meaning “strongly disagree,” the mean rating for Native Americans was 3.33, the lowest of all minority groups surveyed. The mean rating for Asian faculty members was 3.83, slightly higher than the 3.81 rating from white faculty members. Hispanic faculty members’ mean rating was 3.75, compared with African Americans at 3.6.
African-American faculty members tended to agree with white faculty members on statements related to work-life balance. But the gap between the two groups widened when they were asked about whether they agreed that tenure decisions were based mainly on their performance.
White faculty members’ mean rating in response to that statement was 3.62, a more positive response than the mean of 3.23 for African-American faculty members. African Americans also were less satisfied with workplace collegiality.
Meanwhile, Hispanic faculty members’ tended to be just as satisfied as their white peers about key institutional and departmental variables of climate, collegiality, and culture, the report said.
Respondents were asked to rate their satisfaction with their institution as a place to work on a five-point scale, with 5 meaning “very satisfied” and 1 meaning “very dissatisfied.” The mean for white faculty members was 3.67, compared with 3.47 for Native American faculty members and 3.65 for Asian faculty members. The mean for Hispanic and African-American faculty members was basically the same at 3.7.
Minority faculty members were more satisfied with their individual departments than with their institutions, with the lowest mean rating coming from Native Americans at 3.69. The mean for white faculty members was 3.91.
Would minority junior faculty members choose to work at their institutions if they were on the market again? Most likely they would. The mean ratings from each of the minority groups surveyed hovered around 4 on the five-point scale.
The full report, “Highlights Report 2008: Selected Results from the Coache Tenure-Track Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey,” can be found on the group’s Web site.
