Inside Higher Ed, Unhappy Associate Professors:
If one had to guess at a sector of the tenure-track and tenured professoriate likely to have the lowest job satisfaction, assistant professors might seem logical. They face uncertainty on whether they will earn tenure, the pressure to excel in teaching and research, the need to master departmental politics — and they must do all of that with less power and less institutional knowledge than those at the associate and full professor ranks. But the preliminary results of a national survey of professors by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education, at Harvard University [Senior Faculty Satisfaction: Perceptions of Associate and Full Professors at Seven Public Research Universities], has found that in most measures, associate professors have lower job satisfaction levels than both assistant and full professors do. On item after item, where preliminary results found a statistically significant gap in satisfaction, associate professors were the least happy.
The following table shows categories in which associate professors were — at statistically significant margins — less satisfied than full or assistant professors were. The figures are on a 1-5 scale of either satisfaction or of agreement.
Faculty Satisfaction by Rank, 2011-12 at Four-Year Colleges and Universities
Category Assistant Associate Full Appreciation and recognition –Satisfaction with recognition received for teaching 3.36 3.24 3.39 –Satisfaction with recognition received for student advising 3.10 2.94 3.13 –Satisfaction with recognition received for scholarly/creative work 3.41 3.26 3.46 –Satisfaction with recognition for service contributions 3.22 3.01 3.24 –Agree with statement that chief academic officer at institution cares about my rank of faculty member 3.22 3.07 3.16 Research factors –Availability of course release time to focus on research 2.66 2.50 2.76 –Institutional support (internal grants, seed money) for research 2.99 2.78 2.83 –Institutional support for managing external funds 3.14 3.04 3.13 –Institutional support for travel to present papers or conduct research 3.29 3.05 3.17 –Appropriate expectations for external funding 3.13 3.07 3.25 –Institutional support for obtaining external funds 3.17 3.08 3.19 –Satisfaction with portion of time spent on research 3.20 3.09 3.58 Service-related factors –Equity of committee assignments 3.16 2.92 3.15 –Time spent on service 3.42 3.28 3.50 –Number of committee assignments 3.54 3.33 3.49 –Value and attractiveness of committee assignments 3.49 3.41 3.48 General benchmarks –Support for interdisciplinary work 2.80 2.61 2.74 –Mentoring 3.24 2.85 3.08 –Personal and family benefits 3.01 2.92 3.03 –Satisfaction with nature of faculty work related to research 3.21 3.09 3.29 –Satisfaction with nature of faculty work related to service 3.35 3.18 3.34 –Satisfaction with appreciation and recognition 3.37 3.21 3.34 Overall satisfaction –Would again work at this institution 3.82 3.65 3.79 –Satisfaction with department as place to work 3.86 3.79 3.88 –Satisfaction with institution as place to work 3.69 3.54 3.70
