About half of new faculty want to quit: IHE article

[Hibush]

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/11/19/faculty-pandemic-stress-now-chronic

Some of wanting to quit is being in a pandemic, but that's not all of the pressure to do more with much less where urgent crowds out important nearly daily.

Hold on now. The data are from CourseHero?!?  CourseHero is a plagairism site.

Thanks for pointing that out. People were trying to assess which nuance of the study design would allow certain conclusions, but it turns out it was just a pile of bull from which one should not extract conclusions.

[Caracal]

This is me! Newish TT faculty at a non-elite but still perfectly solid school. Loved my job as of March, now actively looking to quit. Industry may had a few lean years so I realize I may not get hired right away. But also, my current job will never be as good as (I thought) it was pre-COVID.

Perhaps, but isn't 8 months into a pandemic, heading into winter, the wrong time to be drawing a lot of conclusions about your future job happiness? Someone I know always says "don't make decisions in February."  It's November, but I think metaphorically it's February.

If you have some concrete information that suggests your job is likely to be dramatically different in the fall, or your chances of tenure are going to be much reduced, that's different. However, I'd be very careful about assuming you have much insight into what the broader effects will be, much less how they are likely to effect you personally.

[polly_mer]

It seems like a meaningless statistic. I sort of want to quit by the end of every semester. Does it mean they are really seriously considering it?

I agree.  This week: Professors all want to quit.  Next week: Professors refuse to retire.

You clearly aren't in on the discussions in fields where the worry has been for several years how few people want to be professors, even after starting grad school with the goal of becoming faculty.  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/29/study-challenges-common-belief-most-science-and-engineering-phds-leave-academe  is one report.

People who have good other options are not choosing academia and that's becoming a problem in fields where students want to study as undergrads.  I can't think of any humanities fields in that category, but that's a recurring discussion in computer science, nursing, some areas of business, some areas of physical science, and many areas of engineering.  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/09/no-clear-solution-nationwide-shortage-computer-science-professors is one report.  At my current non-academic employer that does research, we have a steady stream of applicants who hold faculty jobs (even with tenure) and would prefer a job without teaching duties and where they do the research themselves instead of managing a research group.

If all you do is talk to humanities professors who are mostly focused on teaching general education, then you won't have a complete picture of academia and the problems of finding good faculty to teach the courses that students want to take.

[Caracal]

It seems like a meaningless statistic. I sort of want to quit by the end of every semester. Does it mean they are really seriously considering it?

I agree.  This week: Professors all want to quit.  Next week: Professors refuse to retire.

You clearly aren't in on the discussions in fields where the worry has been for several years how few people want to be professors, even after starting grad school with the goal of becoming faculty.  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/29/study-challenges-common-belief-most-science-and-engineering-phds-leave-academe  is one report.

People who have good other options are not choosing academia and that's becoming a problem in fields where students want to study as undergrads.  I can't think of any humanities fields in that category, but that's a recurring discussion in computer science, nursing, some areas of business, some areas of physical science, and many areas of engineering.  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/09/no-clear-solution-nationwide-shortage-computer-science-professors is one report.  At my current non-academic employer that does research, we have a steady stream of applicants who hold faculty jobs (even with tenure) and would prefer a job without teaching duties and where they do the research themselves instead of managing a research group.

If all you do is talk to humanities professors who are mostly focused on teaching general education, then you won't have a complete picture of academia and the problems of finding good faculty to teach the courses that students want to take.

This seems neither new, nor surprising, nor evidence of some larger problem with academia. If people with computer science degrees are in demand than they have lots of options, most of which are going to be able to pay more than academic jobs. In those circumstances, only people who are really committed to teaching are likely to be interested. If there were lots of jobs available to historians that allowed them to do research and make more money without having to teach students, I'm sure it would be tough to recruit historians to faculty positions.

[bad_math_puns]

This is me! Newish TT faculty at a non-elite but still perfectly solid school. Loved my job as of March, now actively looking to quit. Industry may had a few lean years so I realize I may not get hired right away. But also, my current job will never be as good as (I thought) it was pre-COVID.

Perhaps, but isn't 8 months into a pandemic, heading into winter, the wrong time to be drawing a lot of conclusions about your future job happiness? Someone I know always says "don't make decisions in February."  It's November, but I think metaphorically it's February.

If you have some concrete information that suggests your job is likely to be dramatically different in the fall, or your chances of tenure are going to be much reduced, that's different. However, I'd be very careful about assuming you have much insight into what the broader effects will be, much less how they are likely to effect you personally.

This is all very true, and I'm not burning bridges for now--it's possible that when teaching becomes more fun/rewarding post-pandemic I'll have a change of heart.

But our admin has announced that there will be multiple rounds of cuts and possible downsizing, that are likely to play out over a period of years (maybe decades). Even if I'm not personally in the line of fire, it is all very demoralizing--hard to feel like tenure means anything at this point.

Also, money's pretty tight in my house (again, because COVID) and I'm having rather a values clarification moment re: salary.

[Ruralguy]

Wanting to quit is different from actually being able to quit.

But, truth be told, we actually haven't had any trouble convincing anybody to retire.
There might be some holdouts who want to die at the chalkboard,  but not many.

[spork]

Wanting to quit is different from actually being able to quit.

But, truth be told, we actually haven't had any trouble convincing anybody to retire.
There might be some holdouts who want to die at the chalkboard,  but not many.

We still have a few who should have retired several years before the pandemic started.

[polly_mer]

But our admin has announced that there will be multiple rounds of cuts and possible downsizing, that are likely to play out over a period of years (maybe decades). Even if I'm not personally in the line of fire, it is all very demoralizing--hard to feel like tenure means anything at this point.

Also, money's pretty tight in my house (again, because COVID) and I'm having rather a values clarification moment re: salary.

Tenure means zero when the institution closes.

What else can you be doing?  I know several people who have started new jobs during Covid and we're still hiring.

Being trapped by having few currently marketable skills after years of teaching gen ed is a different situation than being a recent enough graduate with in-demand skills and a willingness to move.

[Parasaurolophus]

The pandemic has sort of had the opposite effect on me.

Before, I was pretty burned out by February (I'd taught 12 courses with no break longer than 2 weeks for the last year). Once we moved online, the daily grind of the commute disappeared. It's not a bad commute, actually, but recent changes to the bus schedules meant that I was consistently missing my boat and having to wait a few more hours, turning a normal day into a 12+-hour day four times a week. By February, I was leaving home before sunrise and arriving back long after, which is demoralizing. With a lengthy break at the end of each semester and a solid summer break, that's fine. Without it all, though, it became pretty tough. So the move online gave me a break and a chance to recharge my batteries, and to take advantage of my absolutely stunning surroundings (I live in a particularly beautiful part of the region). Plus I had two months off last summer, which helped a lot.

I still hate all the same things about my job, and I still hope to move up somewhere where I'll have a lighter teaching load, some non-intro courses, a better-prepared set of students, and some research support. But I'm also really, really grateful to have the job at this time, to be at an institution that's weathering the pandemic just fine, in a department with no cuts coming down the pipeline, and where I can do pretty much anything I want with my research and service. It's made it really clear that the plusses outweigh the minuses, whereas I wasn't so sure when I was burning out last year.

Some of that was probably just the adjustment blues, which are wearing off now. I expect it's the same for a lot of other people who got to be new faculty during the pandemic: it's probably hard to disentangle the pandemic effects and the new job effects. But I have to confess that the pandemic has seriously increased my quality of life, at least where work is concerned. I'm lucky that that's the case, I know, but I think it's true. It's done a lot to counterbalance some of the things I was finding hard to deal with.

[Stockmann]

You clearly aren't in on the discussions in fields where the worry has been for several years how few people want to be professors, even after starting grad school with the goal of becoming faculty.  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/29/study-challenges-common-belief-most-science-and-engineering-phds-leave-academe  is one report.

People who have good other options are not choosing academia and that's becoming a problem in fields where students want to study as undergrads.  I can't think of any humanities fields in that category, but that's a recurring discussion in computer science, nursing, some areas of business, some areas of physical science, and many areas of engineering.  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/09/no-clear-solution-nationwide-shortage-computer-science-professors is one report.  At my current non-academic employer that does research, we have a steady stream of applicants who hold faculty jobs (even with tenure) and would prefer a job without teaching duties and where they do the research themselves instead of managing a research group.

If all you do is talk to humanities professors who are mostly focused on teaching general education, then you won't have a complete picture of academia and the problems of finding good faculty to teach the courses that students want to take.

Maybe in engineering and CS there's a problem in recruiting faculty, but in the sciences surely there are tons of postdocs out there who would gladly take the job. As PhD Comics puts it, a postdoc is a job substitute, so in any field in which it's the norm to do one or more postdocs before becoming a professor I'd assume there's actually a glut of PhDs looking for academic jobs.

[eigen]

The pandemic has sort of had the opposite effect on me.

Before, I was pretty burned out by February (I'd taught 12 courses with no break longer than 2 weeks for the last year). Once we moved online, the daily grind of the commute disappeared. It's not a bad commute, actually, but recent changes to the bus schedules meant that I was consistently missing my boat and having to wait a few more hours, turning a normal day into a 12+-hour day four times a week. By February, I was leaving home before sunrise and arriving back long after, which is demoralizing. With a lengthy break at the end of each semester and a solid summer break, that's fine. Without it all, though, it became pretty tough. So the move online gave me a break and a chance to recharge my batteries, and to take advantage of my absolutely stunning surroundings (I live in a particularly beautiful part of the region). Plus I had two months off last summer, which helped a lot.

I still hate all the same things about my job, and I still hope to move up somewhere where I'll have a lighter teaching load, some non-intro courses, a better-prepared set of students, and some research support. But I'm also really, really grateful to have the job at this time, to be at an institution that's weathering the pandemic just fine, in a department with no cuts coming down the pipeline, and where I can do pretty much anything I want with my research and service. It's made it really clear that the plusses outweigh the minuses, whereas I wasn't so sure when I was burning out last year.

Some of that was probably just the adjustment blues, which are wearing off now. I expect it's the same for a lot of other people who got to be new faculty during the pandemic: it's probably hard to disentangle the pandemic effects and the new job effects. But I have to confess that the pandemic has seriously increased my quality of life, at least where work is concerned. I'm lucky that that's the case, I know, but I think it's true. It's done a lot to counterbalance some of the things I was finding hard to deal with.

I think this speaks a lot to the humanities / STEM divide in responses Polly was referring to earlier.

Since I have to teach a large portion of classes still in person but staying in my office is risky, I'm having to commute back and forth multiple times a day. I'm regularly in risky to moderately risky situations involving close contact with large numbers of students, and my workload has roughly tripled as I try to deliver courses in multiple modalities and re-teach things several times as students have to miss sections of labs to quarantine.

This has also *killed* my scholarship, putting me at least a year behind in my lab's research, probably closer to 2 full years lost by the time this ends. What research is able to be done costs 2-4x as much due to the competition for limited reagents. While I'm unable to do research, my equipment is aging out of service contracts, I've lost huge amounts of sensitive materials that are unable to bridge the gap in research and who's cost I'll have to eat.

[mamselle]

Wow.

All those reagents.

I hadn't even thought of that.

(Seriously).

M.

[bad_math_puns]

But our admin has announced that there will be multiple rounds of cuts and possible downsizing, that are likely to play out over a period of years (maybe decades). Even if I'm not personally in the line of fire, it is all very demoralizing--hard to feel like tenure means anything at this point.

Also, money's pretty tight in my house (again, because COVID) and I'm having rather a values clarification moment re: salary.

Tenure means zero when the institution closes.

What else can you be doing?  I know several people who have started new jobs during Covid and we're still hiring.

Being trapped by having few currently marketable skills after years of teaching gen ed is a different situation than being a recent enough graduate with in-demand skills and a willingness to move.

I'm in that STEM limbo where I don't have a lot of marketable skills currently, but my hope is that it will be quite feasible to pick up enough coding and statistics to make a jump to industry in a relatively short time.

[Caracal]

I think this speaks a lot to the humanities / STEM divide in responses Polly was referring to earlier.

Since I have to teach a large portion of classes still in person but staying in my office is risky, I'm having to commute back and forth multiple times a day. I'm regularly in risky to moderately risky situations involving close contact with large numbers of students, and my workload has roughly tripled as I try to deliver courses in multiple modalities and re-teach things several times as students have to miss sections of labs to quarantine.

This has also *killed* my scholarship, putting me at least a year behind in my lab's research, probably closer to 2 full years lost by the time this ends. What research is able to be done costs 2-4x as much due to the competition for limited reagents. While I'm unable to do research, my equipment is aging out of service contracts, I've lost huge amounts of sensitive materials that are unable to bridge the gap in research and who's cost I'll have to eat.

I think that's true. Everyone has to deal with different issues. Some are disciplinary, others are personal. The problem I have is that, thus far, online teaching feels like it really highlights the things I don't do well as an instructor. Last semester I did asynchronous, which I hated. This year, I've been stuck with this nightmare hybrid/even though we are not having actual in person classes model. Organization is the kind of thing that, at best, I'm barely adequate at. Now, I have 4 classes-two of them are divided up into 2 sections and 2 are divided into three. The whole thing is a logistical nightmare for me. I'm constantly messing something up on Canvas. In theory, I just need to focus and organize things in batches ahead of time-but focus is what I just don't have right now.

I don't have the sheer increase in workload that lots of stem people do, which I'm grateful for, and I'm also very happy I don't need to go in to teach. But, I'm not feeling very good about my work. If I thought this was just how my job would look going forward, I'd be trying to quit.

[mahagonny]

Are there pre-pandemic figures for this to indicate any increases in desire to quit since the pandemic started?

Are there figures for the workforce in general to compare this to?  At any given time a lot of people, in lots of different occupations, feel like quitting.

I have to say, I'm really not looking forward to going back to being in-person with 13 lab sections of the same course. The more things get adapted for remote delivery, the fewer of them I feel are absolutely necessary in person.

Cheer up, things may never return to the way they were now that remote instruction has been tried across the board and has worked out...such as it has.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/11/19/faculty-pandemic-stress-now-chronic

Some of wanting to quit is being in a pandemic, but that's not all of the pressure to do more with much less where urgent crowds out important nearly daily.

And a big chunk of it was already the normal day-to-day condition that preceeded the pandemic, the culture having given up, decades ago, on maintaining any minimum standard of desirability in job offerings or people being respected for holding the jobs provided.