Leaving Academe

[downer]

Interesting CHE article here for those who can access it
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-big-quit
It doesn't say much on the statistics, and could well be making a mountain out of a molehill.

Nevertheless, with student numbers going down, lots of complaints about working in academe, less job security, and the adjunct army, it wouldn't be surprising if academics who can work elsewhere decide that's their best bet. I'd expect older faculty to retire, if it weren't for the looming recession and high inflation, which will mean they have to work another couple of years at least now.

is there any good data on numbers actually leaving academe?

[marshwiggle]

Interesting CHE article here for those who can access it
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-big-quit
It doesn't say much on the statistics, and could well be making a mountain out of a molehill.

Nevertheless, with student numbers going down, lots of complaints about working in academe, less job security, and the adjunct army, it wouldn't be surprising if academics who can work elsewhere decide that's their best bet.

The good thing about this is that the more people who do it, the better the prospects will be for those who remain; supply and demand.

[RatGuy]

Interesting CHE article here for those who can access it
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-big-quit
It doesn't say much on the statistics, and could well be making a mountain out of a molehill.

Nevertheless, with student numbers going down, lots of complaints about working in academe, less job security, and the adjunct army, it wouldn't be surprising if academics who can work elsewhere decide that's their best bet.

The good thing about this is that the more people who do it, the better the prospects will be for those who remain; supply and demand.

That hasn't been my experience here in the past 4-5 years. When a faculty member in my department has retired or has moved elsewhere, the line has been removed. The Dean has also shot down any hope of post-pandemic hiring in our department.

[TreadingLife]

While what you said is true, here is another way to look at it. Would I rather another colleague in my department and another "mouth" for the college to feed, or would I prefer a smaller program and smaller faculty body that reduces the frequency of needing salary cuts or forgone COLAs year after year to balance the budget? I'd rather see my salary grow meagerly rather than see my program size grow while my inflation adjusted salary shrinks (and mind you, this argument is more compelling when inflation is 2% vs 8.5%. It is hard for any COLA to keep pace with inflation these days.)

[mamselle]

Reflexive zero-sum thinking may prove inaccurate.

M.

[Hibush]

The part of the article that stood out to me was the phenomenon of companies recruiting the most productive mid-career faculty. Those examples came from England, where the university salaries for such positions are low relative to other countries (even in the Warwick/UCL level of R1-type schools), but industry salaries are internationally competitive.

Taking out the strongest part of the demographic middle will undoubtedly hurt the institutions. They'll need a mechanism for retention.

[RatGuy]

While what you said is true, here is another way to look at it. Would I rather another colleague in my department and another "mouth" for the college to feed, or would I prefer a smaller program and smaller faculty body that reduces the frequency of needing salary cuts or forgone COLAs year after year to balance the budget? I'd rather see my salary grow meagerly rather than see my program size grow while my inflation adjusted salary shrinks (and mind you, this argument is more compelling when inflation is 2% vs 8.5%. It is hard for any COLA to keep pace with inflation these days.)

Among NTT faculty in my department, there hasn't been a COL adjustment in more than five years. The loss of a line doesn't change faculty salary at all -- the money "saved" from the elimination of the line doesn't return to the department. None of these things are good for morale.

[Harlow2]

While what you said is true, here is another way to look at it. Would I rather another colleague in my department and another "mouth" for the college to feed, or would I prefer a smaller program and smaller faculty body that reduces the frequency of needing salary cuts or forgone COLAs year after year to balance the budget? I'd rather see my salary grow meagerly rather than see my program size grow while my inflation adjusted salary shrinks (and mind you, this argument is more compelling when inflation is 2% vs 8.5%. It is hard for any COLA to keep pace with inflation these days.)

Among NTT faculty in my department, there hasn't been a COL adjustment in more than five years. The loss of a line doesn't change faculty salary at all -- the money "saved" from the elimination of the line doesn't return to the department. None of these things are good for morale.

Agreed. And the service loads remain the same for the departments, and fewer faculty must work harder.

[dismalist]

These are all common symptoms of a declining industry. And it will continue to shrink.

[Mobius]

I've spoken with a few folks about positions outside of academia. Don't know if it will happen or not, as I am pretty picky about the type of job I want and where I want to live to give up the schedule I have now. I am not willing to add more stress into the mix from a commute or pressure environment, even with a decent raise.

[Hibush]

I've spoken with a few folks about positions outside of academia. Don't know if it will happen or not, as I am pretty picky about the type of job I want and where I want to live to give up the schedule I have now. I am not willing to add more stress into the mix from a commute or pressure environment, even with a decent raise.

At some of the struggling schools, faculty are particularly stressed by the demand to respond to market forces. Sometimes that is just naivete about those forces and their relevance to the higher-ed industry, sometimes it is because academe was chosen because it offered a refuge from all that. In either case, the demands to do things because the increase revenue or margin, help with customer retention, improve operational efficiency etc are extremely stressful.

In that case, working for a company is going to be rough, because those things are all front-of-mind in any role a PhD holder might have.

[RatGuy]

In our case, attrition is more of a factor than enrollment per se, but we've had three consecutive record-breaking freshmen classes. Some of this is the sports scene, and some of this is our refusal to engage in hybrid or distance-learning. We do lose a lot of students between year 1 and year 2, but most of them are transferring to places like Clemson, UNC, Alabama. Tuition is also up. Yet that revenue isn't passed onto faculty -- and we are an outlier when it comes to faculty salary, because other comparative universities in the region presumably pay better.

[marshwiggle]

I've spoken with a few folks about positions outside of academia. Don't know if it will happen or not, as I am pretty picky about the type of job I want and where I want to live to give up the schedule I have now. I am not willing to add more stress into the mix from a commute or pressure environment, even with a decent raise.

At some of the struggling schools, faculty are particularly stressed by the demand to respond to market forces. Sometimes that is just naivete about those forces and their relevance to the higher-ed industry, sometimes it is because academe was chosen because it offered a refuge from all that. In either case, the demands to do things because the increase revenue or margin, help with customer retention, improve operational efficiency etc are extremely stressful.

In that case, working for a company is going to be rough, because those things are all front-of-mind in any role a PhD holder might have.

If/when the capacity of institutions that close is sufficient so that the capacity of what's left is actually in line with the student population, then things should stabilize. This isn't hard math for anyone with a PhD.

[mamselle]

I've spoken with a few folks about positions outside of academia. Don't know if it will happen or not, as I am pretty picky about the type of job I want and where I want to live to give up the schedule I have now. I am not willing to add more stress into the mix from a commute or pressure environment, even with a decent raise.

At some of the struggling schools, faculty are particularly stressed by the demand to respond to market forces. Sometimes that is just naivete about those forces and their relevance to the higher-ed industry, sometimes it is because academe was chosen because it offered a refuge from all that. In either case, the demands to do things because the increase revenue or margin, help with customer retention, improve operational efficiency etc are extremely stressful.

In that case, working for a company is going to be rough, because those things are all front-of-mind in any role a PhD holder might have.

Yes, if you've never before done so, a course in introductory accountancy for managers would be a good entree. There's a whole language and mindset that one needs in any non-academic setting, which includes labs, pharma production sites, software development sites, etc.

M.

[jerseyjay]

Since the pandemic, my university--a small essentially open admissions public university that is in a major metropolitan area--has been hit by many people either retiring or switching jobs. Two long-term tenured faculty members in my department retired; I believe there were about a dozen elsewhere in the school.  There have also been at least a dozen people in various administrative roles (not just administrators per se, but people in the bursar's office, human resources, the registrar's office, online learning, maintenance, etc.) either leaving or retiring.

We are in the middle of a secular drop in enrollment with pandemic-related declines also. The result is that the school is in deep financial trouble.

Assuming the school survives, many of the retiring or leaving faculty will not be replaced by full-time lines. On top of it, there is a decline in part-time professors for cost reasons. The result will be  a loss in experience and institutional knowledge, and those fewer full-time faculty members still around will have to do more (service and teaching) for the same or even less money (given stagnant wages and the desire of the administration for concessions from the union). It also means that leaving aside teaching, the school as an institution is functioning much worse since there are fewer people working there and those who remain often don't know so much as those who left.

For some faculty--those who have skills (nursing, computer programing, etc.) that can transfer elsewhere, it might result in better salaries. As a historian, the current situation does not make it more likely to jump ship, either to another school or to private industry, because neither of those is much of an option for a middle-age, mid-career PhD in history.

I do not see a silver lining in this. (Except for the fact that since I have tenure, I will still most likely keep my job, even though the conditions are not so good as a decade ago.)