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, 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.
Satisfaction with support for interdisciplinary work, for mentoring, for getting course release time to do research, and for obtaining support to present papers at conferences; and satisfaction with the share of their time spent on research. On all of these factors and many more, associate professors ranked last in satisfaction.
On global questions about satisfaction, associate professors were the least likely to say that they would choose to work again at the same institution, to say that they were satisfied with their department as a place to work, and to say that they were satisfied with their institution as a place to work.
In most of the categories where no rank could be declared -- in a statistically significant way -- to be the least satisfied, associate professors were tied or close to tied for least satisfied. While assistant professors were most satisfied in some areas, and full professors in others, associate professors were not most satisfied in any category.
The data are based on a survey by COACHE as the collaborative is known of 13, faculty members at 69 four-year institutions public and private during the academic year. A key caveat is that COACHE did not survey adjunct professors, many of whom would no doubt trade their lot for that of an associate professor without much hesitation. Another key caveat is that COACHE is planning more analysis of these results, to look for demographic and other factors that may influence the relative satisfaction of associate professors.
Kiernan Mathews, director of COACHE, said that both administrators and faculty members have sought more attention for associate professors. Many of them are like the newly tenured professor whom I recently witnessed, while setting up his laptop for a presentation, that his e-mail client showed over 3, unread e-mails. He is highly regarded in his field, employed at an Ivy League institution, well-liked by students -- yet completely overwhelmed and alone.
Some of the work that has been done by others on associate professors points to gender as a key issue. On the other hand, there is a lot of freedom.
While tenure does not create absolute job security, it provides a hell of a lot more job security than one had pre-tenure. It does allow one to think seriously about what one wants both in terms of a research agenda and in terms of work-life balance issues. Its not only a job that is likely to be available to you for the rest of your life — it is a job that is likely to be available to you for the rest of your life that you have a fair amount of agency in shaping.
My guess is that my non-academic friends would see that as an embarrassment of riches, no matter how hard I worked for those entitlements.
Include Synonyms Include Dead terms. Direct link. Life as an associate professor with tenure can be even more isolating and overwhelming than being an assistant professor on the tenure track. The path to achieving what amounts to higher education's golden ring is well marked and includes guidance from more-experienced peers. But once a professor earns tenure, that guidance disappears, the amount of committee work piles on, and associate professors are often left to figure out how to manage the varying demands of the job--and fit in time for their research--on their own.
National data collected this year from 13, professors at 56 colleges and universities by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education, at Harvard University show that associate professors are some of the unhappiest people in academe.
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