Professor retention a major challenge for universities

Attracting and retaining the world's brightest students is on the mind of every university official. But a new, unprecedented study in the journal Science suggests leaders in higher education face an understated, even more pressing challenge: the retention of professors, reports Science Codex.

The good news, said Deborah Kaminski of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who led the study, is that men and women academics in the areas of science, technology and engineering are being retained at the same rate. The one exception is in mathematics departments, where women depart their jobs significantly sooner than men.

However, looking at the bigger picture of the study – the first large-scale longitudinal study on faculty retention – reveals that faculty members of both genders stay at a university for a median of 11 years. "This means if you hire 100 assistant professors tomorrow, in 11 years only 50 of them will still be at your school," said Kaminski, a professor in the department of mechanical, aerospace and nuclear engineering at Rensselaer. "This leakage rate is huge, and should be a big red flag to everyone in higher education.”
Full report on the Science Codex site