Indeed, a male assistant professor in his third year reports that it is “a huge challenge to have any kind of personal life and do what you’re supposed to do,” and a first-year historian characterizes his personal life as having been “swallowed up” by his professional life.
While participants in both studies acknowledge that pressures exist at all career stages, they agree that new generations of faculty are especially hard hit, and one central concern is the increasing emphasis on scholarly productivity and research output. Students of higher education have long criticized the “corporatization of the university” and how institutions of higher education increasingly define “expertise and the reward system in terms of scholarly rather than pedagogical expertise” (Glazer-Raymo, 1999, p. 202). Finkelstein, Seal, and Schuster (1998) found more than a decade ago that new faculty (defined as full-time with up to seven years of experience) emphasize research productivity to a greater extent than senior faculty (defined as full-time with seven and more years of experience). More recently, they confirmed the mounting importance of research expectations over time (Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006). These tendencies resonate with Assistant Professor Williams who is convinced that the younger generation is required to produce, if not more output in general, certainly more research than previous ones; and this produces tension in his department at a liberal arts college which seeks to polish its national standing. The older generation does not believe the college ought to emphasize research over teaching, whereas the younger generation resents having to carry a disproportionately large part of the research burden, and refers to the senior generation as “dead weight.”
Others attest to the drastic increase in pre-tenure expectations. Assistant Professor Selinski, for example, believes that the amount of time he has to put into his professional labors is far greater than what most of his predecessors did. “I think they were less encumbered with paperwork, with politically correct nonsense, with compensating for the failures of the students. For one, the students were better trained,” he claims. Previous generations, according to him, were under less pressure to publish and had more time for family and outside pursuits than his generation.
It is not just junior faculty who assess the changes in academic requirements in this way: many of their senior colleagues agree. Dr. Jarman, who has served his institutions for more than thirty years, says that formerly the standards were not as high as they are nowadays. His college used to primarily be a teaching institution whereas now things are a lot more difficult for young faculty: “they’re putting in a lot more time than I think I did in terms of pursuing their scholarship, particularly in the . . . probationary period.”
Professor Lewis, who is in his thirty-fourth year, simply says: “There were no formal tenure requirements when I started.” Senior Professor Ingrahm agrees: “I just submitted a file to the dean. And ultimately the tenure showed up. So I wasn’t particularly aware of what happened to the process after I submitted this file. And then I had the tenure.” Professor Jellig remembers how thirty years ago putting in time was all it took to get tenured and promoted. Beyond that, “there was not anything that you had to prove that you had done one thousand and one publications and that sort of thing.”
Compounding institutional expectations, junior faculty nowadays “tend to sort of get sucked into doing some things they probably don’t have to do,” according to Senior Professor Jarman. He observes at his private liberal arts college an emphasis on personal and interactive relationships with students, one-on-one work in addition to the usual research and classroom responsibilities. Some of his colleagues take this obligation too seriously, he thinks: they do independent research with too many students and advise too many of them. “Sometimes my younger colleagues in order to make sure that they either get tenure, or that they get a good salary, or that they get promoted, whatever, . . . tend to go overboard in trying to meet expectations. I think there are ways that my younger colleagues could cut back on their working here in order to achieve that healthy balance.”
Senior Professor Sneed locates the responsibility within the institution rather than the individual. He has great sympathy for his junior colleagues and does not endorse the current institutional trend of inflationary expectations. “I think it sucks,” he says, “I think we’re still really schizophrenic here. . . . I think that the demands we make on junior faculty include a good balance, and that it is reprehensible that we do not go out of our way to make their lives better. . . . I think there’s a lot of bullshit that we ask people to do that we don’t need to do for the sake of the status quo.”
Increased scholarly requirements do not exclusively affect junior faculty, of course. Senior Professor Ashcroft describes his own institution as becoming more research oriented, an effort he believes is unrealistic given the higher teaching load it continues to face. “The teaching load that we have, you don’t have over at Johns Hopkins,” he says. Yet the trend of growing research expectations remains.
Although those expectations may affect faculty across the board, regardless of stage and status, one junior professor suggests that tenure is what makes the difference in workload, and once tenure has been obtained, chances are better to create a reasonable split between personal and professional pursuits. “I can only go by what I’ve observed with senior researchers,” says Dr. Ruggerio, assistant professor of nursing. “They have a lot more time on their hands to deal with family life and to have more of a social life.”
There is an overall consensus among faculty across the career span, in short, that senior professors are better positioned than their junior colleagues to successfully balance their lives. This assertion was borne out by the study on women faculty which found that whereas participants at midcareer continue to struggle with balancing issues, most late-career faculty report a very healthy balance between their personal and professional lives. But again, that is not true for junior faculty, and the problem of rising expectations is compounded by the fact that these expectations tend to lack clarity.
Lacking Clarity and the Paradox of Flexibility
Cathy Trower researched generational differences in academe and found that “Generation X” scholars), have a “new view” of academic employment policy that is markedly different from the “traditional view.” Younger scholars want clarity of the tenure process, criteria, and standards, as well as the evidence required. They demand clarity of expectations for scholarship, teaching, advising, colleagueship, and campus citizenship and, in addition, they are asking for reasonable and consistent performance expectations, as well as consistency of messages from senior faculty and administrators (Trower, 2005, p. 17). Yet what they want is still far removed from what actually exists at least at the seven institutions we included in our study.
There, unclear expectations often make life difficult for beginning academics, a problem well-defined by existing literature (Colbeck, 2006). It has been argued, furthermore, that nebulous criteria and processes for tenure, promotion, and merit increase academe’s potential for bias against caregiving in academe (Drago & Colbeck, 2005). If and when faculty do not know what expectations they need to meet professionally, in other words, it is difficult for them to openly and diligently pursue personal obligations. In short, unclear expectations at work directly affect faculty’s personal lives. And despite efforts in many places to make especially tenure expectations more transparent, in the institutions we studied they had largely remained unclear.
Assistant Professor Miller calls tenure expectations a “moving target,” elaborating that one of her biggest struggles derives from feeling that nothing ever gets done to the extent or with the quality she would like. Academics, she explains, tend never to know how much work is enough and, subsequently, carry a constant sense of guilt because they are never doing as much as they could. The academy is remiss at providing clear expectations, and as long as faculty do not know what, exactly, the expectations are and what it takes to succeed, they are doomed to try to do as much as they possibly can, often sacrificing obligations to self and others.
Coupled with the problem of ill-defined expectations is the paradox of flexibility. It appears that academics have too much of it and, simultaneously, not enough. According to Healy (quoted in Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2007, p. 240) “[f]lexibility is a way of defining how, when, and what work is accomplished, and how careers are organized.” In some ways, faculty members enjoy a relatively high degree of freedom to define the boundaries between their personal and professional lives. If and when coupled with unclear expectations, however, such freedom, is not always experienced as helpful. Assistant Professor Dr. Calhoun, for example, explains her inability to enjoy flexibility:
Part of the problem for me at least is that when you don’t have a clearly defined nine to five job it is not like you can leave at the end of the say and say “I’m done.” Your project is always with you in a certain sense. On the on hand, I feel like I have a lot of free time because my time is not scheduled. On the other hand, I feel like I don’t have any free time because since my time isn’t scheduled, or as scheduled, at any moment I could be working or arguably should be working. Sometimes I think if I could set banker’s hours in some way and sort of tell myself that I’m working from eight to six and then I’m done, but thus far I haven’t had a lot of success holding myself to those commitments.
Along similar lines, Colbeck observes that faculty may have much discretion over how they allocate their time and integrate roles, but they work under intense pressure to meet high expectations that are often unclear. She quotes a colleague saying that faculty “enjoy the freedom to work themselves to death” (Colbeck, 2006, p. 47).
The issue of flexibility is even more complex given that faculty members’ relative autonomy in organizing daily routines stands in stark contrast to the rigidity that characterizes their work in other respects. Gappa, Austin, and Trice (2007, p. 240) make a similar distinction and argue that the concept of flexibility ought to recognize individuals’ responsibilities beyond the workplace, thus allowing for major adjustments of work schedules such as leave taking or shifting from full-time to part-time work. In addition, it “encompasses providing career-path options, such as multiple points of entry, exit, and re-entry into a faculty position, and the ability to shift between tenure-track and contract-renewable appointments” (p. 240).
And yet, faculty members, especially junior faculty on the tenure track, tend to have little flexibility, if broadly defined. Not only do they lack opportunities to make significant schedule and career adjustments, they are typically bound by a career path that demands their undivided attention for at least five consecutive years before they are eligible to be tenured. And though senior faculty members may be able to apply for sabbaticals or research and study leaves, some institutions do not grant such options to their junior faculty. Out of the seven institutions represented in our study, for example, six offered sabbaticals to their faculty but only two extended the offer to its nontenured faculty, an ironic reality given the rise in expectations particularly for that group.
Flexibility, in short, is more than simply not having to punch a time clock, fill out time-sheets, or otherwise account for every working hour of the day. It is a concept that, if “integrated into the culture and policies of an institution,” allows faculty members “to negotiate work arrangements that reflect the current level of their personal responsibilities” (Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2007, p. 241). Our studies of both male and female faculty members at various institutions indicates that we are far from making these kinds of provisions.
Women on the tenure track often experience most poignantly how lacking flexibility has the potential to curtail faculty aspirations. As illustrated in the women’s study and documented elsewhere (Mason & Goulden, 2004, 2002; Mason, Goulden, & Wolfinger, 2006), the pre-tenure years often coincide with women’s last childbearing years. They are up against both their tenure and biological clocks. And because the pressure of the tenure track makes it difficult to have children and simultaneously work as full-time faculty members, women find themselves in a position where they have to make a choice between having children and pursuing their career, seemingly unable to do both. The following quote by Assistant Professor Calhoun captures the dilemma:
The thing I worry about the most in terms of this question about balance is the . . . whole biological clock problem which is that my pre-tenure years are also, for whatever reason, in sync with the years in which I should probably, if I want to have a child, I should be doing it. I will get tenure provided everything goes all right when I’m 38. According to a lot of doctors that is getting late to start a family. I haven’t found a way to start a family yet while on the tenure track. The one thing that would make a difference to me is if there was a way to make tenure sort of not coincide with one’s child producing time. It isn’t that I don’t want to get tenure. Obviously I do. It would be nice if tenure didn’t have to be such a rigid thing. As it stands, I don’t feel like I can really prioritize finding a partner and getting pregnant right now. So, I have to sort of roll the dice on whether or not I will ever be able to carry children. Which scares me. To get a more flexible schedule for tenure would make a big difference, I think.
Female faculty on the tenure track are asked to make choices their male counterparts hardly ever have to make, namely the choice between family and work. Not surprisingly, research illustrates that women who enter the tenure track without children have less than one in three odds of ever having children. In addition, a majority of men (60 percent) are married with children twelve years after receipt of their Ph.D. whereas only a minority (41 percent) of women on the tenure track are married with children (Mason, Goulden, & Wolfinger, 2006, p. 16).
Though men fare better in the long run, partly because they do have the option to postpone family formation until after tenure, our research on male faculty found that the pressure of obtaining tenure acts as a major stressor for them as well, and since many male junior faculty also begin their careers at an age at which family formation occurs, they find, at best, a tenuous balance between their work-life responsibilities. Because of these stressors, many believe they will get married and have children after tenure, a course of action highly recommended by their mid- and late-career male colleagues. Such a delay, though perhaps not desirable, is at least possible for men. As mentioned previously, women typically do not have the same biological luxury. Instead, they may have to engage in what Drago & Colbeck call “productive bias avoidance,” meaning behaviors such as delaying childbirth intended to shield them from negative consequences they may face if and when they have to take care of others in addition to pursuing their careers. Such behavior is productive in the sense that it prevents sacrificing one’s career; in fact, it may improve work performance. Drago and Colbeck argue that women more frequently employ such avoidance behavior than men, leading to “disparaging outcomes”: men and women face identical performance standards but women are forced to pay a higher price to meet them (Drago & Colbeck, 2003, p. 4). For Dr. Calhoun, the price is possibly forfeiting motherhood.
Although her male colleagues do not face equally dramatic choices, our research indicates that men are beginning to struggle with the incompatibility between academe and personal commitments. And though it is not always easy to balance life for those male faculty who have partners and families, as the following chapters will discuss, being single creates its own challenges. Dr. Trenton points out “the . . . scenario I have seen with male academics is that if you don’t have family already, it might be hard to start one once you are in these positions because the tenure thing is so over your head that no one feels like they have vast amounts of time to go out and find a partner.” He mentions his brother, also an academic, who only started investing more time in dating after he got tenure. “He really just forgot about that while he was doing his book and trying to get tenure,” says Dr. Trenton. About a friend in a similar situation he says: “I don’t know what to say to him because I know he would like to have a family but also he’s not going to commit professional suicide to earn that.”
Our study found a paucity of single men. Of the forty-one men interviewed, only three were single, and one was divorced without having remarried. In comparison to female faculty, these numbers indicate that the vast majority of male faculty are in committed relationships, whether with a significant other or a wife. However, the experiences of the men who had remained single were fascinating and bear recounting.
The pre-tenure single men are clearly putting their personal lives on hold while they took the time to establish their careers. When asked whether he had a healthy balance between his personal and professional lives, Professor Ruggerio says: “there could probably be a lot more social life, but you know, just because of the time restraints within the tenure track, it doesn’t really allow much time for that.” In response to the same question, Professor Hall presents a similar scenario: “my professional life is sort of swallowing my personal life, but I am assuming that’s only temporary. I don’t know . . . I don’t feel like I have enough downtime this semester.” Both express hope that their life balances will improve as their careers develop. Professor Ruggerio, speaking about his life after tenure, says, “I’m hoping I can see some kind of, at least a 50/50 split.” Professor Hall feels that things will settle down, and “maybe I can start looking more seriously (for a significant other) in a bit.” Both share the belief that they will eventually be able have more fulfilling personal lives. However, midcareer Professor Price indicates that the length of time he has been single may cause problems should he be able to find a life partner. He says, “I don’t regret my long bachelorhood, but it (a relationship) is something I want to have. . . . If I were to find the right person and get married, which I think would be good, I recognize that I’ll have some challenges because of how long I’ve lived on my own.” Thinking about friends who have been married since they were young, he muses: “I know a couple of people who got married, and he was 20 and she was 19, and they’re still married, and it’s a very happy marriage, and they know each other in a way that anybody I marry now will never know me. When they see this person, they see this long arc of what this person was like as practically a teenager and through early adulthood and then maturation. For some people that might be disastrous, for this couple that seems to be a really comforting thing. I know I will never have that now, you know.”
Those men who choose to have children pre-tenure are often forced to pay a price as well, as the following chapters illustrate in detail. It is clear, then, just how urgent it has become for institutions to create tenure policies that do not disadvantage women or men who have children before obtaining tenure.
In summary, higher education, faculty roles, rewards, and the definitions of what it means to be a successful academic, have undergone considerable changes over the last decades, some of which carry important ramifications for faculty members’ abilities to balance their lives. Participants in both studies observed the mounting importance of research expectations over time, a trend most significantly affecting pre-tenure faculty. They, in turn, perceive themselves as carrying undue burdens in comparison with senior colleagues. Given that productivity standards across other realms of academic work have been ratcheted up as well, most junior faculty end up with less time to spend on personal pursuits than their senior colleagues. The tendency is ironic, however, as it is typically the earlier years in a career during which people build partnerships and families; they do it at a time when they can least afford it.
For many reasons, institutions need to offer more flexible workloads and career plans. Junior faculty may desire the option to have more time available than five years to get ready for tenure, either because they face increased productivity expectations or for reasons related to their personal responsibilities. Women, for instance, may want to break out of the rigid five-year system to be able to start a family without being forced to give up their careers. Mid- and late-career faculty, in addition, may have to reduce their workload to deal with family or health-related crises, elder care, and a myriad of other issues.
At the seven institutions included in our studies, none had the kind of flexibility that allowed faculty at different career stages to custom-tailor their work schedule so that they would be able to respond to personal needs. No institution allowed for part-time tenure-track work options or for reentry to the tenure track after prolonged absences. Stoppage of the tenure clock, if available, was negotiated individually with department chairs or deans, and extended leaves for personal reasons were either not available or, again, individually negotiated and taken as “research leave.” Yet some institutions are more progressive, and we will now take a look at what can be done to allow for faculty flexibility, with an emphasis on flexibility in the design of the tenure track.
Exemplary Institutions
University of Washington
Though quite a few institutions allow faculty to extend the probationary period for various reasons, usually related to pregnancy, childbirth, and adoption, the University of Washington exceeds those provisions and offers an array of flexible work arrangement options for both faculty and staff. According to Quinn and Shapiro (2009), because time is such a scarce resource, flexible work arrangements (FWAs) are a top indicator of work-life quality and employee satisfaction. They note that FWAs are becoming increasingly necessary given the increase of caregivers in academe and, furthermore, they typically involve only minimal costs.
For one, UW offers its faculty the so-called stopping of the tenure clock. The Academic Human Resources website reads: “The University recognizes that under special circumstances, such as care for new infants, faculty women and men must devote extraordinary efforts to their family responsibilities which may significantly detract from their research and academic capabilities. Even if the faculty member continues to work full time, efforts normally devoted to scholarship may necessarily be reduced by these new family responsibilities. In recognition of these family obligations, the University has developed several programs to stop temporarily the tenure clock” (University of Washington, n.d-b). If a faculty member takes a medical or family leave of six months or more, he or she is automatically entitled to an extension of the pre-tenure period. But even without taking a leave, or if taking a leave shorter than six months, a faculty member is entitled to a tenure clock extension if “family care responsibilities have interrupted the regular dedication to teaching or scholarship” (University of Washington, n.d.-b) as long as it is requested prior to the year of review.
According to Quinn and Shapiro (2009), a 2007 study showed about 25 percent of tenure-track faculty making use of the extension policy with more women than men using it for personal reasons, and more men than women for professional reasons. Stopping the tenure clock has had no effect on the attainment of tenure, and almost all faculty who used the policy were glad they had done so. The authors recommend the following to those who wish to replicate the policy:
- To counter the perception that the policy accommodates, and inadvertently stigmatizes, women, it ought to be structured in such a way that faculty of both genders are eligible to use it.
- To avoid a “mommy-track” and increase inclusiveness, reasons other than childbirth ought to be included such as caring for family members, personal medical reasons, or professional reasons such as loss of lab space.
- Because some faculty may realize they need an extension years after the triggering event, they ought to be allowed to ask for it then.
- To help change the perception that usage of the policy is “abnormal,” department chairs should be encouraged to discuss it regularly at annual review times. (Quinn & Shapiro, 2009)
Beyond the stoppage of the tenure clock, a faculty member at UW can decide to choose among several part-time tenure track options. Specifically, he or she may be initially appointed for the duration of three years at 50 percent or greater of full-time responsibilities. If the appointment is renewed, the second appointment allows the faculty member to choose to work at 90 percent or more of the full-time load for three years, 70–89 percent for four years, 60–69 percent for five years, or 50–59 percent for the duration of six years. At the end of the second probationary period, whatever its length, the faculty member will be reviewed for tenure and promotion. Provided it is in the written agreement by the dean of the assistant professor’s school or college, the faculty member may, at any time, change the percentage and terms of the appointment, as long as they are consistent with the numbers just mentioned (University of Washington, 2002).
The part-time tenure track option was introduced at UW in 1998, and initially few faculty members made use of it, according to Quinn and Shapiro (2009), partly because it proved difficult to define and evaluate a part-time research agenda. They report that most of those who did go part-time, furthermore, were post-tenure but that recently the number of pre-tenure faculty using part-time options has increased, particularly among women in science and engineering. Faculty report appreciation for being able to spend time with young children or aging parents, or, for late-career faculty, to ease into retirement. Quinn and Shapiro have the following advice for those who wish to replicate the policy:
- Expectations need to be defined in writing and shared with tenure review committee members.
- Departmental teaching obligations need to be met when a faculty member goes part-time without overburdening other department members. Since part-time options saves salary dollars, this money can be used to cover those obligations.
University of Michigan
Michigan does allow for a stoppage of the tenure clock, available to both women and men. This option is open to “a faculty member who must help meet the demands of caring for dependents” (University of Michigan, 2005a). However, as has been noted by Jaschick (2009), stopping the tenure clock often comes with concomitant problems. External reviewers and tenure committees may look at the length of time a person has been in probationary status and judge the amount of scholarship produced as insufficient, given the “extra year.” Commenting on Jaschick’s article, Janice Bellace, a former associate provost at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that other institutions should do what Penn has done, which is to inform external reviewers that a child care extension had been taken by the person being evaluated (Jaschik, 2009). Further, tenure committee members also need to be educated about this policy. According to UM’s provost and vice president for academic affairs Dr. Sullivan, “we are going to need to move to a longer tenure clock.” She also believes that “colleges and schools [within the university should] vote on whether they want to lengthen their tenure period. We don’t need a one-size-fits-all policy.” This type of flexibility being promoted by a senior administrator helps to ensure that the policy is being used because faculty are given the message that it will not have a deleterious effect on their careers.
University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles
Both campuses allow for stopping the tenure clock, and both campuses have an eight-year probationary period. To make sure faculty understand the policies and programs tied to faculty work-life issues, UCLA, through its office of Faculty Diversity and Development, provides information that is easily downloaded. The brochure gives the pertinent websites and the links to relevant policies. It provides the four key points about tenure stoppage for faculty who are in their eight-year probationary period. “Childbearing or parental leave of one quarter and up to one year will be excluded from service. The tenure clock may be stopped for up to one year for each event of birth (or adoption or foster care) up to a two year limit. . . . Requests for time off the tenure clock must be made within two years of a birth or adoption. Stopping the tenure clock should not disadvantage faculty in promotion, advancement or compensation. The file must be evaluated without prejudice, as if the work were done in a normal period of service” (University of California, 2003c). The policy is very clear. However, long-term faculty member Dr. Miller at UCLA admits that “the culture does not predispose people to utilize policies,” so whether faculty are taking advantage of the policy is difficult to discern. The policy at Berkeley is the same; they have gone further to ensure that the policy is communicated, however. Nevertheless, Dr. Mary Ann Mason, UC Berkeley law professor and codirector of the Center for Economic and Family Security, points to the communication issue: “It’s a constant effort to make clear what the policies are. On our campus, it [stopping the tenure clock] is a default option. You automatically get the tenure clock stopped unless you don’t want it. This is a much fairer system.” The benefit of this “default” option is that a faculty member has to ask not to stop the clock rather than to stop it; therefore, no one is made to feel as if he or she is the beneficiary of a special accommodation. Again, stopping the tenure clock for a new child is a relatively common practice in institutions of higher education. Its use, however, seems to be limited because of the fears faculty have about possible repercussions. Berkeley has removed that fear, and thus has made good on its promise to be family friendly.
Williams College
Interestingly, the tenure stoppage policy at Williams is not as progressive as some of the institutions we studied and definitely not as progressive as our exemplary institutions. Faculty members who wish to obtain a one-year delay in a tenure decision need to have taken “more than one parental leave prior to a tenure decision” (Williams College, 2009). This policy requires a faculty member, then, to have had two children before stopping the tenure clock. Thus, the implicit expectation is that junior faculty continue their scholarship while taking a semester of paid parental leave.
Faculty member Dr. Alonzo (pseudonym) mentioned another program at Williams that could be seen as an aid to work-life balancing. Williams has a Mortgage Program and “makes subsidized mortgages available to eligible faculty and administrative staff in order to assist them in acquiring homes in the Williamstown area. This benefit is intended to help these employees when first entering the Williamstown area housing market” (Williams College, 2009). The program offers loans at half the posted interest rate of one of the local banks. Dr. Alonzo explains that “because the institution wanted faculty to stick around and be on campus, they felt that faculty needed help buying houses in Williamstown.” Despite the high cost of real estate surrounding the college, junior faculty are encouraged to purchase homes near campus.
In response to the question of how well work-life policies and programs are communicated, Dr. Alonzo explains that although the institutional mission is “good, there is not much commitment to doing something when departments are reluctant to change.” According to her, administrators usually come from and go back to the ranks of the faculty which both helps and hinders. On the one hand, Williams does not have the kind of antagonistic relationships between administrators and faculty as many other institutions. Instead, the administration is very faculty-friendly. On the other hand, because the bulk of the senior administrative staff does not consist of professional administrators, “there are problems when it comes to getting them to recognize where Williams is behind the curve.” There is, according to her, a tendency to think we are Number One, we’ve always done it this way, why change?
Still, from Dr. Alonzo’s perspective, Williams is making concerted efforts to address work-life issues in a proactive way despite resistance emanating especially from some of the older faculty.
Boise State University
Boise State University allows for a one-year extension of the tenure clock under certain circumstances, including the birth or adoption of a child. Multiple extension requests may be granted. The institution’s policy states explicitly that
If a probationary period extension is approved, a reduction in scholarly productivity during the period of time addressed in the request should not prejudice a subsequent contract renewal decision. Any faculty member in probationary status more than the standard four (4) or five (5) years because of extensions shall be evaluated as if the faculty member has been on probationary status for the standard four (4) or five (5) years. (Boise State University, 2009, p. 7)
Boise State University recently received an Alfred P. Sloan Award for faculty career flexibility and, in addition to developing a mentoring program and successful policy communication structure, the institution is currently working on the development of part-time tenure-track options for its faculty. Such arrangements would add another layer of flexibility to faculty members seeking to expand their options and be better able to balance work-life responsibilities.
When asked about obstacles on the road to policy implementation, Provost Andrews and Academic Affairs Director of Professional Development Anson reiterated familiar themes: the importance of communication, for instance. “You just can’t communicate enough,” we were told. At the start of every semester Boise State sends all faculty a list of the career flexibility policies and procedures websites. Boise State also encourages departments to provide information on its career flexibility programs early on in a person’s career at the institution, namely in the acknowledgment of his or her job application package. In addition, the provost meets with every department in the process of faculty hiring, talking about policies and encouraging the department to communicate the availability of these policies and programs to applicants. These steps are meant to alleviate fear potential hires may have about inquiring about family-friendly policies. They don’t have to bring up the topic, it is done for them.
Another roadblock facing family-friendly policies can be tradition. Faculty are trained to value individualism but the flexible workload policy, for instance, is based on people having to think like a family. “It’s like doing Saturday chores,” explained Dr. Andrews. “Not everyone can mow the lawn; someone has to take out the trash. There are all these things that need to be done, and we need to divide them up. Departments need to be receptive to functioning as units rather than as individuals. Here at Boise State, we have rewarded with new resources departments that demonstrate commitment to moving as units.”
San Bernardino Valley College
San Bernardino Valley College does provide tenure to its faculty. The CTA Bargaining Agreement requires faculty to be evaluated “during the fall semester of the fourth year of service” (San Bernardino Community College District, 2010a, p. 54). Though the agreement does not specifically spell out that the tenure clock can be stopped, faculty member Dr. Jiminez (pseudonym) explains that “tenure is granted after the successful completion of four fall evaluation cycles. If for some reason, you were off for the entire fall or spring, it would mean that you have another year.” Issues surrounding scholarly productivity are not relevant because faculty are evaluated on “expertise in subject matter . . . techniques of instruction . . . effectiveness of communication . . . [and] acceptance of responsibility” (San Bernardino Community College District, 2010a, pp. 50–51). Therefore, though faculty’s tenure would be delayed for one year if they took time off, there are no penalties for doing so.
Policy Meets Faculty
Relating what is available at exemplary institutions back to our interview data, one cannot help but imagine how much happier and productive Dr. Miller, who believes she had to choose between a career, a life, and a family, would be if she had supportive policy options. Knowing that she could opt for a flexible work arrangement, such as that available at the University of Washington, without damage to her career might increase her quality of life and, by extension, her employment satisfaction. Providing flexibility would, furthermore, be cost-effective for her institution given that adjuncts to cover her classes are less expensive than paying her at a full-time rate. It is also likely that a diminishing stress level would positively affect her productivity as a scholar.
Further, working hard to make all members of a promotion and tenure committee aware that junior faculty members’ materials are to be evaluated on a standard of four or five years, as Boise State or Berkeley do, gives teeth to otherwise ineffective tenure clock stoppage policies. Being assured of fair and uniform evaluation criteria, regardless of whether faculty take time out to deal with various life circumstances, would help junior faculty realize that their institution understands they have a life outside of work. It certainly would make a difference for someone like Dr. Trenton. It seems eminently distressing to think he feels that trying to work on building a relationship and starting a family amounts to career suicide. By creating and effectively communicating life-friendly policies to all parties involved, academic institutions might create happier and more productive faculty whose institutional commitment would be cemented, making them less likely to leave an institution that has made considerable investments in them.
Faculty need clearly outlined tenure expectations. Our data indicate that in few cases were clear tenure goals communicated to pre-tenure faculty. This uncertainty ramped up expectations for the faculty we talked to and, by extension, left them unnecessarily stressed. Perhaps senior faculty within a department would be more prone to help their junior colleagues by crafting clear expectations for tenure if departments were rewarded for acting as a unit, a successful practice engaged by Boise State. Had such clarity been established at his college, Professor Sneed might not see his junior colleagues going “overboard in trying to meet expectations.” Creating a cultural shift away from traditions of individualism toward collective visions and practice, however, takes time. Organizing informal brown bag sessions such as the ones at Michigan, or routinely meeting with departments engaged in faculty hiring as practiced by the provost at Boise State, are promising first steps. In the following section, we make further policy recommendations relevant to the issues discussed.
Recommendations
Rigid tenure schedules are confining in that they do not allow the flexibility necessary to deal with major life events. Therefore we recommend that:
- Stopping the tenure clock in case of childbirth or adoption becomes a default option, as is at the University of California, Berkeley. As a result, tenure clock stoppage becomes the norm rather than the exception and thus loses its potentially stigmatizing character.
- The institution ensures that department chairs, external reviewers, and tenure and promotion committee members are well aware of the details pertaining to tenure clock stoppage to avoid the common pitfalls of the policy, namely the expectation of increased productivity when a faculty member was given “an extra year.”
- Schools and departments individually consider whether or not to lengthen the probationary period, given that a university does “not need a one-size-fits-all approach,” in the words of Michigan’s Provost Sullivan.
- Tenure extensions be granted for reasons other than childbirth, such as caring for family members or for medical reasons. Doing so would address equity concerns by making all faculty, including those without new children, eligible for extensions. In addition, it would avoid the creation of “mommy tracks.”
- Flexible work arrangements be introduced, such as those provided by the University of Washington. These are low-cost options with significant positive impacts on work-life balancing efforts.
- Part-time options for tenure-track faculty be provided. An excellent example is the University of Washington, which allows faculty to choose among several different part-time scenarios.
