Why do faculty members leave a university?

This paper uses the results of a survey of tenured faculty members who resigned from the University of Minnesota to analyze the factors that influenced their decisions to leave. The results indicate that the probability of accepting an outside offer is positively related to the expected salary gain, but that other general factors are also important determinants of faculty decision making in this area. However, even with the survey results, we know very little in any systematic sense about specific factors that influence individual faculty decisions, particularly about differences in these factors for those faculty who leave as opposed to those who remain. To analyze faculty retention more completely, we need additional information about the personal circumstances of faculty members who are and are not retention cases and more extensive information on why the retention cases made their eventual choices about staying at or leaving the institution.     

Time effects in earnings of faculty members

Empirical analyses of salary discrimination among university faculty members typically use data from a single cross-section. However, if earnings profiles exhibit instability over time, comparison of individuals from a cross-section will not reflect actual life-cycle earnings differences. In this paper we compare relative earnings by sex estimated from cross-section and longitudinal data samples. The results indicate substantial differences in estimated male-female salary ratios.     

Organized labor: Toward a new dignity in the workplace

Jim Auerbach is Assistant Director of the Department of Education, AFL-CIO, Washington, D.C.