A three-decade comparison of college faculty characteristics,satisfactions, activities,and attitudes

Information about personal background, professional activities, job satisfactions and dissatisfactions, and career appraisal was gathered by means of a questionnaire administered to a 25 percent random sample, stratified by rank, of full-time faculty in Minnesota's accredited, nontheological colleges and universities. Results of the survey are compared to results of earlier surveys in 1956 and 1968 using the same instrument with similar samples. Preliminary analysis suggests that the professoriate has remained relatively unchanged across the two and a half decades of the surveys, that the educational level of the faculties has risen sharply over the years, that Minnesota college teachers find their careers satisfying, and that most of them would make the same career selection again if given the opportunity.Presented at the Twenty-First Annual Forum of The Association for Institutional Research, Minneapolis, May 1981.