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Individual and organizational correlates and faculty attitudes toward tenure: A secondary analysis
Abstract
This multivariate study examined how individual, organizational, and mediating factors shaped faculty tenure attitudes. Secondary analysis of two Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching surveys from 1984 and 1989 provided the basis for descriptive and regression analyses of faculty individual, organizational, and mediating factors influencing faculty tenure attitudes. Faculty were sampled from all two- and four-year United States colleges and universities reported in the Carnegie Foundation data base. The sample was 5,057 for 1984 and 5,450 for 1989. Individual variables were constructs of career factors, personal work factors, and vocation factors. Organizational variables were constructs of department functioning, employment conditions, and educational factors. Mediating variables were age, gender, rank, tenure status, and institutional type. Descriptive analysis indicated that the percentage of faculty who agreed tenure was more difficult to achieve without publishing increased from 47.4% in 1984 to 52.7% in 1989. The percentage of faculty who agreed tenure abolition would improve American higher education decreased from 35% in 1984 to 29.9% in 1989. The percentage of faculty who agreed that achieving tenure was more difficult than it was five years prior decreased from 61.6% in 1984 to 53.5% in 1989. Stepwise regression tested variables' relative contributions to faculty tenure attitudes. Of all variables, institutional type had the only practical statistical significance $(p<.0001)$ in both 1984 and 1989. Explained variance for mediating factors was approximately 45% in 1984 and 32% in 1989. Explained variance of individual and organizational factors was approximately 1.5% for 1984 and 2.6% for 1989. Total model R-square was.4549 in 1984 and.3370 in 1989. Further studies should examine tenure attitudes within seperate or comparable institutional types, examine tenure attitudes within and across disciplines by institutional type, analyze faculty research and publication attitudes in relationship to tenure, and undertake a national study of faculty attitudes concerning alternatives to traditional academic tenure practices.
Subject Area
Higher education|School administration
Recommended Citation
Ostrander, Ray Johnson, "Individual and organizational correlates and faculty attitudes toward tenure: A secondary analysis" (1992). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9314425.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9314425