Dear Garry Gordon (Vice-President of Academic Affairs),
Here is my response to your request for additional “numbers”
from our AAUP Faculty Attrition Report. We are happy to share
further this information, but I would like to preface this information
with some quick comments.
In the Social Sciences, many of us are suspicious of the notion
of letting the facts speak for themselves. If AAUP had wanted
a strict quantitative report, we would have created such a report.
Instead, we collected the data as well as we could and attempted
to write a report that thoughtfully and objectively portrayed
the context from which we collected the data. Let me, though,
repeat the numbers that are already in the report because I think
that these numbers may best serve your interest.
| Aggregate figures for departing faculty,
1995-1999 |
||||
| Division | Tenured | Tenure Track | Temporary | Total |
| Bus. & Acc. | 4 (all retired) | 2 | 2 | 8 |
| Education | 1 (retired) | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Fine Arts | 5 (3 retired) | 6 | 24 | 35 |
| HPP | 5 (all retired) | 7 | 3 | 15 |
| Lang. & Lit. | 11 (6 retired) | 12 | 29 | 52 |
| Math & CS | 3 (2 retired) | 5 | 13 | 21 |
| Science | 9 (6 retired) | 5 | 18 | 32 |
| Social Science | 5 (4 retired) | 7 | 16 | 28 |
| Total | 43 (31 retired) | 45 | 108 | 196 |
In preparing the Attrition Report, AAUP attempted to protect
participants’ confidentiality. We trust that, when you share this
information with the other universities with whom you want to
share data, you will show the same concern
Let me also respond briefly to the criticism that you and President
Jack Magruder politely shared with me concerning the AAUP Attrition
Report. You both suggested that the report attacked the Administration.
This criticism is unfair. The numbers below show that AAUP, in
fact, protected the Administration. Fifty percent of the people
who responded to our survey cited the Administration as one of
their reasons for leaving, and this reason was cited more frequently
than any other. In our written report, we chose not to focus on
or highlight this data; we were not confident that, given our
sample, the statistic was representative of our population. Thus,
in our written report, we simply listed the Administration as
one of several different reasons that people gave for their decision
to leave.
Here is the additional data from the Faculty Attrition Survey.
AAUP identified about 200 faculty members who had left TSU over
the last five years. After conferring with the VPAA office and
then conducting our searches, we secured the addresses of fifty
former faculty members. Twenty-four responded to the AAUP survey.
The percentages below add up to more than 100% because people
listed multiple reasons for leaving.
Reason for leaving / Number of responses / Percentage
of respondents
No work for spouse / 3 / 12.50%
Medical benefits / 2 / 8.33%
Salary / 6 / 25.00%
Research support / 8 / 33.33%
Leave policy / 3 / 12.50%
Teaching load / 11 / 45.83%
Service load / 4 / 16.67%
Personality issues / 4 / 16.67%
Administration / 12 /50.00%
Computer support / 1 / 4.17%
Retirement benefits / 1 / 4.17%
Social outlets / 11 / 45.83%
Better job / 5 / 20.83%
Early retirement / 4 / 16.67%
Support staff / 1 / 4.17%
Garry, I hope that these additional figures are useful to you
when you do your comparative studies with other universities.
Faculty attrition is a serious issue for us. I want to avoid creating
an us/them dichotomy that discourages constructive conversation.
Best,
Keith Doubt, Ph.D.
Truman AAUP Chapter President
Associate Professor of Sociology