Can We Make It Hard to Leave?

I work at a non-tenure granting institution that’s in the middle of a midwestern cornfield.  Literally.  First thing the VP asked is if I was going to buy a house in town.  His goal was to make me financially dependent upon staying in the area and on the college, but why would I want to commit to an institution that’s never going to commit to me?  On top of that, my wife teaches middle and high school, and area schools aren’t going to hire her because she didn’t grow up in the midwest or that particular part of it.  Why should we commit to a community that doesn’t particularly care for us?  If my employer had worked a bit to help my wife get a teaching job in town we may have bought a house here and treated this place like a place worth staying long term.  As it is, there’s no commitment to faculty on the part of administration and, in practice, no real respect for them either.  You only stay here if you’re too professionally undeveloped to get a job anywhere else or have roots in the area (grew up here, have family here, etc.).  I think you’re doing the right thing by asking what the institution can do, but the answer always begins with the idea that an institution needs to be a place worth staying.  Fant’s article and attitude disgusted me.  I’d teach high school before I taught at his college and would never apply to any open position at his school simply because of the attitude demonstrated by just one of its upper administrators.

Well, timing is everything.  Yesterday, several hundred faculty and staff members of Pepperdine University joined together in our Mullin Town Square on the Malibu campus, for an annual tradition called “Pepperdine Honors.”  The hour-long event included live music and food, and the honoring of people who had achieved career milestones (5, 10, 15 years etc. on up to 30 and 35 years!) and this year, 3 retirees.  Non-honorees sat at round, linen covered tables, munched on cold shrimp, tasty appetizers, and desserts, and chatted with colleagues and co-workers while the honoreers walked a red carpet and received hand shakes and gifts from senior management including President Andrew K. Benton.  Masters of Ceremonies celebrated the nature of the Pepperdine Community — service, initiative, integrity, and personal responsibility — and honorees received rousing applause as they took their bows. To those new to Pepperdine, say in their first couple of years, they got a glimpse of what it means to belong to a Pepperdine community that cares for them way beyond the tasks they perform. 

The fact is, you will increase retention 100 fold if new hires purchase a home rather than go in to a rental or worse, temporary housing with a trailing spouse/partner. Providing this assistance costs the institution absolutely nothing.  An Area Familiarization tour, which can be tailered to the candidate or new hires interests (entertainment, cultural, religious, schools, child/elder care facilities…. as well as housing) will enhance both recruiting and retention efforts for a minimal cost (usually $500-$1000). The problem with most institutions of higher education is the hiring process itself is so decentralized, it’s challenging (but not impossible) to “round up the troops”  and implement  a cohesive, comprehensive relocation program. Many schools still don’t even provide direction (and in some cases, no funding) for a basic household goods move. The Higher Ed market must embrace what the corporate world has known for decades.  A poorly executed relocation will result in a costly “repeat performance”.  Forward thinking Deans of Faculty and HR Talent Acquisition Managers look to HERS, Higher Education Relocation Specialists to assist in reaching their recruiting, relocation and retention goals. 

At new faculty orientation this year, we added a family picnic at the end of the day. Also, a first year faculty breakfast is held monthly to address issues as they come up. Outside speakers are scheduled as needed to provide more indepthly advice. The hope is to reinstitute a faculty mentoring program. As with other schools, we have been experiencing the loss of faculty who have even been granted tenure.

The context of this discussion is an administrator judging new faculty unwilling to commit because s/he does not purchase a home in the community within two years if employment–as if that were more important than teaching or scholarship.  My wife was asked by a principal in the area during her interview if she had family in the area.  A colleague of mine did buy and is now trying to sell…and is being told to expect to lose $30k on the sale if lucky.  Do these sound like two good reasons not to buy? This is the reality.  Attitude follows accordingly.

It can’t help that that many people see the only way to get a significant bump in pay is to get another job offer. The unspoken rule is stay three years, then move to get your pay bump. Why not implement some sort of pay and benefits structure that rewards people who stay beyond the halfway point on the tenure track? Maybe more people would stick around, if they weren’t losing big money by not going back on the job market.

kgodwin — you’re thinking that faculty jobs are like other jobs.  The point is that a faculty job is -not- like other jobs.  Everyone with a Ph.D. would get a tenure track job if they could.  So the prudent thing to do in this job AND housing market is to get a tenure track job first, and then wait until you have tenure, or at least wait to see how things are going — see if you’re likely to get tenure.  If you’re denied tenure, at most places, you’re fired.  Out of a job.  You are reviewed extensively (or should be) and have quite a few difficult hurdles to jump in order to get tenure since it’s such a commitment on the part of your university.  It’s not just like an annual review where your employer is checking to see if you’re doing your job at a reasonable level — it’s an extensive review which must ultimately be voted on by the board. Many variables are involved. 

Another fact about faculty jobs is that you’re almost certainly going to be unable to get one in the same city in which you’re currently living if you don’t get tenure.  It’s not like you can change firms in the same city.  Salespeople can sell anything anywhere.  Insurance people can get jobs in any number of firms in the same general area.  Same with construction.  Tenure track faculty are almost certainly going to have to move out of state to get another job.       

What you should be asking instead is, Isn’t it crazy for any employer to care if their employees buy a house?  I know a couple of people who work in pharmaceutical sales.  Do you think their employers care if they “commit to the community”?  Do you think they’d even -ask- about a decision to buy a house?  Those who seem to care provide support — they know that a home purchase would tie the employee to the community, so they help them do it.  But what they don’t do is judge their quality as an employee by their willingness to buy a house.  That’s just dumb.  It does in fact make a little more sense of a faculty member with tenure, as the university is making a long-term commitment to them.  But I think the faculty member’s application for tenure is the only sign a university should need about the faculty member’s willingness to commit.  Anything else is frankly none of their damn business.       

At my first job, we bought a house within a year of moving to the new location. It seemed like less of a gamble then; the housing market was chugging along, as was the economy. We were confident that we could sell when the time came. (As it turned out, we sold barely before the market and the economy collapsed in the middle of the last decade, so it was more of a gamble than we thought.)

Buying a house isn’t the real issue, though. Our feeling reluctant to leave had to do with being part of the community. Where we lived we were the odd ones in many ways. We weren’t particularly enamored of many social institutions around which many of our neighbors and colleagues’ lives revolved, although we tried to join some of them; we didn’t have any close family ties in the area; since it was a government and education town, a large portion of the town’s population was transient, which made it more difficult to establish long-term relationships with simpatico members of the community.

Can the institution help in this regard? In most ways, no; the community is what it is. But in a few ways, yes; supporting social groups that intentionally accommodate the interests of partners and spouses might help. On-campus child care would certainly send a strong message. I’m skeptical of dating services, but any way that faculty and their families can feel as if the institution has an interest in some of their personal needs helps.

To respond directly to some of the content of this article, I think it’s demeaning to ask anyone at a university to set up a dating service.  It’s also unnecessary.  There are quite a few out there. 

When I was recruited, the chair took time to find out about my outside interest in nature and arranged to have a current faculty member who shared that interest take me to some local hiking spots. Helped seal the deal.