Exodus at Madison

In the latest issue of The Chronicle, Robin Wilson takes a closer look at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s continuing struggle to retain faculty members. She notes that they’re jumping ship at an alarming rate:

About 400 professors at Madison received job offers from other colleges in the past four years. That is double the number who received offers in the four years before that. While in some years the university has been able to hang on to as many as 80 percent of those with outside offers, the proportion slipped to 63 percent last year.

The political-science department — which lost nine professors, a whopping 20 percent of the department — was among the hardest hit last year, Wilson points out. The reason, of course, is cash, or rather a lack thereof, she writes:

Wisconsin’s stagnating state higher-education budget has forced the university to keep faculty salaries far below average. When professors get feelers from elsewhere, they learn that a move can easily mean a whopping 100-percent salary increase — sometimes more.

Budget problems have also depleted money for perks that keep faculty members on board — funds for research and travel, pay for summer months, reduced teaching loads, and longer and more frequent sabbaticals. …

As the faculty pay gap between public and private institutions widens nationwide, lots of public universities are having a hard time competing. But Madison is having particular problems, losing faculty members not only to well-off private institutions, like Chicago, but also to lower-ranked public universities. In the past few years, professors in a variety of disciplines have left Madison for Arizona State, Florida State, and Rutgers Universities and the University of Minnesota, among others.

While the administration hopes that fellowships for new faculty members, which can be used for travel, books, and other expenses, and an influx of private money for hiring and retention will help to stem the tide of losses, many worry that the damage is done. Wilson quotes Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, as saying:

“They are hemorrhaging in terms of their ability to attract and retain faculty. It’s a wonderful university, but once you get the reputation of going in the wrong direction, it’s very, very hard to build it back up.”

Read the whole story.