Americans consider international education essential for today’s students, and they connect foreign-language learning and study abroad with improved prospects for success in the global marketplace, according to a survey commissioned by Nafsa: Association of International Educators. Conducted on the eve of the 2010 elections, the poll of likely voters found that 75 percent of respondents agreed that “unless our colleges and universities do a better job of teaching our students about the world, our children and grandchildren will not be prepared to compete in the global economy.” Nearly two-thirds said that without foreign-language skills, young people will be at a “competitive disadvantage in their careers.”
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48 Responses to U.S. Voters Support International Education, Poll Finds
studentroads - January 12, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Now that an overwhelming number of Americans recognize the net benefit of a global dimension to higher education, the debate should turn to how best to maximize this benefit. In this time of economic troubles, universities (public and private) have to decide how important these long term benefits are relative to short term cuts. What programs achieve the highest return (“teaching our students about the world”) on the investment?
- study abroad programs and scholarships
- foreign langauge requirements
- diversity of student population on campuses
- visiting professors from overseas
Trey Medley - October 10, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Or reluctance to buy a house could signal fiscal responsibility, particularly if the person in question is too young to have saved up enough money for a substantial down payment. It could also mean a general cautiousness as a candidate may wait until after tenure or mid-tenure reviews before deciding on the security of the position. There are too many stories of untenured academics being fired and finding it unable to move due to a house purchase. Networking is also a good way to promote collaboration, whether for major projects or simple panels at conferences. The entire tone of this post is one of needless suspicion. Until they start shirking job responsibilities or are known to have floated a CV, give them the benefit of the doubt instead of invading their personal life (a home purchase should still be a personal decision for when an individual or family is personally ready to do so, not a means to show that you are “in it for the long haul”).
girl37 - October 10, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Agreed. The example of not purchasing a house being indicative of failure to commit to one’s new community is almost an old-fashioned viewpoint. First, as stated above, it doesn’t acknowledge the fact that the candidate may not earn tenure and could be unable to sell said house in the current “Housing Crisis” era, and second, housing costs are extremely high in some parts of the world and faculty salaries may not be enough to purchase a house, especially for singles or for couples with a “trailing spouse” who hasn’t found gainful employment.
11272784 - October 10, 2011 at 3:10 pm
I don’t buy it. In today’s economy, buying a house before you get tenure is nothing more than placing a bet, and it’s one you may lose.
And the dean with the cell phone idea needs to join the late 20th century so he’s only 20 or 30 years behind.
goodeyes - October 10, 2011 at 3:21 pm
Faculty that are slow or not very interested in getting to know other faculty are either looking for other work or clueless about this aspect of getting tenure. Faculty that don’t get to know their peers, send a message that these faculty are not important or that these facutly are not liked.
antiutopia - October 10, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Keep in mind that a new Ph.D. right out of grad school may be earning an income in the 40s or 50s and have massive student loan debt. Do you really think purchasing a house within two years of getting a first full time teaching job is always an option? In one faculty member’s situation that I’m aware of, the nearest town
where the (female) spouse can get work is about 90 miles away, and they
have small children, so they want to live near the spouse’s workplace rather than the faculty member’s workplace.
Or perhaps administrators who are hypermonitoring their faculty members’ lives are turning the institution into a place no one would want to stay? Or, perhaps a lack of tenure? Any reason you’re not wondering why people want to jump ship as soon as they get there rather than looking for reasons to deny tenure to a new faculty member within their first two years at the institution? If that’s how admin. thinks at that institution, I’m not sure I’d want to stay there.
7738373863 - October 10, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Who in her/his right mind expects a debt-laden assistant professor to buy a home in the first two years of employment, especially if the institution hiring the newbie is a high-rent district like mine (Greater Boston)?
edward_tenner - October 10, 2011 at 3:50 pm
Anybody whose senior administrators who feel this way _should_ be looking for another job. The only grounds for decisions about a college teacher should be good old instruction, research, and service, and of course integrity, not lifestyle. This article, while unfortunately normalizing the worst kind of small-town conformity that too often is the reality behind “academic freedom,” has the merit of calling attention to it, however complacently.
geochaucer - October 10, 2011 at 3:55 pm
While I agree with concerns about new faculty not joining the community, I 100% share the perspectives of other comments here that not buying a house or switching a cell phone number are meaningless indicators. Maybe in 1978 or even 1993. Not today. Not even close.
onecardaway - October 10, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Are you kidding? Not changing area codes when it no longer matters? Not buying a house when that’s been a bad investment for so many? These opinions are out of touch with reality.
profjw - October 10, 2011 at 4:18 pm
OK, house purchases and area codes aren’t good indicators in 2011. I am, however, concerned when, in the 2nd or 3rd year the conference presentations still all involve co-authors from only the faculty member’s PhD institution; when s/he has given more research talks “there” than “here”, and when the only service contributions the person is interested in are those in which “we can reproduce a program that I did at ‘Before U’ “. Ditto on hearing about tons of external service with no concommitant internal service activities popping up.
I’m from a small (lovely, but not so prestigious) teaching school and I’ve had a couple of new faculty use us as a “rest stop”. There are always signs. If someone isn’t happy here, however, a good outcome is they find somewhere where they are happier and quickly. I do appreciate it, however, when they at least give us a chance.
ash - October 10, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Agreed that expectations that new faculty buy a house right away are outrageously unreasonable. My partner and I just relocated to an institution in Southern California. All of us in the new faculty cohort barely have two nickels to rub together. The university’s moving allowance did not cover even half the costs of moving to the area, we have bills and loan payments, and our first paycheck (which barely covers the high cost of living in this area) didn’t come until October. Buy a house? We’re all lucky we are able to buy groceries! Talk about out of touch!
newyorkyankees - October 10, 2011 at 6:56 pm
If buying a house or changing their phone number to the local zip code is such a big deal, was it ever brought up during the screening process?
totoro - October 10, 2011 at 7:56 pm
I’m 46 and a full professor and I rent. House prices here (not US) are so crazy that even though we could afford to do so now to buy I’m not in a hurry to do so. I think Fant is in Iowa or somewhere though where I could buy a house for cash… But anyone who buys a house before getting tenure is a bit crazy IMHO.
exMGH - October 10, 2011 at 9:11 pm
When I changed senior administration jobs a few years ago and got a significant increase in my salary, I went from owning to renting because there’s an inversion in the rental costs of housing where I moved: high-end houses and apartments here are priced well below what they would have been a few years ago. By saving the difference between rent and PITI on a similar property, I will have much more money in cash after a few years than I would have equity in a home–especially since real estate prices are and will almost certainly continue to be flat.
So not purchasing a home may be a sign of financial sophistication and open-mindedness.
wagamama - October 10, 2011 at 10:35 pm
The signs don’t have to be even as tangible as described in this article (and I agree that buying a house these days is a pretty high bar to hurdle). A colleague in my division recently left, and I realized that I barely noticed the difference, because I had never seen her at division meetings, at lunch in the cafeteria, or even in the hallways, since all her classes were at odd hours (once-a-week evening seminars, for example). Certainly in retrospect it was clear she wasn’t planning to get with the program.
wingedwarrior - October 11, 2011 at 6:02 am
OK, OK, OK so not buying a house or updating a cell phone number are not necessarily indicative of a short-timer. What IS?
alf11 - October 11, 2011 at 7:08 am
I teach at one of those institutions many use as a resting place both because of the stype of school and because of the location. Housing is very cheap, but one of our most dedicated faculty rents because that suits him. One of our faculty who left had bought a house. Signs that people don’t intend to stay are subtle, usually. I didn’t make a lot of friends on the way to tenure because I live about 90 minutes away due to a partner’s job and other family issues. The person who left had begun creating programs to serve local businesses, which looked like a commitment to the institution. But, I think some signs are doing minimal service to the institution, having no or few professional contacts on campus outside the department and maybe not even inside the department, doing little to get involved with curricular innovations of the specific campus, and taking on few or no graduate students if that is part of the position.
yellow1 - October 11, 2011 at 7:27 am
Before coming to higher education, I worked in corporate training. Part of my expertise was in the service industry, and I could tell you down to the penny what it cost the bottom line when it came to turnover. Unfortunately, I have never worked anywhere in higher education that puts tangible, monetary value on the training and turnover side of hiring, especially faculty (search committees, recruiters, move allowance, actual salary–these front end things are considered only). In these fiscally tight times more than ever, I think if higher ed focused more on the costs all around when new hires don’t stay long, we would all do a better job during the search and interview process because we would understand the costs (not just monetary either–time was always the most wasted commodity to me when it came to turnover/poor retention of employees).
I think there are many clues faculty and others leave in higher ed that they aren’t staying long, but I think we have to look more closely in the mirror if/when we feel new hires don’t stay with our institutions as long as we hoped, thought, or planned. We also tell our students that the average graduate will have X careers in his/her lifetime, gone are the days of working for the same company for an entire career, and we hope they’ll prepare for that. So…why are we surprised when we have turnover, when new hires stay for 2-5 years?
mbelvadi - October 11, 2011 at 7:34 am
Isn’t one of the points of hiring from outside your own graduate pool to bring in fresh ideas from other institutions, and isn’t that exactly what the person wanting to bring in the program from Before U is doing? Perhaps the person feels that this is what they have uniquely to contribute in the service area, particularly when “locals” tend to have the existing service “niches” well filled up with no room for the “outsider”.
mbelvadi - October 11, 2011 at 7:36 am
Were the odd-hours classes her choice? Or was she getting stuck with the least desirable sections that the students demanded for their own scheduling needs?
englishwlu - October 11, 2011 at 8:24 am
Last time I checked, promising to stay forever wasn’t a requirement for tenure. It’s the obligation of settled senior faculty to guard against such idiotic suspicions entering any evaluation discussions. Faculty in the unusually fortunate position of having other opportunities should have their careers fostered and their accomplishments evaluated in the same fashion as the others who will probably stay. If this attitude of fear and disapproval of the potentially mobile colleague is allowed to enter tenure and promotion discussions, it won’t be long before it starts skewing searches, with outstanding candidates thrown out of the stack because “she’ll never stay.”
People said it about me when I arrived at this job 17 years ago, so I planted an asparagus bed.
singfasola - October 11, 2011 at 8:52 am
I think the dean with the cell phone idea hints at the tone of the entire faculty culture at the institution – 20 or 30 years(or more) behind. Many times a dean’s behavior, or the behavior of other high-ranking administrators and academics, will model the behavior the institution actually favors.
unemployedacademic - October 11, 2011 at 9:02 am
You’re right, but you really need to go further than hiring in your suggestions. Universities, like corporations, have systematically cut their responsibilities to employees, and now they complain about new faculty members’ lack of loyalty? That’s rich. If they’re serious, then they should stop killing tenure with adjuncts, pay a decent wage, provide decent benefits, provide substantial and regular raises without a counteroffer from another institution, take shared governance seriously so that when faculty derail their ability to get hired elsewhere by serving they are compensated, etc., etc.
wall8305 - October 11, 2011 at 9:14 am
In 2010, I took a new position as department chair at a university that was and is an excellent fit for me personally and professionally. I have not bought a house here, not do I intend to. Reason? I am 59 years old, had great difficulty selling my previous house (almost having to default on the mortgage before finally selling at a loss), and can’t see committing to a mortgage that will extend a decade or more past any plausible retirement date. Further, my professional responsibilities occupy enough of my time without having to address problems of maintenance and upkeep for a house and a yard.
Am I looking to move on? Not at all. That chief academic officer who assumes non-purchasers of houses are looking to jump ship had better pay attention to the individual concerns of his/her faculty rather than expect everyone to have the same life priorities.
polisciguy - October 11, 2011 at 9:27 am
I totally agree on the adjuncts issue. As an adjunct, I enjoy the foot in the door to the possibility of a F/T post, but have come to realize the fact my P/T colleagues teach at my CC and often several others means that we are lessening the likelihood of any of us getting a F/T position any time in the near future.
proftowanda - October 11, 2011 at 10:27 am
One more notation to the point about buying a home: I tried to do so beforre tenure, but as a single (divorced) mother with student loans, I could not get a bank to give me a mortgage. Hmmm, are these male administrators who use this measure?
Instead, the measure that has proved almost infallible in my decades of watching colleagues come and go is whether they subscribe to the local newspaper, or these days even read it online — or whether they continue to read only the New York Times.
nybound - October 11, 2011 at 11:06 am
Living in a different city, more than an hour away… I’ve seen it happen 3 different times with colleagues in my department.
oldphilprof - October 11, 2011 at 11:29 am
Whether or not buying a house matters depends on the local market and the institution. My institution fully expects a new tt-hire to successfully achieve tenure. If we didn’t think you could do it, we wouldn’t have hired you in the first place. (My institution is a regional university — not an R-1.) Area codes DO matter when your department office and institution phones are all on landlines. It is grossly inconsiderate to make your department pay for a long distance call to your cell phone because you have an out-of-area area code.
Additionally, a junior faculty member who uses up every available sick day looks like someone who wants to be free to leave without wasting any benefits. Similarly, a junior faculty member whose conversation about colleagues deals mainly with colleagues at a previous institution is clearly sending the wrong signals.
not4nothin - October 11, 2011 at 11:38 am
Sign #1: new hire asks the library to route the CHE to her office. She cuts out the job ads in her subject area and passes the remainders along to the next name on the route list.
Sign #2: new hire, unfamiliar with her office IT setup, leaves multiple copies of her CV and cover letter in the networked office printer.
sortaretired - October 11, 2011 at 12:20 pm
The head of our IT unit told me that long distance is no longer significantly more expensive than local calls.
kgodwin - October 11, 2011 at 12:58 pm
I think a lot of the signs of a short-timer are dependent on your institution’s culture and location. Living in a different city, more than an hour away, is not in any way indicative of someone planning to fly the coop at my institution. Heck – I live an hour away from my institution, and I sincerely hope they will consider me a valuable employee 30 years from now (although since I’m not an instructor, it’s hard to tell…job security isn’t the same for the other employees).
Here, the best indicator of someone planning to “escape” is someone who’s “rained-out” by January. Since I’m in the west side of the Cascades in the pacific northwest, if you’re depressed by the rain in January of your first winter, we can be pretty sure that you’re looking for a job on the east side, or in sunny So Cal, lest you grow moss on your back like the rest of us.
kgodwin - October 11, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Sorry for the long rant, but this whole cell phone thing has got my goat at the moment…
One of the reasons people tend to keep their old area code is to help them maintain connections to the others in their life – be they your family, or old friends. Your cell phone number is the only number that CAN move with you. As someone who moved 9 times in 7 years, keeping a consistent phone number is an important part of maintaining your sanity/connections with significant others (in the sociological sense) these days.
And why is it any more inconsiderate to expect your department to shell out for the minimal additional costs of calling long distance on your cell phone than it is to expect your family/friends to shell out for long distance to stay connected with you? If we want people to stay, we can’t isolate them from their support networks.
And what in the world are we doing calling folks on their cell phones/at home all the time, anyway? What’s THAT important? I can see an occasional call, but enough calls to rack up any kind of real long distance charges? I can’t see that.
If we’re talking TT faculty, they’ve got an office phone. Leave a message there. Email them. Don’t bug ‘em at home! And if they aren’t TT faculty – it’s completely irrational to expect that level of loyalty. For adjuncts – keeping an old area code is their business. For administrators – if they need to be reached consistently outside of business hours, they should have an institution-issued cell with a local area code anyway – it’s insane to expect them to foot the bill for official business! For the rest of us – when we go home, we’re off the clock. We aren’t professionals – we don’t get paid to take work home with us. Leave us be, unless you have a Really Good Reason for calling…
vatican - October 11, 2011 at 2:22 pm
It is interesting to read the speculations about someone’s propensity to stay or leave based on a few criteria. I am working on a research paper and had to interview executives. One executive mentioned that the way their firm (in the financial industry) gets people to stay is to help them obtain mortgage easily. I burst out laughing but she was dead serious. Also, I’ve had ex-colleagues who bought a house and had since moved on. Instead of obsessing over people leaving, maybe it is a good thing for some people to leave because of a poor fit. If a person is able to obtain a better employment package (salary, benefits, etc) elsewhere, what can the current organizations do better? Sometimes, I think it is convenient to blame the leaver for being disloyal. People leave for various reasons – this is why a good exit interview (with appropriate follow up) is so necessary. I too have been a matter of speculation among my colleagues even though I’ve bought a place. The reason? I’m still single. I guess the next step is for the administrators to set me up with someone? As to whether I plan to move? I am very happy where I am but I’ll also consider any serious offer on the table.
Richard Grayson - October 11, 2011 at 3:48 pm
Maybe if they don’t buy a house or change their cell phone number, they can get a conspicuous tattoo with the name of their employer and/or city.
mkt42 - October 11, 2011 at 11:45 pm
I agree. I am troubled by the attitudes expressed in Dr. Fant’s columns; just a few weeks ago he wrote about torpedoing a new hire based on what one found in an online search.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/onhiring/when-and-how-to-speak-up/29579#disqus_thread
An administrator who is ready to conjure up negative thoughts about a new hire based on the flimsiest of evidence, or clearly worthless evidence (buying a house)? One might as well sit around thinking of ways to find out if the new hire is a drug dealer in a motorcycle gang — which happens but it’s silly to turn over rocks looking for evidence of it. Not the kind of administration I’d want to work in.
yellow1 - October 12, 2011 at 8:05 am
I absolutely agree about the adjunct part of this as well. Adjunct turnover is costly in terms of service to students, training costs, etc. I hope more schools adopt models where adjuncts get increased pay per course/hour instructed based on the length of their tenure.
Doctor Cleveland - October 12, 2011 at 11:49 am
I think I have a different sense of “commitment to the life of the department or the university.” I have had colleagues who routinely went on the job market but who served our department excellently and unselfishly. I have known other people who have showed no sign of interest in either the job market or the welfare of the university. They do have houses in the area, and that’s where they’ll be while you do their share of service work.
It’s sad when the colleagues who have been helping to build the university and improve the students’ education move on. But it’s worse for the school when those who are not doing those things stay. Length of time on the job is not the only sign of commitment to a job, or the most important.
boiler - October 12, 2011 at 12:41 pm
I don’t really get the concern here. Why should untenured faculty make a commitment to the institution? The institution hasn’t made a commitment to them. If their publication and teaching don’t make the grade, all the mortgages and phone numbers in the world won’t keep the school from dropping them. Asking them to make the institution their home, to put down deep roots and forsake other opportunities, is silly if the institution isn’t doing the same thing.
On a broader level, why is there this hostility and suspicion about people who are looking at other positions? This is a job, not the mafia. People can and should leave if they see a better opportunity elsewhere, and the best people will have the most opportunities. If you want to have good people at your institution, accept the fact that you’ll get some turnover. If you want to keep them, make sure they have good reasons to stay. Fretting about who’s likely to jump ship is pointless and counterproductive.
antiutopia - October 13, 2011 at 11:10 am
You’re still not thinking right, profjw. I work in a small-town college too. If my college offered tenure, I’d be rather -stupid- to buy a house in town before I received tenure, as then I’d be saddled with a house in a town that has a severely depressed job market while needing to find employment elsewhere, probably across the country. I don’t think admin. should expect professors to fully commit to a community or to an institution until the institution has committed to them. Application for tenure is all the sign of commitment to the institution that you need.
If you’re not at a tenure-granting institution, you have no right at all to expect any commitment, as you make no commitments.
dxg197 - October 13, 2011 at 11:55 am
What about buying a house on the other side of the city (40 miles away). We had a faculty member that did that and she never seemed invested in the community. I think she just stayed because she couldn’t find another job.
gbrown - October 13, 2011 at 8:02 pm
I’m 4 years at my CC. Tenured last year. I changed my phone number immediately, but am still renting an apartment. I send a thousand or more dollars per month to support an elderly family member. Until he passes on, I will be living in an apartment with no funds for “roots” as defined in the article. As a single, middle-aged woman, I’m also not sure when or if a house purchase is where I want to invest. I can only hope that colleagues are not viewing me with skepticism, assuming the worst. Oh, and after our V.P. left last year for a presidency at another college AND we hired a new V.P. who is busy making changes that fit his CV (and will get him a better deal somewhere else), I’m convinced that the lack of commitment from administrators far outweighs the lack of commitment from faculty. Hey, at least faculty don’t eliminate departments and tenure lines in the guise of “reorganization” and force faculty to all use the same textbook to help students save money. Just saying…
kgodwin - October 14, 2011 at 11:52 am
We also don’t grant administrators or staff jobs for life. I know at my institution, the longest contract an admin/exempt person can get is a year. I’m sure there are places where it’s longer, but when the institution can cut you loose for no reason on May 1 every year (the contract requires 60 day notice), I don’t really see why administrators should have any commitment to the institution.
Another quirk at my institution – and this one I’m pretty sure is just my institution – is that administrators can’t get a pay raise, even with increased responsibilities, without having their job eliminated, recreated, and then re-interviewing for it. They don’t even get cost-of-living increases.
But why would an administrator make a commitment to the institution when they’ll be forced to re-compete for their job every 5-6 years, or be stuck with the same pay and increased responsibility? When we hire a tenure-track faculty member here, we’re making at least a 1.7 million dollar commitment (assuming they’re hired at age 30, they retire at age 65 at the second pay step – an unrealistic set of assumptions). Can’t we expect just a *little* more loyalty for that kind of commitment? Especially contrasted with the $60Kish commitment we make to administrators?
beatrianthro - October 14, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Wow… I just started my first semester in a tenure-track position in a department that I intend to stay in forever, if they’ll have me. The truth is I CAN’T buy a house, no matter how badly I might want to –grad school left me with heavy debt and no income plus no moving expenses equalled a hefty accumulation of credit card debt by summer’s end. I am just trying to dig myself out of a hole right now. I certainly hope that my department does not see this reluctance to buy a house a sign I’m thinking about moving on!
beatrianthro - October 14, 2011 at 4:03 pm
Perhaps that is the key factor here –new faculty members might not buy a house, but hopefully they’re having colleagues over for dinner and socializing with them outside of work. I think that if a new faculty member is looking to get out, it would become obvious to people that are close to him or her, and if no one is close to him or her, that may be indication enough.
bizilizi - October 14, 2011 at 5:35 pm
This article reeks of a type of McCarthyism. As t-rey says, it’s tone is “one of needless suspicion.” I am both saddened and shocked that certain academics and administrators think in this close-minded, privacy infringing way, and jump to ridiculous assumptions. Many of my colleagues and friends, long-time California residents, purposely do not buy property due to the insane real estate market (that has grown increasingly worse over last five years, with economy drop, house foreclosures etc), and the exorbitant CA. property tax law. They believe renting works out cheaper than purchasing, if you add to yearly property taxes, house maintenance and repair, loan plus interest repayments for the mortgage, and house insurance. When I was in grad.school in San Francisco in mid-late 90s, students were paying, yes paying to rent closet space to sleep in since no apartments or any other form of rental was available.
Virtually everyone I talk to these days makes a conscious decision to rent or have long-term plans to move out of state to purchase property. An acquaintance in the medical profession informed me just yesterday, you can’t buy anything in California for $300,000 but you can get a mansion for the same price in Idaho. Once she finishes school, she and her husband are moving to Idaho for this very reason. Get a clue Gene Fant Jr! Seriously
wagamama - October 14, 2011 at 11:27 pm
I don’t believe they were demanded by students–evening classes are not popular where I teach (four-year private residential institution).
vlghess - October 15, 2011 at 10:08 am
I guess I’m really replying to all the “housing costs” posts that point out the tenure-gamble–i.e. anyone who took a tenure track job in 2004 and bought a house and didn’t get tenure…Not good. My undergraduate institution (when I was there 35+ years ago) had a stock of “faculty housing”–lovely houses near campus rented to tenure-track junior faculty. It was almost a ritual that when one got tenure one built a house in the area.
Sadly, when I moved back to the area after 31 years away (I’m at a different institution) I learned that all that is gone–faculty prefer to live in the “cooler” towns over the notch or wherever, faculty housing is gone, and… But I still think that old solution had merit…