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[chronicle_moderator]

A new survey has found that junior professors on the tenure track care more about the climate, culture, and collegiality of their academic departments than they do about workload, tenure clarity, and compensation. Given how often faculty strikes, disputes, and lawsuits center on issues of pay, tenure, and performance, are those survey results plausible? Or are such surveys inherently poor at measuring such subjective matters as collegiality? Or do the results suggest that junior professors, defying careerist stereotypes, are upholding an age-old tradition of collegial academic culture?
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[conjugate]

This sounds right to me.  Consider: I do not suffer fools gladly, so I'd have to be paid a great, great deal more to work in a job where I had to put up with abrasive jerks and still feel as happy as I do at my current posting.  For the tenure clarity issue, I feel that even if the requirements weren't spelled out fairly well I'd be confident because I feel the people on my tenure committee genuinely like and respect me.  Furthermore, I knew that this job had a heavy workload (and, oddly, no sabbatical system in place) but since I like my students and my coworkers it isn't such a great load as if I had to teach this many hours with students I didn't like, inbetween dealing with colleagues I didn't like, and tolerating insufferable rules and arbitrary silly regulations.  So collegiality and such seem to trump the other issues. 

[jonesey]

Well, I'm adjuncting a full load (5/5) of English Comp and Lit classes at the Freshman/Sophomore levels, and, really, have no idea how the tenure system works where I teach.  I was at a private, for-profit school (where they only have adjunct profs) and just started at a state college, so I'm still learning the ropes.

That said, I was working for a Fortune 100 company out of grad school, and while the money was great, I hated it.  50 hour weeks, constant micro-management, and the knowledge that whatever I was doing, in the end, didn't make any difference in the world (except to the CEO, I'm sure). 

This is the first time in my life that I've been given a basic set of instructions and told to "go forth and teach" without a manager standing over my shoulder while I work. 

I'm not at an R1 or anything like that, but I'm an English prof, so, really, I don't have any "research" to worry about.  Where I work, even most tenured profs have a 4/4 or 5/5 load.  I took about a $25K/year cut in salary to do this (not to mention the loss of all benefits and 401K) but I'm actually happy when I go to work.  That alone is worth it. 

As far as tenure, or my preferred job environment, I agree that getting along with my co-workers is very important to me.  I don't think anyone who teaches for a living is doing it for the money (although the t-t salary isn't too damn bad; $45K - $75K/year, and there's that whole "unable to be fired" benefit that you won't find anywhere else.  That's not too shabby, either). 

[ohcanada]

Sounds like what I would respond -- but, I think there are also problematic aspects to using this kind of measurement.  For instance, how are we defining "collegiality" and "climate"?

To me, collegiality means that there are senior professors who seem to genuinely like me, who are willing to answer my questions, who want to help make my transition as smooth as possible. If I'm in that kind of department, then chances are that tenure requirements *are* going to be clear -- even if the University as a whole is erratic on tenure, I'll at least know that and will know what the history of tenure appointments in our dept. has been.

Being in a place with a good climate and high collegiality also implies to me that the workload will be fair -- even if it is high.  I'm pretty motivated by fairness.  So, if we're all in it together at a place that demands a high teaching load or a lot of service, and we're all being collegial about it, then sure -- I'd rather be there than at a place with a lower teaching load but a group of hostile colleagues.

Also, to me, collegiality doesn't necessarily imply a shared social life.  I'm happy that I have a few colleagues that I enjoy socializing with -- but I'm not looking for the stereotypical drunken faculty parties that crop up in movies and novels about academia.

Like Jonesey, I worked in a field I hated before turning to academia.  When I went on the job market, I was adamant that I would not take a position where the dept. didn't seem to be relatively collegial, with a good climate and a culture that made me feel welcomed & like I could feel comfortable.  Life's too short. 

But, that said, just because I prioritize those characteristics over compensation doesn't mean that I would not gladly take my place in the picket line to protest salaries. Just because I'm willing to accept a job at a lower pay scale in favor of collegiality doesn't mean that I'm not going to work my ass off to make the pay more fair or to make the bureaucratic mechanisms more clear once I get there.

[prof_mom]

A new survey has found that junior professors on the tenure track care more about the climate, culture, and collegiality of their academic departments than they do about workload, tenure clarity, and compensation. ...

I think this is true, and we have talked about this before in terms of family friendly departmental culture. When I was on the job market, I was looking for a family friendly place. I didn't want a place where families were hidden, but a place where people openly admit they have families and outside interests. Any time I have been invited to apply elsewhere, I always consider what I know about the culture of that place.

It is worth a lot to work with people who are generally nice to each other.

[oldfullprof]

In the three departments I was in as an assistant professor, one of the key things I was hoping for was decent treatment.   I would have liked to be at a SLAC or research 1, but my profile (older, few grad school pubs, unfashionable diss topic, state college undergrad, much predoctoral teaching) seemed to guarentee me regional state college jobs.

The first two campuses on which I worked were both fairly pathological.  Department No. 1 had two angry factions that dated back 30 years, when there were tenure fights.  One faction was the better than you, do no publishing, but act superior anyway faction.  Members of it were always trying to move into administration, where, when they got there, were always a PIA.  They didn't ever miss a department meeting though, even with there 1/2 time administrative jobs.  Too bad.  They had a few acolytes among the untenured.

I was quickly enlisted by faction No. 2, the funky bunch.  They were warm, did publish, and got better student evals than faction one.  But they were also chaotic, and started trouble with the "anals," probably for fun.  One guy, my mentor, couldn't be trusted to be alone with female candidates because of his salty mouth.

I was marginally acceptable to Faction 1., but left anyway when we hired a psychotic guy, also a member of the funky bunch, who'd scream at you in hallways, if you were wheeling the VCR into a classroom.  "You have no standards," he'd yell.  We also hired a woman, kind of a James Hynes character, who accused everyone in the department of sexually harrassing her-- as if.

Campus No. 2, a management dept., was like a version of Nazi Germany transplanted to Central New York.  I worked in a department with a mafia chair, the bionic woman-- one of the most needlessly competitive people I've met in academia, and a Rush Limbaugh fan, who'd declaim the latest dittohead nonsense in the halls with very little prompting.

I was nonrenewed by this department when I was slow to cook up a buncha papers on which the Godfather could also afix his name.

In my current department we miraculously have none of these characters.  It's almost too calm.  But it's home.  I went happily from a 3-3 load at the first two campuses to a 4-4 on this one.  Well worth it.  I've been here three years, so I know it's not a fluke.   

[grumpy]

I would generally agree with the report, but with a big caveat.

One of the things I am MOST concerned about IS my salary (sorry for the overly dramatic capitalization!).

Between my State University salary and my wife's earning as a school teacher, we are still unable to afford a house without struggling to make our (quite strict) budget.  I think if I worked in just about any other part of the country, I'd say the findings were dead on - it's a great lifestyle.  But, when you only get promoted twice in a career, and the university system gets rid of salary step increases...

(...it's a problem, and I'd take one more jerky colleague in trade for $7-8k per year!)