A New Generation of Faculty: Similar Core Values in a Different World

The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) was established in 2007 in response to the explosion of hiring and turnover costs and to persistent challenges in diversifying the academy. It is a consortium of over 150 colleges, universities, and systems across North America committed to making the academic workplace more attractive and equitable for early-career faculty - the cohort most critical to the long-term future of their institutions. COACHE gives presidents, provosts, and deans both peer diagnostics and concrete solutions for informing efficient, effective investment in their faculty. The member institutions focus on issues critical to faculty success and on steps academic policymakers can take to improve faculty recruitment, development, and retention. The core element of COACHE is the Tenure-Track Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey, which was designed, tested, and validated in focus groups and a rigorous pilot study. Each section of the COACHE instrument is built to generate a report not simply of "interesting" data, but of actionable diagnoses. The COACHE model is designed to take participating institutions from data collection to policy action in less than one year. Because of COACHE, we know what more than 15,000 tenure-track faculty think; highlights are presented in this paper. WHAT ALWAYS MATTERED STILL MATTERS, BUT TIMES HAVE CHANGED What's important to pretenure faculty - clear and reasonable tenure requirements, support for effective teaching, scholarship, and professional development, work-life balance or integration, and a sense of community and collegiality - is not new and is not specific to Gen Xers (born 1964-1980); rather, these themes have been at the heart of the academic enterprise for decades. However, a lot has changed for those working on tenure-track lines (Trower 2008) since 1940 when the American Association of University Professors codified tenure and academic freedom (AAUP 2006). What's different today? Just a few major factors: knowledge production and dissemination (there are new methods, technologies, and venues for publication); resources (institutional, state, and system-wide budget cuts); increased competition for grant funding and different funding sources; longer lead times for getting published (in top-tier journals in many disciplines and by university presses); increased pressures for transparency and accountability; and a ratcheting up of expectations for all faculty, including teaching, research, service, and, at some institutions, outreach. On the personal side, there is increasingly a 24/7 expectation for faculty work and accessibility to students. Furthermore, the new norm for faculty with partners is the dual-career household; few faculty members have a spouse or partner who stays at home to raise children. The demographics and learning needs of students have changed dramatically. In fact, just about everything is different today except the tenure system (Trower 2009). While tenure-track faculty may want the same things as their predecessors, younger Boomers (born 1956-1963) and Gen X faculty live and work in a very different world than older Boomers (born 1946-1955) and Traditionalists (born before 1946). Because of this, Gen Xers, in particular, have been vocal about wanting increased flexibility, greater integration of their work and home lives, more transparency of tenure and promotion processes, a more welcoming, diverse, and supportive workplace/department, and more frequent and helpful feedback about progress. TENURE IS STILL THE GOAL, AND SO IS STAYING PUT Those who study generations and make comparisons between them have wondered whether Gen Xers will have loyalty to the companies for which they work, since data show that most in this age group have already moved around more than older generations, and find it less troubling to do so. A common perception of Gen Xers is that they lack commitment to their jobs and employers, and are constantly seeking "the next best thing. …