Promotion and Burnout for College Faculty

What leads to burnout of faculty and what might be done about it William Barnett

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Life intervenes, and I need to take a few days away from creating new posts. The one below, however, addresses a pressing challenge that colleges and universities have yet to overcome. In addition to the plight of contingent faculty, full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty remain highly stressed. This post was published last summer and, therefore, was seen by few subscribers.

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In the struggle for promotion with tenure, many college faculty are burning out. Under the best of circumstances, the process is stressful. For persons of color, women, and other underrepresented groups, it can be brutal. And for first-generation students, low-income students, and students of color, the promotion process can rob them of much-needed support.

The Growth of Faculty Burnout

The pages of The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed are filled with stories of faculty members (and staff) who have left academia for other kinds of work. Many cite burnout as their chief reason for doing so.

The Promotion and Tenure Process

The transition from the rank of assistant professor to associate professor is the most significant advancement step for faculty because it usually comes with tenure (meaning lifetime employment). After five years of full-time service, a rigorous review occurs during the sixth year (there are usually preliminary reviews before that, typically in the third year). If the decision is positive, promotion with tenure is granted. If the decision is negative, the faculty member is granted one more year of employment after which employment at that institution is terminated.

Scholarly Publication

The criteria for promotion fall into three major categories: scholarly publication, teaching, and service. Of the three, publication of scholarly articles or books receives the most careful attention. The reason for such scrutiny lies in the fact that articles or books submitted for publication must be peer-reviewed. That is, other experts in the field must approve the research methods, rigor, and logical argument of the submitted material for it to be published. In some disciplines, the number of times a published article or book is cited by other scholars is also tracked as an indication of quality.

An impressive publication record can also lead to successful grant applications that support additional research. Some institutions expect a faculty member (especially in the natural or social sciences) to receive a certain level of external funding to support their research program.

In light of these circumstances, the pressure to publish the expected number of scholarly articles or books (that number can vary by institution) is intense. And that pressure is felt during the entire time of service as assistant professor.

Teaching

Evaluation of teaching effectiveness is rather more haphazard compared to that for scholarship. Many institutions place great weight on student evaluations of their courses even though most research concludes that such evaluations lack validity and reliability. Some colleges evaluate the quality of course syllabi, of the quantity and quality of guided student research, and outcomes of student performance. Such indirect or proxy measures, however, fail to consider the level of student preparation for academic work and an institution’s academic culture.

Service to Institution or Community

The category of service includes a wide range of possible activities: participation on college committees, engagement in faculty governance, providing support for and mentoring students, supporting student organizations and activities, participating in community organizations, etc. Except for committees and some student support activities which can be assigned, faculty members can choose how they wish to fulfill this requirement.

When a tenured associate professor applies for promotion to full professor (the highest rank), the review process is similar, except that continuing employment is not at issue. Here, however, the weight assigned to scholarly publication and attraction of external funding is much heavier.

How Burnout Happens

Burnout, especially in the early years of a faculty member’s career, is particularly distressing. It occurs at precisely the time when the demands among scholarship, teaching, and service are most acute.

Imagine an assistant professor of color who worries about how to secure funding and time for a significant research project while preparing to teach courses, many for the first time. In addition, service on committees, support for student organizations, and advising individual students of color become overbearing since such obligations fall especially heavily on BIPOC faculty. Meanwhile, domestic obligations and other aspects of life outside of academia require attention. Disproportionately, women are typically expected to remain caregivers for children or other family members. No wonder so many younger faculty report that these expectations and obligations, taken together, lower their quality of work!

This problem is not new. In 1990, Ernest Boyer reported in Scholarship Reconsidered (p. 45) how stressed younger faculty feel.

Faculty who do secure a tenure-track position often are obliged to publish with regularity and "make a name" for themselves. But this is also a season when teaching can be especially time-consuming, when professors are expected to do departmental chores and serve on campuswide committees. The danger is stress and burnout, and in our faculty survey, 53 percent of those under 40 years of age reported that "my job is a source of considerable personal strain."

As has been widely reported, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated all these stressors. The pandemic delayed or prevented scholarly research for many. Students needed more support, especially for online courses. Domestic chores and childcare became more burdensome. Many faculty reported that they lacked sufficient time and energy to cope.

In a 2021 article in Diverse, Rebecca Kelliher summarized the situation, pre- and post-pandemic, for women and BIPOC faculty members:

For years long before the pandemic, research already outlined how female faculty and faculty of color in tenure-track roles often do more mentoring and university service work than their white male colleagues. Yet this workload does not advance their careers given the tenure review process prioritizes research and publications over service, teaching, and mentoring labor.

Impact on Students

As I have mentioned in previous posts, first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students need much more faculty support. First-generation and BIPOC faculty know about this need first-hand and try as much as possible to meet it.

Further, since more Black and Hispanic faculty are younger and in the early stages of their careers, because of past discrimination, their providing massive support to students can become overwhelming. Cutting back on advising and supporting students in order to conduct research leading to scholarly publication would provoke extreme emotional stress, and rightly so.

We need to connect the dots: expecting faculty to excel in fulfilling all the traditional criteria for promotion can run headlong into inferior support for students—especially students whom institutions are so desperate to recruit and retain. Both groups, faculty and students, suffer from a pandemic of faculty burnout. And the quality of education declines accordingly.

Recalibrate Promotion Criteria

Change must happen. Otherwise, higher education will continue to lose many very talented faculty and students. Although I realize the need for further, detailed discussion, here are a few suggestions for what might be done.

1.     Institutions should decide who they are. That is, they should determine what kinds of scholarship are most beneficial to their students and to them. (In the report cited above, Boyer outlined four types of scholarship: scholarship of discovery, scholarship of integration [across disciplines], scholarship of [practical] implication, and scholarship of teaching [methods].) For example, smaller, non-research-focused colleges should give much more weight to teaching and service, and scholarship associated with those criteria, when evaluating faculty for promotion.

2.     More flexible contractual understandings should be implemented for faculty of color, women, and other groups. Several institutions have urged tenure-track faculty and others to keep records of their activities and submit COVID-19 impact statements as part of their portfolio. Decisions about performance can then include considerations of the impact of illness, caregiving responsibilities, and other relevant circumstances. Whether this approach has resulted in the desired consequences, I suggest that it be continued and expanded beyond pandemic-related events. In other words, personal circumstances that affect a faculty member’s performance in research, teaching, or service should always be included in performance evaluations.

3.     All faculty members (adjunct, full-time contingent, tenure-track, and tenured) should participate in determining goals and objectives prior to periodic performance reviews. Of course, the goals and objectives for each period must fall within institutional parameters, but great weight should be given to what each faculty member thinks is manageable and appropriate. Such determination should include specific types of research and scholarly activity, progress toward improving instruction and student outcomes, and the type of service that best fits each faculty member’s talents. Finally, whenever unforeseen circumstances arise, faculty members should have an opportunity to request revision of their performance contract.

Burnout is real, as is continuing discrimination against women and BIPOC faculty for purposes of promotion and tenure. Institutions that are implementing procedural changes to address these challenges deserve praise. The rest need to catch up, lest higher education lose many of its most talented.

Since the devil is always in the details, please feel free to comment on what your institution is doing or what you think needs to be done to reduce burnout and make performance evaluation of faculty more humane.