How attracting and retaining women faculty builds intellectual and financial capital.

Anyone in academia knows the financial pressures that universities face. While a few notable exceptions have large endowment funds, the vast majority (including virtually all public universities) struggle to thrive under stressful financial burdens every day. In the 30 years between 1970 and 2000, the weighted average of institutional expenditures on research per faculty more than tripled[1] while state support for higher education continued to decline. In FY 2002-2003, for example, California's education funding shrank by almost 10 percent. Colorado's funding was cut by almost 22 percent during that same period; Massachusetts' budget was slashed by 23 percent[2]. No state is immune from feeling the resource crunch. In the context of this stark fiscal reality, there is no cushion for the cost of attrition and risk management issues when excellent women faculty are lost. And in this competitive environment, attracting and retaining top faculty members is the best buffer against these hits to an institution's financial security.

The Opportunity: 

Attracting the Best Faculty:

Intellectual capital of the faculty is a college or university's greatest asset and best hope to address the challenge of limited resources.[3] Institutions of higher learning that address work-life concerns increase their appeal and improve their ability to attract and retain the best pool of faculty candidates.

• Half of the current tenured faculty will be considering retirement within 10 years: Currently, 50.5 percent of tenured faculty members are at least fifty-five years old.[4] This means that about half of the current tenured faculty will be retiring in the next ten years, creating a strong demand for new faculty (and creating an historic opportunity to address the under-representation of women in the academy.
  
  
• Women make up half of doctoral candidates: In 2003, women earned 51 percent of all doctorates awarded to U.S. citizens and 45 percent of all doctoral degrees awarded.[5] And yet this talent pool is underutilized: married women, both with and without children, are leaving academia at disproportionately high rates at every stage of the academic career.[6] According to Chancellor Blumenthal at the University of California, Santa Cruz, "It is essential to put in place programs to retain women in order to achieve a diverse faculty. If you don't have a department that appeals to women, you will limit your talent pool and may end up with a lesser candidate." [7]
  
  
• Men also are also leaving academia: A recent survey of academics found that one-third of respondents indicated that they had considered leaving academia for other jobs.[8] Gen-Y men are more likely to insist on work/life balance than their older counterparts. A study of men in their 20s and 30s found that over 70 percent of them said they would be willing to take lower salaries in exchange for more family time.[9]

The Risks:

The High Costs of Attrition:

• Start-up costs run in the millions: A 2002 survey of over 200 public and private research universities found that the average start-up costs for assistant professors at private Research I universities in physics/astronomy, biology, chemistry, and engineering varied between $390,237 and $489,000. For senior faculty members, the average start-up costs ran from about $700,000 in physics to about $1,442,000 in engineering.[10] Even a start-up package for an Assistant Professor of Psychology at a public university averages $47,000.[11]
  
  
• Lost Grants: Losing a faculty member can also pack the secondary punch of losing research grant support. Callister reports that "it can take ten years for a new faculty member in science or engineering to develop enough of a positive revenue stream from grants to recoup start-up costs. If a faculty member leaves before start-up costs are recovered, the university loses money. And must start over again." [12]
  
  
• Time Lost to Recruiting: Any senior faculty member can tally up the many hours of potential research time that is instead spent on recruiting, interviewing and mentoring new faculty. One Dean estimated that over the life of a search, she spends two full weeks reviewing applications, leading search meetings, hosting candidates and talking with them prior to and after the visit. By her estimate, the average search committee member at her institution spends 25 to 40 hours reviewing applications, attending search meetings and speaking with candidates.[13] Given that departments often conduct multiple searches, this represents an enormous drain on faculty time.

Risk Management Costs:

• Employment discrimination claims are more common than sexual harassment claims in academia: In a survey of 500 colleges and universities, employment discrimination was the single greatest and most quickly growing cause of employment claims (equal to 51 percent of all claims in 1997). This was five times greater than the number of wrongful termination claims and six times greater than the number of sexual harassment claims.[14]
  
  
• Large Settlement Costs: Employment discrimination claims can cost employers hefty sums. In 1997, 73 percent of employment discrimination claims that did not go to court were settled for $110,000 per claim for public institutions, and $175,000 per claim for private institutions. [15]
  
  
• 400 Percent Rise in Family Responsibility Discrimination Cases: More recently, the Center for WorkLife Law has documented a dramatic increase in the number of lawsuits filed by workers alleging they were discriminated against because of their family caregiving responsibilities. In the last decade (1996-2005), the number of family responsibilities discrimination (FRD) cases filed grew nearly 400 percent from the previous decade. Plaintiffs are more likely to win family responsibility discrimination lawsuits than other types of employment discrimination cases. The average award is just over $100,000; the largest award to date is $25 million. [16]
  
  
• Widespread Noncompliance: In a recent survey of 100 U.S. colleges' and universities' maternity and childrearing leave policies for faculty, over a third of the respondents' policies were noncompliant or had a high probability of being noncompliant in their implementation.[17]
  
  
• Costly Impact on Institutional Reputation: The costs of settlement are only one of the prices paid with discrimination lawsuits. Negative media attention can affect an institution's ability to recruit faculty, students, and donors. And faculty members may lose precious time to litigation, taking away time from their research and teaching. [18]
  
  
• Potential Loss of Federal Grants: All federal agencies that give funds to institutions of higher education, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, are obligated to enforce Title IX.[19] A 2004 Government Accounting Office (GAO) report found that the proportion of faculty in the sciences who are women has increased, but they still lag behind men faculty in terms of salary and rank. The GAO recommended that the Administrator of NASA, the Secretary of Energy, and the Director of NSF take actions to ensure that compliance reviews of grantees are conducted as required by Title IX. [20]

Many colleges and universities are at the forefront of efforts to attract and retain women faculty, with innovative programs and initiatives that eliminate discrimination while enhancing their financial and intellectual capital. Read more about leading edge policies and programs and get a deeper knowledge of the patterns of gender bias in academia.

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(The above is excerpted from Joan C. Williams and Donna L. Norton, "Building Academic Excellence through Gender Equity," American Academic 4, no. 1 (March 2008) 185-208.)

Endnotes