Recruitment and Retention of Academic Staff in Higher Education

R ESEARCH

Recruitment and Retention of Academic Staff in Higher Education Hilary Metcalf, Heather Rolfe, Philip Stevens and Martin Weale National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Research Report RR658

Research Report No 658

Recruitment and Retention of Academic Staff in Higher Education

Hilary Metcalf, Heather Rolfe, Philip Stevens and Martin Weale National Institute of Economic and Social Research

The views expressed in this report are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department for Education and Skills. © National Institute of Economic and Social Research 2005 ISBN 1 84478 523 8

Acknowledgements This study was only possible due to the generous support of a large number of people. We would like to thank them all. We will not name individuals, as most cannot be named for reasons of confidentiality. In particular, our thanks go to the universities which participated in the study, those individuals who agreed and facilitated access and described their human resourcing. A special thanks goes to those individuals who helped provide us with the quantitative survey samples. In many cases, this was an onerous task and we greatly appreciate the tenacity and dedication shown. We would also like to thank the research students and academics who participated in the qualitative research for their time and trust to respond to highly personal questions. Finally, our thanks go to all the research students and academics who completed the detailed quantitative questionnaire.

CONTENTS DETAILED CONTENTS.....................................................................................................I TABLES ....................................................................................................................... VII FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... XII REPORT SUMMARY .................................................................................................... XIII 1

INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1

2

PREVIOUS EVIDENCE ON RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION ISSUES IN ACADEMIA7

3

THE STRUCTURE OF ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION .........43

4

INTERSECTORAL AND INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS OF PAY ........................65

5

ENTRANTS TO ACADEMIC JOBS..........................................................................87

6

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT AND CAREERS ........................................................131

7

LEAVERS...........................................................................................................157

8

THE ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCE POLICIES AND PRACTICES ..........................169

9

CONCLUSIONS ..................................................................................................203

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................................................................................215 APPENDIX A : THE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH...........................................................223 APPENDIX B : THE STAFF AND STUDENT SURVEYS ...................................................227 APPENDIX C : HESA STAFF AND STUDENT DATA ....................................................237 APPENDIX D : NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS ..............................243 APPENDIX E : INTRA-UK EARNINGS AND UK/US ACADEMIC EARNINGS ...............249 APPENDIX F : THE LIKELIHOOD OF STUDENTS ENTERING ACADEMIA ....................255 APPENDIX G : JOB SATISFACTION AND INTENTIONS TO LEAVE ACADEMIA ............263 APPENDIX H : RECENT AND PROPOSED POLICY DEVELOPMENTS ...........................289

Detailed Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................... I DETAILED CONTENTS..................................................................................................... I TABLES ....................................................................................................................... VII FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... XII REPORT SUMMARY .................................................................................................... XIII S.1 The study...................................................................................................xiii S.2 Recruitment and retention problems .....................................................xiv S.3 Pay .............................................................................................................xiv S.4 Recruitment to the sector ........................................................................xiv S.4.1 Pattern of recruitment ............................................................................xiv S.4.2 Reasons for entering academia...............................................................xv S.4.3 Satisfaction of academic staff................................................................xvi S.5 Retention ..................................................................................................xvii S.5.1 Factors affecting leaving the sector......................................................xvii S.6 Discrimination and equal opportunities...............................................xviii S.7 Raising the supply to the sector ............................................................xviii S.8 Improving retention .................................................................................xix S.9 Management and human resource practices .........................................xix S.9.1 Recruitment practice and recruitment difficulties ..................................xx S.9.2 Promotion and retention practices ..........................................................xx 1

INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1 1.1 Overview of the study .................................................................................2 1.1.1 HESA staff and student data.....................................................................3 1.1.2 The comparative analysis of pay ..............................................................4 1.1.3 The qualitative and quantitative survey research .....................................4 1.2 Nomenclature...............................................................................................5 1.3 Report layout ...............................................................................................5

2

PREVIOUS EVIDENCE ON RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION ISSUES IN ACADEMIA 7 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................7 2.2 Turnover ......................................................................................................7 2.3 Evidence on recruitment and retention problems..................................11 2.3.1 Current experience of the case study universities: recruitment..............13 2.3.2 Current experience of the case study universities: turnover...................14 2.4 Factors affecting recruitment and retention...........................................16 2.4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................16 2.4.2 Employers’ views on factors affecting recruitment and retention..........16 2.4.2.1 Pay....................................................................................................17 i

2.4.2.2 Reputation and subject area .............................................................17 2.4.2.3 Redundancies ...................................................................................18 2.4.2.4 Promotion.........................................................................................18 2.4.3 The whole package .................................................................................18 2.4.4 Job satisfaction of academics .................................................................19 2.4.5 Factors affecting recruitment and retention: pay....................................20 2.4.5.1 Comparative pay levels within the UK............................................21 2.4.5.2 The importance of pay .....................................................................22 2.4.5.3 Pay systems......................................................................................23 2.4.5.4 Academic salaries in an international context .................................23 2.4.5.5 Pay discrimination ...........................................................................25 2.4.6 Factors affecting recruitment and retention: pensions............................26 2.4.7 Factors affecting recruitment and retention: job content........................26 2.4.7.1 Teaching...........................................................................................27 2.4.7.2 Research...........................................................................................27 2.4.7.3 Administration and management .....................................................27 2.4.8 Factors affecting recruitment and retention: promotion and progression 27 2.4.8.1 Changes in career path .....................................................................27 2.4.8.2 Internal promotion ...........................................................................28 2.4.8.3 Promotion criteria ............................................................................28 2.4.8.4 The RAE ..........................................................................................29 2.4.8.5 Gender..............................................................................................30 2.4.8.6 Ethnicity...........................................................................................31 2.4.9 Factors affecting recruitment and retention: workload and hours of work 31 2.4.10 Factors affecting recruitment and retention: security of employment....33 2.4.10.1 Staff on temporary contracts........................................................33 2.4.10.2 The pattern of use of temporary contracts ...................................34 2.4.10.3 Findings from the study of contract research staff in Scotland ...35 2.4.11 Factors affecting recruitment and retention: family-friendly practices..37 2.4.12 Factors affecting recruitment and retention: other .................................37 2.5 Summary and conclusions ........................................................................39 3

THE STRUCTURE OF ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION .........43 3.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................43 3.2 Institutional structure ...............................................................................43 3.3 Job structure..............................................................................................44 3.3.1 Grade structure .......................................................................................44 3.3.2 Pay structure ...........................................................................................47 3.3.2.1 Additional earnings..........................................................................47 3.3.3 Contractual status ...................................................................................49 3.3.4 Primary employment function................................................................51 3.3.5 Mode of employment .............................................................................51 3.4 The characteristics of academic staff in Higher Education ..................53 3.4.1 Gender ....................................................................................................53 3.4.2 Age .........................................................................................................57 3.4.3 Ethnicity .................................................................................................58 3.4.4 Nationality ..............................................................................................58 3.4.5 Staff Qualifications.................................................................................59 ii

3.5 Summary....................................................................................................62 3.5.1 Job structure............................................................................................62 3.5.2 Characteristics of employees..................................................................63 4

INTERSECTORAL AND INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS OF PAY ........................65 4.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................65 4.2 Flows in and out of the UK Higher Education sector ............................65 4.3 A comparison of academic salaries across nine countries .....................68 4.3.1 Data.........................................................................................................68 4.3.2 Results ....................................................................................................70 4.3.2.1 Full-time Staff..................................................................................72 4.3.2.2 The Distribution of Earnings ...........................................................73 4.4 An analysis of intra-UK earnings and UK/US academic Earnings ......77 4.4.1 Background.............................................................................................77 4.4.2 UK ..........................................................................................................78 4.4.3 US ...........................................................................................................79 4.5 Factors affecting international pay differences ......................................81 4.6 Summary and conclusions ........................................................................84

5

ENTRANTS TO ACADEMIC JOBS ..........................................................................87 5.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................87 5.1.1 A note on the data...................................................................................87 5.1.2 Layout of the chapter..............................................................................88 5.2 Source of entrants to the sector................................................................88 5.3 Career routes into academia: existing staff ............................................93 5.4 Existing staff: decision process for entering academia..........................96 5.5 Students as a source of entrants.............................................................103 5.5.1 The supply of PhD students..................................................................106 5.6 Students’ career intentions.....................................................................107 5.6.1 What do research students want from a job?........................................112 5.7 Does academia offer what research students want? ............................115 5.7.1 Students’ perceptions of academia .......................................................115 5.7.1.1 Prior knowledge of academic employment....................................115 5.7.2 Research students’ perceptions of academic jobs ................................117 5.7.3 Do students think academia offers what they want? ............................118 5.7.4 Are students’ expectations met? ...........................................................120 5.8 The factors influencing the likelihood of students entering academia122 5.9 Summary and conclusions ......................................................................124 5.9.1 Source of academic recruits..................................................................124 5.9.2 Career decisions....................................................................................125 5.9.3 Students ................................................................................................126 5.9.4 What do research students want from a job?........................................127 5.9.5 Perceptions of academia .......................................................................127 5.9.6 Policy implications and further research needs ....................................128

6

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT AND CAREERS ........................................................131 6.1 Introduction .............................................................................................131 6.2 Career paths ............................................................................................131 iii

6.2.1 Expected progression............................................................................132 6.3 Academics’ satisfaction...........................................................................134 6.3.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................134 6.3.2 Are Female Academics Happier? .........................................................136 6.3.3 What Makes Staff Happy?....................................................................137 6.3.4 The determinants of satisfaction...........................................................148 6.3.5 Is there a single overall measure of satisfaction? .................................150 6.4 Summary..................................................................................................152 6.4.1 Progression within academia ................................................................152 6.4.2 Overall satisfaction...............................................................................152 6.4.3 Satisfaction with individual aspects of the job .....................................152 6.4.4 Factors affecting satisfaction................................................................154 6.4.4.1 Personal characteristics..................................................................154 6.4.4.2 Experience......................................................................................154 6.4.4.3 Grade..............................................................................................154 6.4.4.4 Contractual status...........................................................................154 6.4.4.5 Differences between universities ...................................................154 6.4.4.6 Hours..............................................................................................155 6.4.4.7 Research ranking............................................................................155 7

LEAVERS...........................................................................................................157 7.1 Introduction .............................................................................................157 7.2 Career plans.............................................................................................158 7.2.1 Career plans: changing universities......................................................158 7.2.2 Career plans: leaving the UK Higher Education sector........................160 7.2.2.1 Remaining in academia to retirement ............................................160 7.2.2.2 Expectations of leaving the sector in the following year ...............160 7.3 Factors affecting the likelihood of leaving UK Higher Education......164 7.3.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................164 7.3.2 Results ..................................................................................................165 7.4 Summary and conclusions ......................................................................166 7.4.1 Career expectations ..............................................................................166 7.4.2 Factors affecting leaving the sector......................................................167 7.4.3 Implications for policy .........................................................................168

8

THE ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCE POLICIES AND PRACTICES ..........................169 8.1 Introduction .............................................................................................169 8.1.1 A note on research staff........................................................................169 8.2 Employment strategy ..............................................................................170 8.3 Recruitment practice ..............................................................................171 8.3.1 Recruitment strategy.............................................................................171 8.3.2 The recruitment process .......................................................................172 8.3.3 The pay offer ........................................................................................174 8.3.4 Other terms and conditions...................................................................176 8.3.5 Response to recruitment difficulties.....................................................176 8.4 Promotion practice..................................................................................177 8.4.1 Promotion systems................................................................................178 8.4.2 Procedures and criteria .........................................................................179 8.4.3 Response to retention difficulties/changes: promotion systems...........181 iv

8.5 Pay system................................................................................................182 8.5.1 Pay level ...............................................................................................182 8.5.2 Retention incentives .............................................................................182 8.6 Appraisal, training and development ....................................................184 8.6.1 Recruits.................................................................................................184 8.6.2 Appraisal...............................................................................................185 8.6.3 Training and development....................................................................186 8.7 Work demands and work allocation .....................................................187 8.8 Equal opportunities.................................................................................188 8.8.1 Gender ..................................................................................................190 8.8.2 Ethnicity ...............................................................................................194 8.8.3 Age .......................................................................................................195 8.8.4 Other .....................................................................................................196 8.8.5 Equality initiatives................................................................................196 8.9 Summary and conclusions ......................................................................197 8.9.1 Ethos and human resource structure.....................................................197 8.9.2 Employment strategy............................................................................198 8.9.3 Promotion practice................................................................................199 8.9.4 Pay system ............................................................................................200 8.9.5 Work demands and work allocation .....................................................201 8.9.6 Equal opportunities...............................................................................201 9

CONCLUSIONS ..................................................................................................203 9.1 The labour pool .......................................................................................204 9.2 Pay ............................................................................................................204 9.3 Job content ...............................................................................................205 9.4 Workload .................................................................................................206 9.5 Other aspects of the job ..........................................................................207 9.6 Job security ..............................................................................................207 9.7 Career prospects......................................................................................208 9.8 Careers advice .........................................................................................209 9.9 Discrimination .........................................................................................210 9.10 Other issues..............................................................................................211 9.11 Management and human resource practices ........................................211 9.12 Further research......................................................................................211

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................................................................................215 APPENDIX A : THE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ...........................................................223 A.1 The scope of the qualitative research ....................................................223 A.2 The sample ...............................................................................................223 APPENDIX B : THE STAFF AND STUDENT SURVEYS ...................................................227 B.1 Aim ...........................................................................................................227 B.2 The university sample .............................................................................227 B.2.1 University sample population...............................................................227 B.2.2 University sample structuring...............................................................229 B.3 The staff sample.......................................................................................231 v

B.4 The student sample .................................................................................232 B.5 Fieldwork .................................................................................................232 B.6 Response rates .........................................................................................233 B.7 Weighting .................................................................................................233 B.8 Bias ...........................................................................................................233 B.8.1 Staff ......................................................................................................233 B.8.2 Research students .................................................................................234 APPENDIX C : HESA STAFF AND STUDENT DATA ....................................................237 C.1 HESA staff data set. ................................................................................237 C.2 HESA Student Data ................................................................................240 APPENDIX D : NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS ..............................243 D.1 Data...........................................................................................................243 D.1.1 UK ........................................................................................................243 D.1.2 US .........................................................................................................244 D.1.3 Australia ...............................................................................................244 D.1.4 New Zealand.........................................................................................245 D.1.5 Canada ..................................................................................................245 D.1.6 Denmark ...............................................................................................245 D.1.7 France ...................................................................................................245 D.1.8 Sweden .................................................................................................246 D.1.9 Japan .....................................................................................................246 D.1.10 Additional tables...................................................................................246 APPENDIX E : INTRA-UK EARNINGS AND UK/US ACADEMIC EARNINGS ...............249 E.1 Background..............................................................................................249 E.2 Empirical Model......................................................................................249 E.3 Results ......................................................................................................251 E.3.1 UK ........................................................................................................251 E.3.2 US .........................................................................................................253 APPENDIX F : THE LIKELIHOOD OF STUDENTS ENTERING ACADEMIA ....................255 F.1 Model ........................................................................................................256 F.2 Results ......................................................................................................258 APPENDIX G : JOB SATISFACTION AND INTENTIONS TO LEAVE ACADEMIA ............263 G.1 The General Model .................................................................................264 G.2 The Job Satisfaction of Academics ........................................................265 G.2.1.1 The satisfaction of temporary staff ................................................266 G.2.1.2 Satisfaction in a dynamic framework ............................................267 G.2.2 Analysis ................................................................................................267 G.2.3 Is there a single overall measure of satisfaction? .................................278 G.3 Factors affecting the likelihood of leaving Higher Education.............280 G.3.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................280 G.3.2 Results ..................................................................................................281 APPENDIX H : RECENT AND PROPOSED POLICY DEVELOPMENTS ...........................289

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Tables Table 2.1 Turnover in HE staff, 2001/2 (%)..................................................................8 Table 2.2 Turnover by broad subject (%) ......................................................................9 Table 2.3 Turnover by higher education institution type (%)......................................10 Table 2.4 Turnover by type of contract (%) ................................................................11 Table 2.5 Turnover as a percentage of total turnover by type of contract ...................11 Table 2.6 Comparison of job satisfaction of academics with whole economy............20 Table 2.7 Contract researchers: value of job attributes................................................36 Table 3.1 Employment by type of institution ..............................................................44 Table 3.2 Salary scales from 1 August 2004 ...............................................................45 Table 3.3 Staff grades (%) ...........................................................................................46 Table 3.4 Staff grades lecturing and senior researchers (%) .......................................47 Table 3.5 Academic Staff: Gross additional earnings in the previous 12 months (%) 48 Table 3.6 Academic staff: Gross additional earnings in the last year, by grade (%)...48 Table 3.7 Academic staff: Gross additional earnings by subject.................................49 Table 3.8 Employment activity by contractual terms (%) ...........................................50 Table 3.9 Breakdown of Staff by Primary Employment Function (%) .......................51 Table 3.10 Mode of Employment (%) .........................................................................52 Table 3.11 Mode of Employment by Terms of Employment (%)...............................52 Table 3.12 Mode of Employment by Employment Function (%) ...............................52 Table 3.13 Academic staff by gender ..........................................................................53 Table 3.14 Mode of Employment by Gender (%) .......................................................54 Table 3.15 Mode of Employment by Age and Gender (%) .........................................54 Table 3.16 Breakdown of Staff by Subject and Gender ..............................................55 Table 3.17 Staff grades (%) .........................................................................................56 Table 3.18 Breakdown of Staff by Primary Employment Function (%) .....................56 Table 3.19 Breakdown of Staff by Terms of Employment (%)...................................56 Table 3.20 The Age of HE Staff (%) ...........................................................................57 Table 3.21 The Age Structure of HE Staff (%) ...........................................................58 Table 3.22 Breakdown of Staff by Nationality (%) .....................................................59 Table 3.23 The Age of HE Staff by nationality (%) ....................................................59

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Table 3.24 Highest qualification of staff (%) ..............................................................59 Table 3.25 Qualifications by Terms and Mode of Employment (%) ..........................62 Table 4.1 Flows into and out of UK Higher Education sector, by nationality ............66 Table 4.2 Destination of academics within Higher Education sector, by nationality..67 Table 4.3 New academics from within Higher Education sector, by nationality ........67 Table 4.4 Academic salaries, in £ ................................................................................71 Table 4.5 Proportion of part-time academic staff ........................................................72 Table 4.6 Real earnings of full-time workers only ......................................................72 Table 4.7 Comparative actual academic earnings by age ............................................80 Table 4.8 Earnings of academics relative to average earnings ....................................82 Table 5.1 Origin of entrants to the HEI sector, 2001/02..............................................89 Table 5.2 Total staff movements by age group (%).....................................................90 Table 5.3 The Contracts of Entrants to HE by Age .....................................................91 Table 5.4 Academic staff: First academic job: type of job ..........................................92 Table 5.5 Academic staff: Contractual basis of first academic job .............................92 Table 5.6 Academic staff: Employment outside academia..........................................93 Table 5.7 Academic staff: Nature of employment outside academia ..........................93 Table 5.8 Academic staff: Entrants making career change by subject ........................94 Table 5.9 Academic staff: Whether made a career change to go into academia .........95 Table 5.10 Academic staff: Entrants making career change by type of university and by gender..............................................................................................................95 Table 5.11 Academic staff: Whether was seriously considering and comparing careers before got first academic job................................................................................97 Table 5.12 Academic staff: Career intentions prior to first academic job ...................98 Table 5.13 Academic staff: Career intentions prior to first academic job by type of university and by gender......................................................................................98 Table 5.14 Academic staff: Career intentions prior to first academic job by subject..99 Table 5.15 Academic staff: Reasons for entering academia (%)...............................100 Table 5.16 Academic staff: Reasons for entering academia by type of university and by gender............................................................................................................100 Table 5.17 Academic staff: Factors prompting career change to academia ..............102 Table 5.18 Academic staff: Factors prompting career change to academia by type of university............................................................................................................102 Table 5.19 First Destination, by degree (%) ..............................................................104 Table 5.20 Nature of study for those going into further study (%)............................104 Table 5.21 Breakdown of students entering employment in the Higher Education sector (by SIC code) (%)....................................................................................105 viii

Table 5.22 Occupation of graduates entering HE......................................................105 Table 5.23 First Destination, by degree and subject (%) ...........................................106 Table 5.24 Research students: Importance of reasons for study................................108 Table 5.25 Research students: What best describes your career intentions? .............109 Table 5.26 Research students: Career intentions by degree subject (excerpt) (%)....110 Table 5.27 Research students: Desired and probable jobs.........................................111 Table 5.28 Research students: Desired jobs, by subject ............................................112 Table 5.29 Research students: Importance of factors in career choice, cumulative % ............................................................................................................................113 Table 5.30 Research students: The importance of elements of the academic job (%) ............................................................................................................................114 Table 5.31 Research students: The importance of a permanent job, cumulative % ..114 Table 5.32 Research students: Parental experience of teaching/research..................116 Table 5.33 Research students: HE Employment prior to current degree...................116 Table 5.34 Research students: HE Employment during current degree ....................117 Table 5.35 Research students: HE Employment whilst student ................................117 Table 5.36 Research students: How well does an academic career offer (%) ...........118 Table 5.37 Research students: Perceptions of academic employment ......................118 Table 5.38 Research students: Comparison of research students’ desired job attributes and expected attributes of an academic job .......................................................119 Table 5.39 Research students: Contract type .............................................................120 Table 5.40 Academic Staff: Hours of work in academic employment......................121 Table 5.41 Research students: Expected earnings in academia .................................122 Table 5.42 Research students: Actual salary .............................................................122 Table 6.1 Academic staff: Academic career expectations .........................................133 Table 6.2 Reported satisfaction in previous studies...................................................135 Table 6.3 Academic staff: Reported satisfaction (%) ................................................136 Table 6.4 Academic staff: Satisfaction by Gender ....................................................137 Table 6.5 Academic staff: The aspects of teaching and job satisfaction ...................138 Table 6.6 Academic staff: The aspects of research and job satisfaction ...................139 Table 6.7 Academic staff: The effect of administrative and organisational aspects of academic employment and job satisfaction .......................................................140 Table 6.8 Academic staff: Other aspects of academia and job satisfaction...............141 Table 6.9 Academic staff: Perceived fairness of decisions on individual pay, current university............................................................................................................142 Table 6.10 Academic staff: Perceived fairness of decisions on promotion and recruitment to senior posts, current university...................................................143 ix

Table 6.11 Academic staff: Whether thinks academic jobs have improved since their first academic job in UK ....................................................................................147 Table 6.12 Factor loadings for overall job satisfaction..............................................151 Table 7.1 Leavers: HEFCE-funded staff ...................................................................157 Table 7.2 Academic staff: Likelihood of moving to another UK university in the next year.....................................................................................................................159 Table 7.3 Academic staff: Reasons for moving to another UK university in the next year and for not moving .....................................................................................159 Table 7.4 Whether expects to stay in UK academia until retirement ........................160 Table 7.5 Academic staff: Likelihood of leaving employment in UK Higher Education in the next year...................................................................................................161 Table 7.6 Sector leavers: plans ..................................................................................162 Table 7.7 Academic staff: Sector leavers: reasons for leaving..................................163 Table 7.8 Academic staff: Whether has worked continuously in academia by subject ............................................................................................................................164 Table 7.9 Academic staff: Total time spent working outside academia ....................164 Table 8.1 Equal opportunities, staff beliefs ...............................................................190 Table 8.2 Childcare provision, staff with children ....................................................193 Table 8.3 Adult care provision...................................................................................194 Table 8.4 Early retirement .........................................................................................195 Table A.1 Case studies: subject areas ........................................................................225 Table A.2 Specialist institutions excluded from the sample......................................228 Table A.3 Other institutions with fewer than 200 staff excluded from the sample ...229 Table A.4 University sample structuring ...................................................................229 Table A.5 Colleges of Higher Education...................................................................230 Table A.6 Universities in London..............................................................................230 Table A.7 Academic staff on clinical rates................................................................231 Table A.8 Staff sample ..............................................................................................232 Table A.9 Student sample ..........................................................................................232 Table A.10 Weights ...................................................................................................233 Table A.11 Staff: comparison of characteristics: survey and HESA data .................234 Table A.12 Research students: comparison of characteristics: survey and HESA data ............................................................................................................................235 Table A.13 Comparison of mean wages in LFS and HESA data ..............................244 Table A.14 Academic real earnings quartiles ............................................................247 Table A.15 Academic real earnings deciles...............................................................248 Table A.16 Variables used in empirical analysis.......................................................251 x

Table A.17 UK Results ..............................................................................................252 Table A.18 US Results...............................................................................................254 Table A.19 Variables used in empirical analysis of academic career intentions.......257 Table A.20 Ordered probit results: Academic career intentions................................260 Table A.21 Variable used in the analysis of job satisfaction.....................................268 Table A.22 Results – satisfaction...............................................................................271 Table A.23 Including alternative salary.....................................................................276 Table A.24 Factor loadings for overall job satisfaction.............................................279 Table A.25 Variables used in analysis of likelihood of leaving ................................280 Table A.26 Results – Likelihood of leaving UK higher education............................284

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Figures Figure 3.1 Age Profile of Qualifications (% of staff) ..................................................60 Figure 3.2 Age Profile of Staff with Doctorates (% of staff).......................................61 Figure 4.1 Real earnings quartiles of full-time academics ..........................................74 Figure 4.2 Real earnings quartiles of full-time academics, men..................................74 Figure 4.3 Real earnings quartiles of full-time academics, women.............................74 Figure 4.4 Real earnings deciles of full-time academics, total ....................................75 Figure 4.5 Real earnings deciles of full-time academics, Men....................................75 Figure 4.6 Real earnings deciles of full-time academics, women ...............................76 Figure 4.7 Net earnings deciles of academics for the UK and France.........................76 Figure 4.8 Predicted lifetime wage profiles, UK .........................................................79 Figure 4.9 Predicted lifetime wage profile, US ...........................................................80 Figure 4.10 Comparative predicted annual wage profiles ...........................................81 Figure 4.11 Predicted lifetime annual wage profile, US..............................................83 Figure 5.1 UK and overseas domiciled students obtaining PhDs..............................107

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Report summary

S.1

The study

The study seeks to identify the factors which lead to individuals entering and leaving academic employment in the English Higher Education sector. Although the main focus was entry and exit from the sector, recruitment to and retention by individual institutions can shed light on this and was also investigated. Academic employment was defined as jobs in higher education institutions (Universities and Colleges of Higher Education) whose main function was academic teaching or academic research, irrespective of the contractual terms of the job holder. Thus lecturing and research staff are included, but academic-related staff (e.g. technicians) are not. Full-time, part-time, permanent and temporary staff within these groups are included. However, the coverage of hourly paid staff is severely limited. (The study excluded staff in Further Education Institutions and those on clinical grades.) The study had five, inter-related, strands: •

a literature review conducted March to May 2003; the review covered the relevant academic and non-academic literatures in education, economics, management and human resources; it concentrated mainly on the last twenty years although it did include earlier work where relevant;

•

analysis of HESA staff and student data, 2001/02, to provide a descriptive analysis of turnover in academia, to identify the basic characteristics of employment in the sector and to identify the student supply into academia;

•

comparative analysis of pay both nationally and internationally, using 2001 data;

•

qualitative research within universities exploring human resource policies and practices and factors affecting entry and exit from the sector; the fieldwork, involving face-to-face and telephone interviews, was conducted between July 2003 and July 2004;

•

quantitative surveys of academic staff and of research students to identify factors which affect recruitment into academia and retention; the fieldwork was conducted between May and July 2004.

Thus evidence used in the research relates to a range of periods and some Higher Education policies and practices may have changed subsequently. To assist the reader, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has produced a list of relevant Higher Education initiatives. These are listed in Appendix H.

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S.2

Recruitment and retention problems (Section 2.2, Section 2.3)

The study did not identify severe recruitment and retention problems in the sector. However, some problems were apparent: vacancies sometimes remained unfilled and there was some reported decline in the quality of applicants. The extent of difficulty varied by subject and fluctuated over time.

S.3

Pay (Chapter 4)

Pay is one of the important factors in career and job choice, affecting both recruitment and retention. The study compared the pay of UK academics with highly qualified people in the rest of the economy and also compared the pay of UK academics with academics in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, France and Japan. Differences in data definitions, differences in the nature of academic jobs and differences in cost of living between countries prevent exact cross country comparisons. However, we are confident that our findings identify the broad scale of differences. Academic pay is low relative to that in other highly qualified jobs in the UK, which is likely to reduce entry to the sector (Section 4.4.2). (Retention is likely to be less responsive to pay differentials as careers progress, due, in many subjects, to a divergence in the skills developed in academia and those needed for senior jobs in other sectors.) UK academic pay1 compares favourably with academic pay in Sweden, Japan, Australia and New Zealand (Section 4.3.2). UK academic pay is similar to that of Denmark, France and Canada. Pay in the US is higher for comparable academic staff and the difference is particularly marked at the top-end of the earnings distribution (Section 4.3.2; Section 4.4.3). Thus pay is likely to be a factor encouraging outflow of academics from the UK to the US, but also a factor easing recruitment from Sweden, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Whilst lower paying countries may prove a fruitful source of recruits, foreign recruitment should be viewed with some caution. Recruits from other EU (and EEA) countries, Australia, New Zealand and the US were identified as more likely to expect to leave UK academia and so reliance on foreign recruitment may lead to future retention problems (Section 7.3.2).

S.4

Recruitment to the sector

S.4.1 Pattern of recruitment The main sources of entrants to academia are students and employees in other sectors (Section 5.2): •

employees in other sectors (UK: 42 per cent; abroad: 21 per cent, including 11 per cent in academia abroad)

1

This section refers to real (as opposed to nominal) pay, i.e. once cost of living differences have been taken into consideration.

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•

students (34 per cent: 19 per cent UK domiciled students studying in the UK, 10 per cent foreign students studying in the UK; and five per cent students studying abroad)

Many make a career change to enter academia, normally from higher level occupations (managerial, professional, associate professional and technical), rather than from lower level jobs (via being a mature student) (Section 5.3). Career changers were particularly common in new universities and in Business and administrative studies, Computing, Subjects Allied to Medicine, Education, Social studies and Engineering. Forty per cent of recruits are foreign (i.e. non-UK nationals). Amongst research students, non-British EU nationals were more likely to want to go into UK academia than other nationals (Section 5.2; Section 5.8). Entrants to academia tend to be recruited to fixed-term contracts in research, although the percentage entering to permanent contracts rises with age, suggesting that previous skills are relevant and recognised (Section 5.2). It appeared that the tendency to recruit to research jobs and to fixed-term contracts had grown over time. S.4.2 Reasons for entering academia Almost 40 per cent of research students were keen to have an academic career and a further 21 per cent saw this of equal interest to some other career (Section 5.6). Amongst existing academics just over one half had been keen to have an academic career. However, many research students and academics did not seriously consider alternative careers and, for those progressing from a research degree, entering academia appears often to be a form of drift, to a job which is known. A significant minority of research students saw academia as providing a stepping stone to another career (12 per cent), which is likely to reduce retention. The study examined what research students wanted from a career (Section 5.6.1) and which attributes they thought academia offered (Section 5.7). The main attraction of academic jobs to research students is doing research and setting one’s own research agenda. A career offering research was very important to 63 per cent of research students. Only 30 per cent were strongly attracted by teaching. Only onethird of research students saw a high salary as very important in their career choice. Non-pecuniary aspects were more often important: most often a good working environment, variety, freedom to use initiative and seeing tangible outcomes from their job. Close behind these factors are autonomy in the job, control of their research, career prospects, collaboration and flexibility of working hours. Also important were good physical work conditions, helping people and job security. Broadly speaking, research students believed that an academic career offered the attributes they wanted from a career (Section 5.7). However, there are three important exceptions to this: career prospects, job security and high salary, none of which tended to be seen as good in academia. Slow career progression, lack of job security (particularly at the start of an academic career) and relatively low pay are likely to reduce the supply from this source. Research students appeared to be wellinformed about the nature of academic employment. However, they tended to underestimate academic pay and not to be aware of the additional financial benefits of university pensions. This is likely to reduce entry to academia (but also reduce

xv

turnover) and so more information on pay may be useful in promoting academic careers among research students. For career changers, other motivations included a better lifestyle (36 per cent) or the desire for change (34 per cent) (Section 5.4). Few were driven through lack of further progression in their previous career outside of Higher Education (or being made redundant or retiring). Some of the factors prompting change to a career in Higher Education included stress in previous job, shift work, routine working and wanting variety at work, academia being ‘more relaxed and informal’, career progression requiring movement into management (and wanting to stay with one’s profession). For art and design lecturers one factor appears to be to fund artistic practice. S.4.3

Satisfaction of academic staff (Section 6.3) Academic staff are somewhat less satisfied with their jobs than those in the workforce as a whole (Section 6.3.1). Academics appear to be considering three separate sets of elements of their jobs, namely the pecuniary factors (both the salary and the ability to earn money from additional work), non-pecuniary factors relating to the qualitative dimensions of the job and longer-term factors such as promotions and job security. The factors affecting satisfaction are discussed below (Section 6.3.3; Section 6.3.4). •

Research is a major source of satisfaction for academics and many academic staff would prefer to spend more of their time on research, although self-determined research tends to be of interest, rather than that determined by others. The demand for research output and the RAE in particular are seen rather negatively. Hours spent on research increase staff satisfaction with the actual work itself.

•

Whilst teaching is not the most important reason for becoming an academic, most would prefer a job that involves teaching. Teaching bright students and seeing their students develop are the positive aspects of teaching. The negative aspects relate to assessment, both of the amount required of the students and that of the staff themselves.

•

Administrative tasks and organisational change tend to be viewed as negative aspects of the job by most academics. Hours of work spent on administration have a negative effect on satisfaction with almost all dimensions of academics’ job satisfaction.

•

Academic staff tend to value more subtle elements of their jobs, such as the support of their peers and the ability to participate in the wider academic community.

•

Being on a fixed-term contract significantly reduces satisfaction.

There was no difference between women and men in satisfaction (once one takes into account differences in other characteristics), except that women were more satisfied with salary (Section 6.3.4). This may be due to women having lower expectations of salary, due to discrimination in the labour market as a whole. Academics from ethnic minorities tended to be less satisfied with the opportunity they have to use their own initiative, the hours they work and their relations with their colleagues than their white colleagues (Section 6.3.4). This is xvi

likely to indicate that academics from ethnic minorities find themselves in less satisfactory jobs.

S.5

Retention

About two-thirds of academics expected to remain in UK academia until retirement (Section 7.2.2). This was higher in new universities. We would estimate that between three and six per cent would leave the sector in the year following interview. This comprised two to three per cent of those on permanent contracts and five to 11 per cent of those on fixed-term contracts. Forty-three per cent of those who thought they might leave the sector in the following year expected to move to another job; this was most commonly to a UK job outside research and teaching, to an academic job abroad or for fixed-term contracts staff, to a UK research job. Contract staff could be seen as being driven out of the sector due to insecurity: they tended to leave due to their contract ending, the desire for a permanent job or pessimism about job opportunities in UK academia. S.5.1 Factors affecting leaving the sector (Section 7.3) The following factors increased the likelihood of leaving the sector: •

dissatisfaction with non-pecuniary elements (the work itself, relations with manager, being able to use one’s own initiative, hours, relations with colleagues and physical work conditions)

•

being a non-British EU (and EEA) national, Australian, New Zealander or US national

•

having had a break in one’s academic career

•

being on a non-permanent contract

•

being closer to the end of a fixed-term contract

•

hours worked

•

hours spent on administrative tasks

•

the fewer hours spent on research

•

perception of excessive workload

•

belief that decisions on either individual pay, recruitment to senior posts or promotion at their current university are not at all fair

•

dissatisfaction with pay and the level of pay (but not estimated relative pay).

A number of aspects of academic employment that staff feel are important for their satisfaction did not affect their likelihood of leaving. Those who said that the RAE, QAA requirements and the general direction of higher education policy lowers their satisfaction by a lot are no more likely to expect to leave UK Higher Education than those who do not. The likelihood of leaving was no different between those who had changed career to enter academia and those who had not. Nor did it differ by gender, ethnicity, or having children. Part-timers were no more likely to expect to leave the sector than full-timers. xvii

S.6

Discrimination and equal opportunities

Discrimination, if worse relative to other employment, may exacerbate recruitment and retention difficulties amongst the discriminated against groups. The sparse, previous, evidence found differences in pay between ethnic minorities and whites and in promotion between women and men (Section 2.4.5.5). This study found that, compared with whites, academics from ethnic minorities were less satisfied with a number of aspects of their job (Section 6.3.4 and summarised in Section S4.3 above), which may suggest that ethnic minority academics find themselves in less satisfactory jobs. Whilst a number of factors may be advanced for these differences, discrimination (whether direct or indirect) cannot be ruled out and further research is required in this area. There was a commitment to equal opportunities in the case study universities at the level of policy, and many heads of department believed that men and women had the same opportunities for advancement, or at least that these were improving (Section 8.8). However, many of the staff believed that disability, age, religion and ethnicity as well as gender affected progression within Higher Education. Indeed, the percentage of staff who believed that these factors affected progression were 64 per cent (age), 44 per cent (gender), 38 per cent (disability) 26 per cent (ethnicity) and 10 per cent (religious affiliation). The qualitative research identified a number of possible reasons for women being disadvantaged, including unfair work allocation, sexism and a disproportionate impact on career progression of part-time working (Section 8.8.1). It was apparent, both from the survey and qualitative research that many staff had not considered the position and opportunities for other under-represented groups, which suggests that the diversity debate does not have a high profile amongst academics in UK universities.

S.7

Raising the supply to the sector (Chapter 9)

The key messages from the research about how supply to the sector could be increased are: • • • • • •

increasing the supply of UK-domiciled students achieving a PhD (Section 5.2; Section 5.5.1); shifting the balance of academic job content towards research (Section 5.4; Section 5.6; Section 5.7); increasing pay (Section 5.6; Section 5.7); targeting foreign recruitment (with the caveat that this may increase retention problems) (Section 4.6; Section 5.2; Section 5.8; Section 7.3.2); increasing the job security of researchers (Section 5.6; Section 5.7); improving career progression for both lecturing and for research-only staff (Section 5.6; Section 5.7).

These findings suggest there are a number of ways in which individual universities and the Government could raise retention of academics in the sector. Many, but not all of these would have financial implications.

xviii

S.8

Improving retention (Section 7.3; Chapter 9)

Throughout the study the message that academics were driven by the desire to do research and neither enjoyed administrative tasks nor always could see benefits of these was repeated. Changing the relative time spent on research and administration (without increasing total hours) and reducing administrative demands would be likely to increase retention, as would reducing the total time spent working. Approaches to this might include increasing the staff/student ratio, reducing structural change and reducing change in administrative demands and reducing the demands of quality reviews and inspections. Turnover is higher among academics who enter UK Higher Education as PhD students from overseas. Encouraging British students to undertake research degrees and so expanding the supply of UK-domiciled people with PhDs entering the sector is likely to increase retention. This might be achieved through more funding for PhD students or addressing the debt built up during earlier degrees. Turnover is high amongst researchers. This is largely due to the use of temporary contracts for most and the lack of career opportunities (in research). Addressing these two issues is likely to have a major effect on the loss of researchers from the sector. It may require imaginative approaches to deployment of both researchers and lecturers. Ensuring pay and promotion decisions are fair and seen to be fair would reduce loss of staff from the sector. Certainly, enhancing pay of recruits (above comparable levels for existing staff) and of valued staff expected to leave are regarded as ‘unfair’ and excite strong feelings (Section 6.3.3; Section 8.9.2). Market supplements and Golden Handshakes are also seen as unfair. Performance pay must be implemented well to avoid perceptions of unfairness. However, even so, the problem of the average employee tending to believe their performance is above average and so deserving a higher than average pay rise, means that more employees are likely to be dissatisfied by performance pay than satisfied. Perceptions of the fairness of promotion decisions are likely to be influenced by the extent of opportunities for promotion: the more opportunity, the less important fairness becomes (and the more likely each individual will have experienced promotion). Thus expanding the opportunities for promotion is likely to increase retention, irrespective of other changes. It is also possible that the emphasis on promotion is, in part, a result of relatively low pay levels. If so, increasing the pay of academics is likely to increase retention also.

S.9

Management and human resource practices (Chapter 8)

Management and human resource practices differ across universities and can affect satisfaction. Most of the case study universities had mixed practices (good and bad) and seemed to be trying to address some of the problem areas. There appears to be a lack of communication and understanding between the academics and the university administration (including the human resource specialists), which probably increases the burden of administrative demands on academics (Section 8.9.1).

xix

Implementation of human resource practices tends to be devolved. In old universities the post of head of department tends to be rotated every few years. Academics’ management and administrative responsibilities tend to be accorded little status. All these factors lead to lack of expertise and some poor practice. S.9.1 Recruitment practice and recruitment difficulties (Section 8.3) Replacement of staff tended to be slow (sometimes taking more than a year), due to the practice of reviewing the need for each vacant post (Section 8.3.1). This led to additional work demands on remaining staff. It was common to down-grade vacated posts (Section 8.3.1). Due to difficulties attracting good candidates, especially at senior levels and to some specialisms, active search methods had become common (using search committees and networks) (Section 8.3.2). Case study universities tended to overlook their own PhD students for recruitment. In the research-intensive old case study universities, due to the RAE, there was an increased emphasis on recruiting ‘stars’ and poaching. This was expected to increase in the run up to the next RAE. The case study universities were practising flexibility over the pay offered to new recruits, but were uncomfortable with the idea of market supplements because of the discrepancies they can create (Section 8.3.3). Pay was seen as only one means to attract new recruits (Section 8.3.4). Other incentives included facilities, equipment and start-up funding. There were indications that these did not always meet recruits’ expectations, and it is possible that this could result in early turnover. S.9.2 Promotion and retention practices The criteria and transparency of promotion practices was found to vary between the case study universities (Section 8.4). Universities were concerned that the criteria used should take account of the range of academic activity, including research, teaching, administration and enterprise. However, research continued to be the preeminent criterion, and in new universities was of greater importance than in the past. The allocation of teaching and administrative responsibilities within university schools or departments was therefore becoming more important than in the past, because individuals with heavy teaching or administration loads were less able to carry out research and therefore achieve promotion. This was found to lead to considerable resentment. In some cases, to retain a member of staff, the formal process was bypassed, leading to strong dissatisfaction amongst other staff. Below professorial level, pay scales are set nationally (Section 8.5). However, case study universities were increasingly using pay incentives to keep valued staff, particularly those in hard to recruit subjects or senior research-productive staff. In some cases, this was formalised. In others the formal system was bypassed to award additional increments, for example, when a member of staff received another job offer. This was not normally seen (or found) to be effective and was thought to affect the morale of other staff. Although the case study universities had appraisal systems, these were sometimes of recent origin and were not linked directly to the promotions process (Section 8.6). Neither were they linked to training and development. Many staff were

xx

not aware of the procedures and criteria for promotion. There was evidence of bypassing the formal promotions process. Such practices are likely to be perceived as unfair and to lead to dissatisfaction. In response to retention difficulties, case study universities were looking at progression and promotion, to make criteria more transparent and to ease the process of progression. Their main concern was to identify and reward strong performers and to encourage them to stay. Transparent systems to enable such progression are likely to be more acceptable to the academic workforce than practising covert deals with individuals. Although training is usually regarded as key to workforce retention, it was acknowledged that heads of department do not always have the skills needed to develop staff. The prevailing view was that academic staff are responsible for their own training and development (Section 8.6). However, there was evidence of an increase in attention to such issues, including management training for heads of department to assist them in identifying staff development needs (Section 8.4.3).

xxi

xxii

1

Introduction

Demand for academic staff in Higher Education has been increasing2 and may be expected to continue to increase given the Government’s intention that participation in Higher Education should increase substantially amongst those aged 18 to 30 years old. At the same time, recruitment and retention problems have been growing in prominence (HEFCE, 2003) and there has been a long-standing concern that the sector faces a ‘retirement bulge’, as academics from the 1960s expansion reach retirement. Consequently, there is concern about the adequacy of the future supply of academics. Other substantial changes in Higher Education in the past 10 to 20 years are likely to have contributed to the tightness of the academic labour market3. Polytechnics were granted university status in 1992, changing their funding regime, their focus and the demands on staff. The number of students has grown substantially, a growth which has not been matched by staff increases resulting in a large increase in the student:staff ratio. Changes in funding have led to much greater emphasis on research output (through the Research Assessment Exercise, the RAE), teaching quality (through the requirements of the Quality Assurance Agency, the QAA) and on academics raising research and consultancy funds. Other changes include tighter contractual terms (affecting holidays and hours worked), an increase in the use of short-term and hourly-paid contracts and the loss of tenure. Overall, these changes have tended to alter the nature of the job, reducing autonomy and increasing the workload, including that of administrative and teaching tasks. At the same time, both the salaries and status of academics are perceived to have deteriorated relative to alternative careers (Halsey, 1992; Keep et al., 1996). Substantial change in the nature of any job is likely to increase turnover, as a mismatch develops between the nature of the job to which people were recruited and the actual job. If these changes tend to reduce the quality of the job, rather than just change it, and if the applicant requirements are not altered (and, probably, lowered), recruitment will also become more difficult. Both turnover and recruitment difficulties will be exacerbated by a relative decline in pay.

2

Between 1995 and 2000, the number of staff in HE (excluding staff in medical cost centres and those who were less than 40% FTE) increased by around 11% (HEFCE, 2002). 3 A market is said to be ‘tight’ if demand is high relative to supply. In competitive markets, prices will adjust to bring demand and supply into line. In markets such as that for academic labour this may not happen for at least two reasons: first, the price of academic labour does not float because of the existence of national pay scales; second, the final product (higher education) is not itself sold on a competitive market.

1

1.1

Overview of the study

Against this background, the study was designed to identify the factors which lead to individuals entering and leaving academic employment in the English Higher Education sector. Although the main focus was entry and exit from the sector, recruitment to and retention by individual institutions can shed light on this and was also investigated. For the purposes of the study academic employment was defined as jobs in higher education institutions (Universities and Colleges of Higher Education) whose main function was academic teaching or academic research, irrespective of the contractual terms of the job holder. Thus lecturing (e.g. Professors, and Lecturers) and research staff (e.g. Research Assistants, post-docs and Senior Research Fellows) are included, but academic-related staff (e.g. technicians) are not. Full-time, part-time, permanent and temporary staff within these groups are included4. Two main groups of academics were excluded from the study: those in Further Education Institutions and those on clinical rates of pay. The resources of the study precluded inclusion of these two groups5. Following discussion with the DfES, it was decided to focus on staff at English HEIs. This was done in order to prevent differences in the funding and structure of the HE sectors obscuring the analysis. Two exceptions to this rule are the analysis of the HESA data on research students and the chapter on international comparisons of pay (Chapter 4). These are discussed in more detail in sections 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 below (and in further detail in Appendix C and Appendix D). The study had five, inter-related, strands: •

a literature review to establish the nature of the recruitment and retention problems and to identify previous evidence on the factors affecting recruitment and retention; this was conducted from March to May 2003;

•

analysis of HESA staff and student data, 2001/02, to provide a descriptive analysis of turnover in academia, to identify the basic characteristics of employment in the sector and to identify the student supply into academia6;

•

a comparative analysis of pay, using 2001 data, both for comparable employment nationally and for academics in Higher Education internationally, in order to establish the competitiveness of academic pay;

•

qualitative research within universities exploring human resource policies and practices and factors affecting entry and exit from the sector; the fieldwork was conducted between July 2003 and July 2004;

4

However, the coverage of hourly paid staff is severely limited, owing to limitations in the HESA data (see below) and to practical difficulties of sampling for the survey (see below). 5 Inclusion of the former would have extended the study to Further Education Institutions. The latter have different terms, conditions and employment patterns from other academics in HEIs and so a larger sample would have been required to adequately cover this group. Staff on clinical rates accounted for five per cent of academic staff (HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2). 6 Analysis of more recent HESA data and of trends over time is contained in HEFCE (2005a) and HEFCE (2005b).

2

•

quantitative surveys of academic staff and of research students to identify factors which affect recruitment into academia and retention; the fieldwork was conducted between May and July 2004.

The research findings are affected by the policies and practices in effect at the time. To assist the reader, the DfES has produced a list of relevant Higher Education initiatives since the survey fieldwork. These are listed in Appendix H. Below, essential aspects of the methods are described. Further details of the methods appear in appendices. Appendix A describes the qualitative research. Appendix B discusses the quantitative surveys of academic staff and research students. Appendix C describes the HESA staff and student datasets. Appendix D describes the data used for the intra- and international pay comparisons. Appendix F describes the model used for the analysis of the likelihood of students entering academia. Appendix G describes the econometric analysis of job satisfaction and intentions to leave academia. HESA staff and student data7 For staff, the HESA Individualised Staff Record for the academic year 2001/02 was used. The analysis was confined to institutions in England and to staff who were not on clinical grades. The sole exception to this is chapter 4, where the focus is expanded to the whole of the UK, to maintain consistency with the international comparisons analysis. For the study’s purposes, the Individualised Staff Record data has two important limitations. Firstly, they exclude employees8 whose total academic employment is below that of 25 per cent of a full-time academic (i.e. those with short hours or with substantial management and administrative responsibilities are excluded)9. One of the implications is that hourly-paid staff will be substantially under-reported and is unlikely to be representative of hourly-paid staff as a whole. Secondly, the data relating to leavers suffer from a high level of nonreporting: around 60 per cent of leavers’ destinations are missing10. Therefore the findings on movement out of the sector must be treated with caution. 1.1.1

For students, the Combined Student/Module Record for the academic year 2001/2 was used. This was combined with the First Destination Supplement (FDS), relating to those students who left in 2001/2. The analysis was not limited to students from English higher education institutions because the appropriate pool of domestic entrants into Higher Education academic post is the whole of the UK. It is important

7

Note that the University of North London was not included in either the staff or student data supplied by HESA because the university has asked that its individual data is not released. 8 Strictly, they exclude contracts whose total academic employment is below that of 25 per cent of a full-time academic, as the record reports contracts rather than individuals. For more information see Appendix C. 9 However, there are staff in the Individualised Staff Record with their FTE recorded as less than 25%; the majority of these records relate to staff who arrived or left during the year. 10 Internal work by HEFCE that matched the 2001-2 survey with that for the following year using staff code, data of birth and sex, found that 20% of those for whom the destination was not known remained at the same institution, 5% were found at a different institution and the remainder could not be matched with a record in the second year. This latter group are made up of those who left the sector and those who remained but whose record in the second year did not match with respect to one of the three criteria.

3

to note that the destination of postgraduate research students in the FDS has a particularly low level of response (38%). Further details are given in Appendix C. 1.1.2

The comparative analysis of pay The comparative analysis of pay uses data from national labour force surveys (and censuses in nine countries. These were chosen to illustrate the types of countries to and from which most international movement with UK academia occurs. They include the main English–speaking countries to which UK academics move (the USA and Australia), together with other English-speaking nations (New Zealand and Canada), three European countries (Denmark, France and Sweden) and Japan. The analysis of the labour force survey data used in the international comparisons used data from the whole of the UK. This was to increase the sample size. However, we would not expect to find significant differences within the UK. Identifying higher education academics was done using information on occupation and industry where available. In most countries we were able to obtain a sample group that matched the UK sample. Exceptions to this were the US, where the sample also included academic staff at state colleges, who also conduct teaching undertaken in the FE sector in the UK, and Australia and New Zealand, where it is possible that our sample excludes some researchers who have no teaching responsibilities. We discuss the implications of this in Chapter 4 and Appendix D. Comparisons were made in both nominal and real terms. Earnings were converted using exchange rates to make nominal comparisons. In order to account for differences in the cost of living, purchasing power parity exchange rates developed by the OECD were used to make real earnings comparisons. Further details are given in Appendix D. 1.1.3

The qualitative and quantitative survey research Qualitative research was conducted in thirteen English universities and quantitative research conducted in a subset of these. A structured sample of universities was selected to ensure coverage of different types of universities (new, old and colleges of Higher Education), universities in London and elsewhere and universities with differing research ratings. Institutions with fewer than 200 academic staff and most specialist institutions11 were excluded. Small institutions were excluded because economies of scale in setting up the quantitative survey meant that their inclusion would have led to a smaller survey, as the project resources could not increase the sample through an increased number of institutions. Specialist institutions were excluded for similar reasons. (This did not reduce the subject coverage, as subjects taught in specialist institutions are also found in other HEIs.) The purpose of the qualitative research was to identify factors which might affect recruitment and retention, including human resource practices and staff preferences. Qualitative interviews were held with senior staff with responsibility for

11

‘Specialist institution’ is a classification developed for funding purposes and refers to institutions where 60 percent or more of funding is allocated to one or two cost centres.

4

human resourcing and, in eight of the universities, interviews were conducted with heads of two departments, and a sample of their academic staff and research students. A survey of academic staff was conducted in ten12 of these universities. The survey covered both research and lecturing staff. Full-and part-time staff were included, but hourly paid staff were excluded (see Appendix B). The questionnaire collected data on personal characteristics, employment history, views on aspects of the job and career intentions. The survey was web-based. A total of 2805 staff responded, a response rate of 32 per cent. Survey data have been re-weighted to be representative of university academic staff in English HEIs. For more information on the weighting and other issues relating to the staff survey see section B.1 of Appendix B. A survey of research students (full-time and part-time) was conducted in nine of the universities, where research students were those undertaking a Masters degree mainly by research or a doctorate. The questionnaire collected data on personal characteristics, employment history and career intentions. The survey was web-based. A total of 1330 research students responded, a response rate of 29 per cent. Survey data have been re-weighted to be representative of research students in English HEIs. For more information on the weighting and other issues relating to the staff survey see Section B.7. Further details are given in Appendix B.

1.2

Nomenclature Throughout this report the following nomenclature is used:

1.3

•

Student when referring to the student survey refers to research student.

•

‘Academic’, ‘academic staff’ refers to those employed in higher education institutions on either the research grade or the lecturing grade.

•

University is used to refer to all higher education institutions, whether a university or a college.

•

New and old universities. New13 universities are those that received university status in 1992 (when polytechnics and many colleges of Higher Education converted to university status) or later; old universities are those which had university status before this date.

Report layout

The structure of the report is as follows. The next chapter sets the scene by presenting evidence on turnover and recruitment and retention problems in higher 12

The aim had been to survey staff and students in twelve universities. Unfortunately, not all the universities were able to supply the sample, either due to data protection considerations or due to difficulties providing an email contact list. 13 This nomenclature is in common use now, but, previously, ‘new university’ was used to denote universities established in the 1960s and early 1970s. Perhaps the term was also used in the nineteenth century to refer to the redbrick universities when the sector was expanded in the Victorian era.

5

education. It also presents evidence on the factors affecting recruitment and retention of academics. Chapter 3 then describes the structure of academic employment in Higher Education, including the grade structure and contractual status, and the main characteristics of academic staff. This description is used to raise some of the factors which might affect recruitment and retention. Chapter 4 continues with the theme of structure, focusing on pay, and examines relative pay to investigate whether pay differences may be a cause of recruitment and retention difficulties. Both domestic and international comparisons are made. The former compares the relative pay of UK academics with that earned by other graduates in the UK; the latter compares academic salaries across eight countries to examine whether pay differences may encourage emigration to universities abroad (or immigration from universities abroad and new entrants to academia). The following three chapters examine career paths and the nature of academic jobs. Chapter 5 describes entry into academic employment: the source of entrants and the factors affecting their career decisions. Students are one of the largest sources of entrants to academia and the chapter concentrates on the career choices of this group. However, some consideration is also given to other sources of entrants and the factors affecting career changes. Chapter 6 turns to the nature of employment once in academia. It describes expectations about career progression and identifies factors which affect academics’ satisfaction in employment. This is examined in more detail using a model of the factors affecting satisfaction, as satisfaction is a good predictor of leaving, which is described in more detail in Appendix G. Chapter 7 then examines movement out of the sector: expectations of leaving and destinations of leavers. A model of likelihood of leaving is developed, identifying the key factors which might affect retention. Together, Chapters 3 to 7 identify the factors affecting recruitment and retention. Based on these findings, Chapter 8 considers how university human resource policies and practices may be influencing recruitment and retention. It describes practices in the case study universities and draws on common practice across universities. Chapter 9 draws conclusions.

6

2

2.1

Previous evidence on recruitment and retention issues in academia

Introduction

Using previous research and evidence from the case study universities, this chapter examines the evidence on recruitment and retention issues in academia. Initially the chapter considers recruitment and retention problems, as evidenced through turnover and through reported recruitment difficulties. First, recent academic staff turnover in Higher Education is described. However, the level of turnover, per se, is not a direct indicator of problems. Whilst higher levels of turnover are normally seen as undesirable and lower as desirable, what is desirable depends on the specific employment circumstances. There is also an important distinction to be made between turnover within the sector and movement into and out of the sector. Moreover, irrespective of the level of turnover, recruitment may be difficult. The following section presents previous evidence on recruitment and retention problems and expands this with evidence of the case study universities’ recent experience. The evidence presented tends to rely on the view of senior human resource managers in higher education institutions. Defining recruitment and retention problems is highly subjective and will be influenced by circumstances, one’s view and one’s experience. Nevertheless, the approach does show whether universities are experiencing difficulties and allows changes in difficulties and differences between subjects to be identified. Section 2.4 then discusses the factors which have been identified as affecting recruitment and retention in academia. A summary is provided in the final section.

2.2

Turnover14

Eighty-seven per cent of academic staff in Higher Education in 2001/02 (for whom we have data) were working in the same institution as they had in the previous year and the recruitment rate was 13 per cent (Table 2.1). However, these figures exclude the three per cent of staff for which data was missing. This is likely to include

14

This section uses HESA Individualised Staff Record data. As has been discussed in Chapter 1 (and Appendix C), certain caveats need to be borne in mind with respect to the reliability of data on the destination of leavers and the source of entrants because of the relatively high levels of non-reporting of these. Thus figures based on these data need to be treated with caution. Note also that the data are confined to academic staff who work 25% FTE and over and relate to contracts rather than individuals (for more on the precise definition of the data see Appendix C). Internal work by HEFCE comparing contract counts with counts of individuals at HEI’s (i.e. if an individual held a more than one post at a single HEI, they were counted as a single observation, but if they held posts at more than one HEI they were counted as more than one) found that the results are almost identical (See Table A.12 and Table A.13 in Appendix C)

7

a high percentage who were new to the institution. Thus, a recruitment rate of 13 per cent is likely to be a minimum estimate of recruitment.

Table 2.1 Turnover in HE staff, 2001/2 (%) na

per cent New to the institution New to the sector b Left the institution Left the sector c Average tenure • • • • • •

•

13 9 7 5 8.2 years

106,746 102,558

a

Note that these numbers are different because fewer people report their state in the following year b Included in those new to the institution c Included in those leaving the sector percentage relates to those whose status was known (i.e. unknowns are excluded from the denominator) Data refers to Staff at English HEIs and excludes those on clinical grades Note that the University of North London was not included in either the staff or student data supplied by HESA because the university has asked that its individual data is not released. Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 20001/2

Seven per cent of staff were recorded as having left. Whilst, with some growth in the sector, the number of staff recruited should be greater than the number leaving, the degree of disparity between these two figures suggests under-recording of leavers and that leaving would be closer to the level of recruitment. If so, the turnover rate in academic jobs was similar or slightly higher than that for all professional employees in the economy, 13 per cent in 2001 (CIPD, 2002). Comparison with previous years suggests that turnover has grown substantially; between 1994-95 and 1998-99 turnover ranged between 2.8 per cent and 5.3 per cent p.a. (PREST, 2000, using HESA data)15. Further evidence of a growth in turnover comes from the findings of the Independent Review of Higher Education Pay and Conditions, which, using a survey approach, put the turnover rate for academic staff in 1998 at 6.4 per cent (Appendix E, Bett, 1999)16. Thus, although the level of turnover may be about average for this type of employee, some recruitment and retention difficulties may be caused because universities would not have been used to dealing with this rate of recruitment and retention. The rise may also contribute to universities’ perceptions of difficulty. 15

Whilst the data analysed are not strictly comparable, as the PREST data was restricted to HEFCEfunded staff (i.e. those who were funded through research council budgets, which would exclude many contract research staff), this difference is unlikely to account for the full increase in turnover. 16 The survey was of heads of personnel in all UK HEIs. The response rate for supplying turnover data was 40 per cent.

8

The above describes recruitment and retention to individual higher education institutions. Whilst this is important in understanding recruitment and retention problems, overall movement into and out of the sector is of greatest interest for this study. In 2001/02, HESA data recorded that a little over two-thirds of recruits to higher education institutions were new to the sector (accounting for nine per cent of staff in higher education institutions) and almost three quarters of leavers (for whom destinations were known) left the sector (accounting for five per cent of the sector) (Table 2.1). If accurate, the figure for new entrants seems high and likely to cause problems. Whilst the figure for leavers from the sector is not high17 (suggesting an average stay in academic employment of 20 years), it is almost certainly an underestimate, as the destination of over 60 per cent of the staff who were recorded as leaving in the sector is ‘don’t know’. Is this pattern consistent across subjects? Turnover is higher in science than non-science, and recruitment from outside the sector is higher for science posts (Table 2.2)18. Turnover appears to be higher in old universities, with 16 per cent (for whom we have data) recruited in 2001/02 compared with nine per cent in new universities (Table 2.3). Table 2.2 Turnover by broad subject (%) Total NonScience science per cent n Inflows Same HEI From other HEI New to sector

89 4 7

85 4 11

87 4 9

Total known

100

100

100

106,746

4

2

3

3,348

Not known Total

110,094

Outflows Same HEI Other UK HEI Left sector Retired or died

95 1 3 1

93 2 4 1

94 2 4 1

Total known

100

100

100

102,558

7

7

7

7,536

Not known Total • •

17 18

110,094 Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refers to staff at English HEIs and excludes those on clinical grades

Although 75 per cent of leavers leaving the sector would be high. Note that such comparisons are only valid if non-response does not vary by subject.

9

The differences between science and non-science and between old and new universities may be due to differences in the percentage of researchers (who are normally on fixed-term contracts) (see Chapter 3), as, unsurprisingly, turnover is higher amongst those on fixed-term contracts than permanent staff (Table 2.4). Employees on fixed-term contracts were also much more likely to have been recruited from outside the sector (18 per cent) and to leave the sector, compared with those on permanent contracts. None of this is surprising given the standard career path of entry to academic employment through research posts, almost all of which offer short-term contracts and the consequent drift from the sector for those who fail to secure a permanent post (see Section 2.4 and Chapters 5 and 7). Table 2.5 shows how these new entrants to the sector and leavers from the sector are concentrated amongst those on short-term contracts, with seven per cent of staff new to the sector and on shortterm contracts and two per cent new and on permanent contracts.

Table 2.3 Turnover by higher education institution type (%) Old New University University

Total

Inflows Same HEI From other HEI New to sector Total known

84 4 11 100

91 3 6 100

87 4 9 100

Outflows Same HEI Other UK HEI Left sector Retired or died Total known

92 2 5 1 100

96 1 2 1 100

94 2 4 1 100

• •

Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refers to staff at English HEIs and excludes those on clinical grades

10

Table 2.4 Turnover by type of contract (%) Permanent

Fixed-term contract

Total

Inflows Same HEI From other HEI New to sector Total known

93 3 4 100

77 5 18 100

87 4 9 100

Outflows Same HEI Other UK HEI Left sector Retired or died Total known

96 1 1 2 100

90 2 7 1 100

94 2 4 1 100

• •

Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refers to staff at English HEIs and excludes those on clinical grades

Table 2.5 Turnover as a percentage of total turnover by type of contract Permanent

Fixed term Total (including contract hourly paid)

Inflows Same HEI From other HEI New to sector Total known

53 2 2 57

31 2 7 40

87 4 9 100

Outflows Same HEI Other UK HEI Left sector Retired or died Total known

56 1 1 1 58

35 1 3 0 39

94 2 4 1 100

• •

2.3

Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refers to staff at English HEIs and excludes those on clinical grades

Evidence on recruitment and retention problems

Recruitment and retention difficulties for academic staff in higher education appear to be a recent phenomenon. Certainly, the literature pointed to few concerns in

11

the UK about the ability of universities to recruit and retain academic staff during the 1970s and 1980s (HEFCE, 200319)20, with the exception of concern about a potential retirement crisis. The issue became more prominent during the 1990s and evidence, based on the difficulties reported by university human resource specialists, suggests that difficulties have grown over the past decade. In respect of retirement, fear that the age profile of academics in many disciplines was dangerously skewed to those close to retirement was causing concern in the early 1980s and the 1990s (UGC, 1984; Keep et al., 1996). However, the age profile of academics is similar to that of the workforce as a whole (PREST, 2000), although analysis of the age structures of departments showed considerable variation, with the proportion of staff set to retire in the next five years ranging from under 10 per cent to over 25 per cent (UCEA, 2002). Analysis using a sophisticated personnel model suggested that the age profile does not present a particular problem in most subject areas, with the exception of mathematics, physics and engineering (HEFCE, 200221). We return to this issue in section 3.4.2 below. The evidence for shortage is based on the reported experience of higher education institutions of difficulties recruiting and retaining academic staff (see, for example, Bett, 1999 and HEFCE, 2003). As would be expected, difficulties are not uniform and vary by institution, location, subject, grade and contract, and may also vary by type of individual. At the end of the 1980s the only area where there were major difficulties was engineering and technology (Pearson et al., 1990). Even by 1998, there were still not widespread problems with recruitment and retention but the number of areas in which difficulties existed had increased (Bett, 1999). Problematic areas included recruitment and retention in business subjects, IT, electronic engineering and some rarer specialisms, and in the recruitment of academics with professional experience (e.g. in law, health studies and teaching)22. Other areas suffering problems with retention included researchers and teaching staff on fixedterm contracts (Bett, 1999). Recruitment problems were sharpest in the old universities, in the South-East (excluding London) and the West Midlands. However, over the next few years reported recruitment and retention problems intensified and became more widespread. Based on higher education institution human resource specialists’ reports of recruitment and retention, UCEA (2002)

19

This study included structured interviews to elicit the views of a number of stakeholders. These 15 organisations ranged from Association of University Teachers and Universities UK, to the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Economic Social Research Council. The study also collected evidence from various categories of academic staff employed in six HEIs. 20 The story is slightly different in the US, where predictions of staff shortages from the 1970s (e.g. Freeman, 1971, 1975; Stapleton, 1989) led to an increase in interest in academic labour markets (see Ehrenberg, 2003, for a summary). In the US, however, the main thrust of the enquiry was the shortages of PhD students rather than issues pertaining to academic staff themselves (Cartter, 1976; Ehrenberg, 1991, 1992) 21 Note that the HESA data supplied to HEFCE allowed aggregation over contracts held by the same individual. HEFCE analysis referred to in this report refers to staff and not contracts. HEFCE also have different cut-offs e.g. 40% FTE for some analysis. This means that our figures and HEFCE’s (2002, 2005a 2005b) will not necessarily tally. 22 These figures come from the staff survey conducted for the Independent Review of Higher Education Pay and Conditions (Bett, 1999). This was the result of surveys sent to heads of personnel of all 178 UK HEIs. The overall response rate was 77 per cent, giving information pertaining to 246,027 of the estimated 300,780 staff in the UK, including 110,070 of the estimated 133,977 academic, clinical academic and research staff in UK HEIs.

12

pointed to a considerable increase in recruitment and retention difficulties for both academic and support staff since 1998. Around one in five institutions reported experiencing difficulties filling academic positions in 2001 (18 per cent), compared to one in twenty in 1998 (six per cent)23. The subject areas causing the most problems were similar to those in the Bett Report, but had expanded. They now included computing/IT, business subjects (accountancy/finance, business/management, law and economics), engineering, science subjects (biological sciences, chemistry and physics), nursing/midwifery and professions allied to medicine, and education. The percentage increase in retention difficulties was of a similar magnitude, with 7.6 per cent reporting retention difficulties ‘most of the time’ or more in 2001, compared to 2.2 per cent in 1998. Departments most frequently mentioned as having a turnover problem were: computing and computer science; law; accountancy and finance; business, business management and information systems; engineering (including electrical); and education (Appendix 4, UCEA, 2002). Institutions reported that lecturers were the most difficult to recruit, with almost 60 of all institutions reporting difficulties. The percentage reporting difficulties in recruiting lecturers was similar in new and old universities, but lower in colleges. More old universities than new found it difficult to recruit professors and research assistants. Recruitment and retention problems were particularly acute in areas which had to compete with the private sector, such as law, IT and engineering (UCEA, 2002). However, the same was true in areas competing with other public sector jobs with higher pay, such as education and subjects allied to medicine (ibid). The result of this was that HEIs reported difficulties attracting many candidates and those that they did attract were often not of the requisite quality. Moreover, they also reported that it was difficult to recruit good young academic staff as a result of low starting salaries (ibid). 2.3.1

Current experience of the case study universities: recruitment Further evidence on the nature of recruitment and retention problems was gathered from the case study universities. This evidence is based on a much smaller number of universities than the UCEA, HEFCE and Bett studies (126, 35, and 137 respectively). However, within these universities, it drew on the views of Heads of department (two per university) as well as human resource specialists. This has the benefit of providing more detail from the ‘coal face’, but does mean that there is greater information about selected subjects. The case study universities did not appear to have widespread recruitment problems for academic staff. Although they experienced difficulties in some areas of recruitment and difficulties attracting the quality of staff they would prefer, neither human resource managers nor heads of departments felt that this amounted to a recruitment ‘problem’ or an issue in urgent need of attention at institutional or Government level. Contrary to the evidence presented above, respondents did not see difficulties as a recent phenomenon. They also did not see them as persistent, except in a few highly specialist areas. Difficulties in some subject areas were viewed as cyclical and linked to external factors including external markets.

23

Here a recruitment difficulty is defined as those who answered ‘always’, ‘usually’ or ‘more often than not’ to the question ‘how often do you have difficulty in retaining staff?’. The other responses were ‘sometimes’, ‘rarely and ‘never’.

13

Human resource managers and heads of department in the case study universities reported greater difficulty recruiting senior level staff, particularly to readerships and chairs. Junior staff were reported to be easier to recruit, although posts involving heavy teaching duties and little time for research were less sought after and the case study universities in London reported more difficulties than others in recruiting junior staff. Recruitment difficulties in the case study universities were reported in subject areas with strong external labour markets. At the time of the fieldwork, these included education and health and, in the recent past, had included law, computing, business and engineering. Only new case study universities reported problems in psychology and economics. Difficulties recruiting to particular subject areas, for example computing, engineering and law, were seen as cyclical, varying with market conditions, by some human resource managers, a view which was confirmed by the experience of some academic staff. The nature of the difficulties tended to stem more from the quality of applicants, rather than the number. Insufficient research experience and track record were the most commonly cited short-comings. In respect of recruitment in vocational subjects, problems were reported in relation to the competence, in higher education, of practitioners. A particular problem was identified in attracting those with sufficient energy or enthusiasm for academic work, and particularly for research. Universities were concerned not to recruit people who ‘couldn’t hack it’ in the private sector and who saw academic life as an easy ride. Again, this was a more common concern among case study new universities who were willing to recruit applicants without research experience, on the basis that they would acquire it. Case study old universities required all new staff to have research experience, with the exception of visiting lecturers, and therefore could avoid this potential problem. Shortages due to lack of academic qualifications among some good applicants were exacerbated in a Health Studies department in a new university, where, until recently, practitioners were recruited (and could rise to senior positions) with a diploma. However, the university now required lecturers to have a degree and senior lecturers to have a Masters degree, which few applicants had. Moreover, the university did not recognise the professional qualifications in their pay decisions. This meant that many suitable practitioners could not be recruited, whilst others could only be offered jobs on the lecturing scale, at salaries substantially below those in the health service. Whilst Health Studies was the only example in the qualitative research where this issue was identified, we would expect the problem to be replicated in other subjects recruiting practitioners where practitioners were required to have relatively low level academic qualifications only. 2.3.2

Current experience of the case study universities: turnover Human resource managers said their universities did not have a problem with overall turnover of academic staff. This was for two main reasons: turnover was objectively low, and some of the case study universities wished to reduce staff in some areas because of changes in student demand. Therefore, they welcomed movement of staff in some areas. At the same time, case study universities did see levels of turnover in some sections of the academic workforce, and in some subject areas, as problematic. Their principal concern was the loss of the more highly productive researchers. However, some were concerned that departures of research 14

active senior staff to other UK universities would increase in the lead up to the next RAE. Most of the case study universities’ human resource managers reported turnover levels in the region of four to eight per cent. Only one case study university reported significantly higher levels, at 16 per cent. A number of human resource managers did not know the current rate of turnover in their institution. Many did not have an opinion on whether turnover in their institution could be considered high or not, but did not believe their university had a turnover problem, including the university where turnover was 16 per cent. Although many human resource managers seemed to lack an overall picture of turnover among academic staff, it was the configuration of staff that was of most concern to them. Their principal concern was that staffing levels matched income from students and research and that numbers of non-research active staff should be reduced. Consequently, they were aware of areas of greatest movement, both in terms of grade and subject area. Far from wanting turnover to be lower, a number of human resource managers said they would even welcome an increase in staff turnover to more than eight per cent because this would allow for the staff profile of some departments and schools to be reviewed and make it easier to improve the calibre of staff. This view was expressed most strongly by those in case study new universities which had undertaken extensive redundancy programmes aimed largely at reducing the number of nonresearch active staff. In some cases, these programmes had not resulted in the rebalancing that universities had aimed for, but had reduced the age profile and teaching experience of lecturing staff. A preference for higher, rather than lower, turnover was also voiced by a small number of heads of department. One head of art and design in a new university stated, ‘There hasn’t been a turnover of staff and the staff profile has aged. I would like more of a cross-section and would like to appoint some of the visiting lecturers to lectureships, but I can’t do this unless current staff leave’. Case study university heads of department expressing a preference for higher turnover were generally in new universities and under pressure to increase their research ratings. They reported that staff with shorter length of service were usually those with a stronger track record in research and who were more marketable to other institutions. Turnover was reported to be higher in junior posts, particularly among researchers and junior lecturers leaving for senior positions or higher ranking universities. The exception to this was a new London university, which experienced higher turnover in the middle and senior grades, possibly for reasons of living costs, it was thought. Although the case study universities preferred not to lose junior staff to other institutions, particularly those who are research active, they appeared to be resigned to a certain level of loss on the grounds that moving around is part of the academic career and that they are powerless to prevent it. Movement was believed necessary to gain promotion and also ‘experience’ which could lead to promotion in time. Human resource managers in some old universities were more concerned at the loss of more senior research active staff to other universities in the UK and overseas than the loss of junior staff. However, turnover among this group was not thought to be excessive and, again, universities were resigned to it. A practice of particular 15

concern was of staff taking colleagues with them to their new department or research centre. Several departments gave recent examples of where this had happened to their own institution. It included the loss of almost an entire physics research team from one old university to another. This practice was reported to be very damaging for departments and faculties and highlighted the importance of retaining ‘star’ performers.

2.4

Factors affecting recruitment and retention

2.4.1

Introduction Recruitment and retention are affected by the whole employment package (the rewards and disbenefits of the job) relative to other employment. These include pay and fringe benefits, intrinsic aspects of the job (e.g., for academics, teaching and research), job security, work organisation, autonomy, progression, family-friendly practices, congeniality of colleagues and the working environment etc. The more attractive the overall package, the more likely it will attract applicants and retain employees. The relative importance of these factors differs for recruitment and retention, due to informational differences between those in a job and potential recruits. Applicants (particularly those entering the sector) have less knowledge and the factors influencing recruitment tend to be those on which information is more easily available. This means that pay tends to loom larger for recruitment than retention. Moreover, the expected and the actual package may differ, leading to turnover. This section presents the factors which have been identified in the literature as affecting recruitment and retention. It starts with a description of what human resource managers and, from the case study universities, Heads of department consider to affect recruitment and retention. It then turns to evidence based on employees’ views and behaviour. Much of the evidence relies on staff views on how certain factors affect their satisfaction. Whilst there is a strong link between overall job satisfaction and turnover (see below), it cannot be assumed that specific factors with which employees are satisfied or dissatisfied affect turnover. Without verification of the link between these factors and behaviour, this evidence should be treated with caution. We shall investigate the link between satisfaction with the various elements of the job and intentions to leave UK higher education. The model and results are presented in Appendix G and are discussed in chapters 6 and 7. 2.4.2

Employers’ views on factors affecting recruitment and retention With regard to specific elements of the package which affect recruitment and retention, those considered by higher education institution human resources departments to be causing most problems were: uncompetitive salaries, locationspecific issues (such as the HEI was in a rural or expensive area, or one with few job opportunities for partner); job insecurity from fixed-term contracts; workload; and poor promotion possibilities (Bett, 1999; UCEA 2002)24.

24

Whilst it is useful to know what factors universities considered to cause recruitment and retention difficulties, it is important to verify these. Indeed, if any causes have been incorrectly identified, this

16

Pay levels were the main reason cited by human resource departments for recruitment and retention difficulties in both the survey of HR departments and the case studies (at a sample of 14 higher education institutions) in UCEA (2002). Two thirds of all respondents mentioned pay as being a major factor behind recruitment and retention problems in the sector, particularly for staff whose expertise is valued in the private sector: IT and computing, law and accountancy were the areas where staff were most likely to leave the HE sector. It was also noted that institutions in London and other major UK cities reported that high housing and travel costs were exacerbating the problem of low salaries (ibid). The case study universities interviewed as part of this project amplified some of the issues regarding pay and some mentioned other factors which they believed affected their recruitment and retention. 2.4.2.1 Pay Particular problems in respect of pay were identified by the case study universities in a number of subjects with strong external labour markets. Health and education, where recruitment was primarily from the health service and from schools, respectively, were seen as highly problematic. These sectors have benefited from considerable pay increases in recent years and salaries have now risen above those offered in Higher Education. As a head of Education at a new university stated, ‘The difficulty is fundamentally that the largest base of recruitment is people coming from schools where salaries for people with positions of responsibility have outstripped the top of the senior lecturer scale’. However, some heads of department referred to a steady decline in academic pay and conditions rather than an increase in salaries elsewhere. As a head of law at an old university explained, ‘A university career has become less attractive, with ever increasing levels of bureaucracy. Academics are no longer respected and pay now lags badly behind equivalent or lesser qualified jobs. Some colleagues consider they are grossly underpaid, compared with newly qualified solicitors. You couldn’t even begin to compare their salaries with their equivalents in private practice where they earn more than 5 times an academic salary’. Although universities experienced problems with recruitment where external markets were strong, or pay and conditions superior, they also benefited from downturns. For example a number of new universities had recruited staff during downturns in the telecommunications and computing industries. 2.4.2.2 Reputation and subject area A department’s reputation and that of existing staff was seen as an important influence on recruitment and retention by some of the case study old universities. itself might lead to recruitment and retention problems, as human resource strategies might be inappropriate and, possibly, counterproductive.

17

These said they were able to attract staff wishing to work with their well-known academics. Equally, some were concerned at the loss of research ‘stars’ since their departments then became less attractive to applicants. These issues were not raised by the case study new universities. 2.4.2.3 Redundancies Some of the case study universities felt they faced greater recruitment difficulties due to recent redundancy programmes. Human resource managers in these universities reported difficulties recruiting high quality staff, required by the university to improve research ratings, because of knowledge of its staff cutting exercises in the wider academic community and because of potential employees’ concerns about job stability. 2.4.2.4 Promotion In respect of retention, some human resource managers commented that junior staff often found it easier to leave their institution to gain promotion, and acknowledged that staff might be encouraged to stay if internal promotion was less slow and complicated. One head of human resources in a new university explained, ‘The deans say they are not able to keep pace with staff expectations of salary. Junior staff begin on a low salary and they can get experienced and very good in quite a short period of time. Often this is by having work dumped on them by the wily old lags. But progression is about time-serving and we don’t deviate from it. So the only way they can get a higher salary is to leave the university for other institutions. These are often younger and enthusiastic staff with strong academic ability who we don’t want to leave. At one point we (the human resources department) did propose an accelerated scheme, but it was strongly opposed by staff and by the unions’. Not all heads of department felt powerless to prevent the loss of good junior staff. One head of engineering in an old university was developing ways in which lecturers could gain the experience necessary to receive promotion without having to move elsewhere. ‘The strength of academia is the movement of people as they develop their specialism, but this also means that keeping people can be difficult, especially in some areas where there is a real dearth of good people. Staff may need to leave their university to gain experience in another institution, but that shouldn’t mean losing them for good. We arrange industrial secondments and most of them come back, so it can work.’ 2.4.3

The whole package Most previous research focuses on specific aspects affecting recruitment and retention. However, as we have said, recruitment and retention will be influenced by the whole package and being able to rank different factors is useful. 18

Research in Australia may be instructive. Bellamy et al. (2003) conducted a survey of academic staff in business subjects at all 38 Australian universities to determine why they remain at universities ‘despite deteriorating working conditions and reduced job satisfaction’25. They found that the most important factors in becoming and remaining an academic were flexibility, autonomy, teaching, research, and the ‘community of scholars’26. Total income and university salary were rated tenth and eleventh out of fourteen factors. A study of Nigerian HEIs found the most important factor affecting retention was pay (Mallam, 199427). The other factors (in declining order of importance) were: supervision, the work on the present job, the job in general, co-workers, and the commitment of the respondents to the institution at which they worked. These, and other, factors are examined below. 2.4.4

Job satisfaction of academics Previous UK research has not explored the overall attractiveness of the academic job package for potential recruits (nor differences between expectations and the reality), but some studies have looked at overall satisfaction amongst academic employees. In the wider economy, reported job satisfaction measures have been found to be good predictors of future quits (Freeman, 1978; Akerlof et al., 1988; Clark et al., 1998; Clark, 2001), although (based on single institution studies) there is a little evidence to this effect from the US HE sector (Nicholson and Miljus, 1972; Hinsz and Nelson, 1990). Most analyses of job satisfaction are based either explicitly or implicitly on the job descriptive index, first devised in the 1960s, e.g. Smith et al. (1969), and updated in Balzer et al (1997). This measures job satisfaction using 5 facets: work in present job, present pay, opportunities for promotion, supervision and co-workers. Subsequent work has tended to add to these facets and the elements that are generally considered to make up overall satisfaction with employment include the nature of the job itself, the hours of work, pay and promotion, co-workers’ and supervisors’ behaviour and physical working conditions. The most common method to measure workers satisfaction is using a 7-point scale running from extremely dissatisfied to extremely satisfied, with four on the scale representing indifference (e.g. Oshagbemi28 1996, 1998; Clark and Oswald, 1996; Ward and Sloane, 2000; Clark, 2001). In his study of job satisfaction and turnover in the whole economy, Clark (2001) found that if one compares overall job satisfaction with satisfaction with the separate elements of work, one finds that it is overall job satisfaction that is the best predictor of quits, followed by pay and the work itself. However, the various elements 25

The study is based on 3161 respondents, a response rate of 42 per cent. Between 61 per cent and 91 per cent of the respondents rated these aspects as ‘important’ or ‘very important’. The percentage rating these aspects as important for becoming an academic were almost identical to their importance for remaining an academic (although the latter figures are slightly lower (with the exception of research). 27 The study was based on a survey of 247 full-time faculty members from ten randomly selected HEIs, yielding a return of 208 respondents (a response rate of 84 per cent). 28 Oshagbemi (1996) investigated the satisfaction of HE staff from 23 universities in the UK with eight aspects of academic life (the survey achieved 554 respondents with a response rate of 50.27%), but does not give an overall measure of satisfaction. Although in later work (Oshagbemi, 1998), he reports a measure of overall satisfaction, but does not explain how this is derived from measures of satisfaction with individual elements. 26

19

of job satisfaction have been found to be very highly correlated both with each other and with overall satisfaction, particularly in academics (Ward and Sloane, 2000). Ward and Sloane (2000) suggest that academics place a lower emphasis on pecuniary relative to non-pecuniary aspects of work than other sectors of the workforce, although there is little discussion of this. There have been no analyses comparing the satisfaction of academic staff in HE with the rest of the population using the same survey. However, three studies have examined very similar aspects of satisfaction and comparison of these may point to problems29. The levels of satisfaction reported by academic staff on the key aspects of job satisfaction are generally lower than those reported for the whole workforce (Table 2.6). Only on satisfaction with the opportunity to use their own initiative do academic staff not score below the general workforce. The greatest differences in satisfaction between academics and the population as a whole is with pay and promotions. Although these are the areas where satisfaction is the lowest in the economy as a whole, the difference between satisfaction with these two facets and the other is much larger for academics than for other workers. Academic staff are most satisfied with the work itself and teaching in particular30. Table 2.6 Comparison of job satisfaction of academics with whole economy Whole economy

Overall job satisfaction Promotion Pay Hours Work itself Job security Opportunity to use initiative Supervisors Co-workers Physical work conditions • •

Scottish academics Ward and Clark (2001) Oshagbemi (1996) Sloane (2000) 5.427 4.212* 5.04 4.484 3.42 3.40 4.615 3.44 3.60 5.214 4.52 Teaching = 5.09 5.562 Research = 4.66 5.27 Admin = 3.93 5.192 4.41 5.745 5.81 5.529 4.18 5.09 4.81 5.42 4.33 UK academics

* Oshagbemi (1998) All figures based on 7-point scale running from extremely dissatisfied to extremely satisfied, with four on the scale representing indifference

2.4.5

Factors affecting recruitment and retention: pay One clear conclusion from the literature is that pay is a major issue (Bett, 1999; Machin and Oswald, 1999, 2000; UCEA, 2002; HEFCE; 2003). 29

Note that these comparisons are rather tenuous, as they refer to different surveys with slightly different questions. 30 Note that not all academic staff teach. Oshagbemi (1996, 1998) does not state whether these averages are averaged over all staff, or just those who perform these tasks.

20

Our comparison of elements of job satisfaction in Section 2.4.4 showed that academics were relatively less satisfied with their pay compared with the workforce as a whole. Pay also is a greater cause of stress amongst academics (Kinman, 1988; Kinman and Jones, 2004), particularly when compared with staff in a range of public sector employment (University of Plymouth, 2003). 2.4.5.1 Comparative pay levels within the UK Certainly, starting salaries for postdocs have remained unchanged in real terms over the past 15 years, while the average figure for all graduates has risen substantially in this period (House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, 2002b, quoting evidence the Roberts Review, HM Treasury, 2002, para 5.29). In their comparison of jobs in the HE sector with similar jobs in the public and private sector, the Hay study in Bett (1999) found that not only did academic jobs compare unfavourably with similarly ‘sized’ jobs in the private sector, but also with other public sector employment. For the Independent Review on Pay and Conditions, Hay Consulting (Appendix F, Bett, 1999) conducted a job evaluation of academic jobs and compared these jobs with other jobs in the public and private sectors of similar content or ‘size’. The conclusions of this study are that there were indeed large pay differentials between the HE sector and elsewhere. These were largest at the top and bottom of the scale (i.e. professors and Lecturer A, or equivalents) and in London and the South East31. In many cases, the upper quartile in the HE sector was lower than the median wage in the private sector. The most competitive wages were to be found at the Lecturer B level in the old university sector and at the Senior Lecturer level in new universities and colleges. The study also conducted an exercise in order to take into account other non-pecuniary factors (e.g. the length of the working week, holidays, cars, pensions and other fringe benefits) that might offset or amplify these differences in salary32. The results of this exercise were that the picture remains broadly the same, with tangible rewards lower for academic jobs. Indeed, for some more senior roles, rewards were even less competitive when the broader package is taken into account. Machin and Oswald (1998, 2000) focused on one problem area (economics) and investigated the severe decline in UK PhD students, with the implicit assumption that this represents the primary source for economics academics33. They concluded that the main explanation for the decline in UK PhD students was low pay. They compared salaries and fringe benefits of academic economists to those of private sector economists, gleaned from the Society of Business Economists, between 1988 and 1998. The authors estimated that over this period the earnings of academic economists fell behind those of private-sector economists by approximately 20-30 per cent.

31

Note that there is a different grading system and nomenclature in old and new universities and colleges. We discussed this further in section 3.3.1. 32 Rees (1994) found that the cost of additional benefits were more significant in explaining faculty retention than pay for US academics. In this study, benefits were based on institutions’ assessment of the cost of their contributions to retirement and insurance plans, tuition waivers and payments, social security taxes, unemployment taxes, workers’ compensation taxes and benefits in kind with cash alternatives. 33 It is certainly true that the most commonly reported highest level of educational qualification of academics is the doctorate (Court, 1998).

21

2.4.5.2 The importance of pay Whilst Clark (2001) found that overall satisfaction was the best predictor of turnover in the economy as a whole, pay alone was the second best predictor. Studies in the US have found that better paid faculty are less likely to leave their jobs (e.g. Ehrenberg et al., 1991; Rees, 1994). In a study of the factors influencing faculty turnover at 10 Nigerian colleges of technology/polytechnics, Mallam (1994) found that the most influential factor on voluntary turnover was dissatisfaction with pay. Oshagbemi (1996) found extensive dissatisfaction amongst UK university teachers with pay (54 per cent dissatisfied and 30 per cent satisfied)34. Pay was the factor with which the highest number of teaching staff expressed dissatisfaction in his survey, which examined satisfaction with seven factors. It is not only aspects of the job itself that are likely to determine an individual’s satisfaction, but also those of alternative employment (Mobley, 1977; Clark and Oswald, 1996; Clark, 2001; Ward and Sloane, 2000). Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, Clark and Oswald (1996) found that workers’ reported satisfaction levels are inversely related to their comparison wage rates. This result has been replicated in the academic sector by Ward and Sloane (2000), who also found that subjective measures of comparison income35 were more important influences on academics’ overall job satisfaction than an objective one36. In our analysis we find that satisfaction with salary was strongly negatively related to perceptions of what staff felt they could earn elsewhere. For more on this see section 6.3. It is helpful to consider work in other areas of the education sector. Dolton and van der Klaauw (1994, 1999) consider the effects of alternative wages in their competing risks analysis of the turnover of new UK school teachers. Dolton and van der Klaauw (1994, 1999) found that the higher the teachers’ salaries the less likely they were to leave and the higher the expected wage elsewhere37, the more likely they were to leave. However, expected wages only affected the propensity to leave teaching for a non-teaching job, they had no influence on the exit probability into non-employment. Female teachers were more likely than men to leave the labour market altogether, a difference that may be explained by family commitments. This work has recently been extended by Chevalier et al. (2002) to examine these effects in five cross-sections of university graduates covering the period 1960 to 1996. Chevalier et al. (2002) show how a time-series approach is a particularly powerful way to identify the effects of relative pay. They found cyclical differences in relative pay for teachers (either due to teachers’ wages not growing as fast or in periods when the economy is buoyant) and that the wage effects of alternative employment were stronger in periods when they were higher relative to teachers’ salaries. 34

The survey achieved 554 respondents (the response rate was 50.27 per cent). Two subjective measures of comparative pay were used: the first was derived from a question asking respondents to say if they earned less or more than they deserve; the second being the difference between what they actually earned and what they felt they deserved. 36 This was obtained by estimating a human capital earnings regression on the wage data collected and a number of background characteristics such as gender, tenure, subject, grade, etc. The measure used was the difference between the predicted and actual value of earnings (i.e. the residual). As the authors note, there are a number of problems with this measure as the residual may capture many other reasons for deviations of actual from ‘deserved’ earnings, such as omitted variable bias or differences in unmeasureable factors such as ability. 37 Based on their predicted wage from an earnings function. 35

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2.4.5.3 Pay systems Another aspect of pay, which may have an impact on recruitment and retention in the HE sector, is the use of discretionary pay. Discretionary pay schemes have been extensively used in the private sector, particularly for middle and senior managers (Millward et al., 1992). During the 1980s and 1990s, a number of developments took place which introduced discretionary pay to the HE sector (Jackson, 1997). However, the implementation of discretionary pay in HEIs faced a number of problems: the difficulty of measuring individual performance (particularly in teaching); the lack of management and human resources structures found in the private sector (Keep and Sisson, 1992; Keep and Mayhew, 1995; Jackson, 1997; Bisset et al., 2000)38; and the frequent rotation of headship of departments and similar staff (Jackson, 1997). If staff are unhappy with the criteria for discretionary pay awards, these may do more harm than good (as might be suggested by the results of Court, 1999, for promotions criteria, discussed below). However, there is little or no evidence on staff’s satisfaction with the design and implementation of discretionary pay strategies. 2.4.5.4 Academic salaries in an international context Relatively low academic pay is not unique to the UK (Enders, 2000). However, according to Enders (2000), salaries in the UK are among the lowest in Europe in absolute terms. Moreover, it is the countries with the lowest salaries where dissatisfaction with them is greatest. However, the author does not state on what evidence these conclusions are based. One problem with Enders’ comparison is that he compares wages in absolute terms and does not take into account differences in purchasing power. There have been very few international studies of academic wages. This is unusual when one considers that the university sector labour market is one of the few that has a truly international dimension. One reason for the lack of international studies may be the difficulty in obtaining data from the Higher Education sector. The international higher education sector is a heterogeneous one, being made up of private and public sector organisations. In many countries it is a combination of the two. This has led those studies that have been done to sample a small number of higher education institutions in different countries to obtain the required data on earnings. In this study we bypass this problem using national survey data. These data are more readily available than information from education agencies, which differ between countries, or even within countries. The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) has undertaken a number of surveys of academic staff salaries and benefits in commonwealth countries. Provan (2001) compared academics in universities in six countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, South Africa and Singapore. The data were not collected in a systematic way, but rather a combination of finding information on the internet and a combination of web-based research and direct contact with university personnel officers. Provan (2001) converted nominal salaries into real salaries using World Bank purchasing power parity series. Provan (2001) found that the wages of UK 38

This situation is not unique to the UK. Crothall, Callin and Härtel (1997) suggest that few Australian universities have comprehensive guidelines for recruitment and retention and there is little systematic 38 training of the personnel involved in the selection process .

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academics compared poorly with all other countries except for Canada. The problem with using Provan (2001) as a guide to policy on the influences of international disparities in academic salaries on recruitment and retention in UK higher education is that it excludes two major destinations of UK academics: the US and mainland Europe (Table 4.2). The most recent ACU study (Maxwell and Murphy, 2003) looked at staff at a sample of forty-five institutions in seven countries: Australia, Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the United Kingdom. This study found that the UK still compared poorly with the other countries (except Malaysia) once one accounted for differences in purchasing power. The highest salaries at all levels were to be found in Singapore. However, the study found that academic salaries in the UK were more similar to those in other countries – in particular Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Malaysia and South Africa – than in earlier studies (e.g. Provan, 2001). The authors put this growing similarity of academic wages down to ‘growing awareness of competition and of developing salary standardisation for institutions that draw on the same academic pool for their teaching staff’ (p. 3). For UK policy purposes, there are two main problems with this study. First, as with Provan (2001), there are no institutions from the US or the rest of Europe, two of the most popular destinations for emigrating UK academics. Second, the method used to account for differences in purchasing power in the different countries is open to criticism. Maxwell and Murphy (2003) use the Economist’s ‘Big Mac Index’, an index of purchasing power created by comparing the prices of McDonalds’ hamburgers in different countries. This is appealing because it is a commodity that is identical across the world and thus differences in prices are likely to reflect differences in production between countries. Whilst in some respects it may be preferable to using exchange rates, which are volatile and are often dominated by short-run factors such as currency speculation, the Big Mac Index is a long way short of an appropriate measure of purchasing power. Indeed, in the case of the ACU studies, the use of the Big Mac Index by Maxwell and Murphy (2003) appears to be a step back from the association’s earlier work (Provan, 2001). The difference in their results with those of Provan (2001) may merely be due to the change in the conversion rates, as the authors acknowledge. Ong and Mitchell (2000) provide a similar study of institutions from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, the UK and USA. The data come from academic associations and unions and individual countries. The authors do not provide any information on how many universities were sampled, or what the coverage of the academic associations and unions is. Therefore, it is uncertain whether figures are for the whole of the sector, all of those in the sector who are members of a particular union or association, or whether they refer to a sample of individual universities. They find that the real salaries of UK academics are lower than staff in all of the other countries in the study, with the exception of South Africa. Although this study does contain information on the US, it still does not provide any European comparisons. Another major problem with Ong and Mitchell (2000) is their choice of conversion rates. Like Maxwell and Murphy (2003), Ong and Mitchell (2000) use the Big Mac Index. We compare salaries in a number of different countries using a more informative price index in Chapter 4 of this report. In his comment on Machin and Oswald (2000), Freeman (2000) compares UK with US academic economists and finds that starting salaries in the UK are between half and two thirds of those in the US in purchasing power parity dollars. Machin and Oswald (2000) show how not only are the salaries of US academic economists higher 24

than their UK counterparts, but also that they are much higher than their colleagues in all other subjects, except computing and IT. The table (quoted from the US Faculty Salary Survey 1995-96) shows clearly that in the US, where wages are allowed to vary in order to equate supply and demand, the top salaries are paid to academics mainly in subjects that are suffering recruitment and retention difficulties in the UK, the top six being: computing and IT, economics, chemistry, astronomy, physics and biology. More evidence of the responsiveness of academic salaries to market forces in the US is provided by Graves, Marchand and Sexton (2002), who found that salaries of economics academics increased with the number of journal articles published. However, not all universities in the US appear to have the capacity to respond to market forces in their pay policies. Over the past twenty-five years, wages at public universities have grown much slower than those at private universities. Zoghi (2003) argues that this is due to the increased financial pressure in public universities. This has not been offset by a corresponding increase in non-pecuniary benefits; indeed higher-paying institutions (in particular private ones) also offer higher levels of benefits (Zoghi, 2003). 2.4.5.5 Pay discrimination One particular aspect of pay within the HE sector that may have an impact upon recruitment and retention difficulties is that of pay discrimination. For economists, Blackaby and Frank (2000) found that, after controlling for individual and workplace effects, black and Indian economists suffer a 7.6 per cent earnings gap with whites39. The ethnic wage gap is similar to that reported in Blackaby et al. (2002) for the economy as a whole (10 per cent). Blackaby and Frank (2000) do, however, find an insignificant effect of ethnicity on grade. Thus not only can the lower wages of ethnic minorities not be explained by their personal or institutional characteristics but neither can it be put down to their lower grades. For women economists, Blackaby and Frank (2000) found that, relative to unmarried men, married women suffered an earnings gap of 9.1 per cent and unmarried women a 14.1 per cent gap. The gap for women may in part be explainable in terms of their lower promotion probability, although this effect was only significant for unmarried women. This result is particularly interesting, as unmarried women are less likely to have time out of their career (Dearden et al., 2003). Work on a group of Scottish academics from a broader range of subjects (Ward, 2001) also points to a gender salary gap of 15 per cent40. However, when the sample is divided by job (researchers, lecturers, senior lecturers and professors), Ward (2001) found no withinjob wage discrimination with respect to gender, after taking into account a range of personal and employment characteristics, except for researchers (for whom there was an unexplained 10 per cent wage gap between women and men). This suggests that the pay gap derives from gender differences in promotion. However, whether pay discrimination exists or not, its effects on recruitment and retention would depend on comparative discrimination (or perceived comparative discrimination) and opportunities elsewhere in the labour market: what is important is whether academic employment is any different from alternative employment. If 39

The study of Blackaby and Frank (2000) is based on a survey of individuals in UK economics departments. The survey achieved 516 responses from 1,600 questionnaires. 40 Ward’s (2001) study is based on a survey of 900 academics in five Scottish universities, although the results refer to a maximum of 723 respondents. However, the response rate is not given.

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academic employment is no more discriminatory than alternatives (or perceived to be no more discriminatory), there is no reason that discrimination should increase exit from the sector to other jobs. However, it may reduce labour market participation, which is likely to affect women with partners almost exclusively. 2.4.6

Factors affecting recruitment and retention: pensions It has been argued that the pension schemes enjoyed by academic staff are not as good as those in the private sector because they involve higher employee contributions (Appendix F, Bett, 1999). However, in light of recent questions that have been raised about the solvency of many pension schemes this may have changed. This is particularly true given the high employer contributions into the USS which have kept it relatively solvent. 2.4.7

Factors affecting recruitment and retention: job content The nature of the job is an important influence on employee satisfaction and hence the balance of the positive and negative factors will impact upon the ability of the HEI to retain current and to attract new staff. It is certainly believed that academics experience substantial intrinsic job satisfaction (Oshagbemi, 1996; Bryson and Barnes, 2000a; Ward and Sloane, 2000), although our comparison with satisfaction across all jobs (Section 4.2) suggests that intrinsic job satisfaction may actually be lower than average. Academic work in the HE sector is made up of a blend of three elements: teaching, research and administration/management. Some academics may not have to undertake all of these responsibilities41, but most, to a greater or lesser extent, do. The balance of these three elements is important to the satisfaction of the workforce and hence turnover (Court, 1999). Some staff may not wish to undertake all three of these tasks and forcing all academic staff to undertake all three will push dissatisfied staff out of the sector. The Association of University Teachers has said that ‘There is no reason why staff should not, as an informed career choice, concentrate substantially in any one of the three major components of academic work’ (p.10, AUT, 1995). Because of this varying mix of teaching, research and administration, some factors will affect some members of staff more than others. For example, changes in student numbers may directly affect only those who teach (by increasing teaching hours and marking), but the effects may be felt indirectly by non-teaching staff as pressure is exerted on them to expand their role to include teaching. Likewise, those that do not undertake research may find that they are affected by things like the RAE if they find that their likelihood of promotion is limited by their lack of research output. Anything that places too heavy (or too small) an emphasis on one area of working may have detrimental effects on recruitment and retention, e.g. the perception that promotions depend primarily on research output (Court, 1999). Moreover, it appears that the positive aspects of academic life are being squeezed by burdens in areas which staff dislike, such as bureaucratic administration (Bryson and Barnes, 2000a). Ceteris paribus, these changes should result in higher turnover.

41

Those who only undertake administrative roles we exclude from this review.

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2.4.7.1 Teaching Oshagbemi (1996) found widespread satisfaction amongst UK academics with the teaching element of their job (80 per cent satisfied and only 13 per cent dissatisfied). The factors contributing to this satisfaction were course content (usually selected by the academic), whereas class size and teaching load could detract from satisfaction. 2.4.7.2 Research Oshagbemi (1996) found that around two-thirds of UK university academics were satisfied with the research aspect of their job (65 per cent satisfied, with 27 per cent dissatisfied). This satisfaction was greater amongst respondents from pre-1992 universities. Gray et al. (2001) examined the importance to satisfaction not of research, but of its applicability. They conducted an analysis of industry-university research centres in the US and found that members’ satisfaction with the relevance of research is positively related to staff retention. However, it has been suggested that the RAE has changed the job content, through changing the balance of teaching and research amongst academic staff, as teaching has been reallocated to non-research active staff, particularly in the RAE highest-rated departments (Heap, 1999, referred to in PREST, 2000). Moreover, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (2000a) found that the RAE could have a very damaging effect on morale, through the classification of some staff as ‘research inactive’. If research does indeed represent a positive, compensating aspect of academic work, then if any group of staff has less opportunity to conduct research this is likely to lead to lower levels of job satisfaction and problems with staff retention. Blake and La Ville (2000) find that although men and women are equally successful in obtaining research grants, women are less likely to apply. This does not appear to be due to differences in inclination in women, but rather their under-representation at the top of the academic career ladder and over-representation in part-time and fixed term contracts. 2.4.7.3 Administration and management Oshagbemi (1996) found relatively high levels of dissatisfaction amongst UK academics with administration and management (37 per cent dissatisfied and 40 per cent satisfied). The belief that too much emphasis is placed on administration appears to be much worse in new universities, whereas in the old universities the stress on research over teaching creates more dissatisfaction (Court, 1999). 2.4.8

Factors affecting recruitment and retention: promotion and progression The literature has identified a number of factors related to promotion and career progression which may affect recruitment and retention. 2.4.8.1 Changes in career path The increasing use of short-term contracts, particularly in research appears to have affected career progression, at least in science and technology, where the traditional path was from PhD to one or two post-doctoral fixed-term research posts 27

and thence to a permanent teaching post (House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, 2002b). The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (2002b) found that, increasingly, the academics were getting stuck in fixed-term research posts and were unable to make the final step to a permanent post. Whilst the Committee identify a number of advantages of the use of contract research posts, they also conclude that it leads to much higher turnover and exit from the sector. 2.4.8.2 Internal promotion There is evidence that promotion practice in HEIs may affect retention. Certainly, in a study of Nigerian HEIs, Mallam (1994) found that the second most influential factor on voluntary turnover was the opportunity for promotion42. Poor promotion opportunities for academics were mentioned as a reason for staff leaving institutions in the survey of HR departments in UCEA (2002). However, this does not mean that these staff left the sector; staff often left to join institutions that were larger, had higher reputations or better research opportunities. Part of the reason for poor promotions leading to dissatisfaction may be that many institutions have used the promotion of incumbent staff or the placement of incoming staff on too high a grade to overcome the low pay in the sector (Bett, 1999). The Bett report concluded that this may be creating a time bomb for the future as staff hit the upper limits of pay scales at later stages of their career. Court (1999) found widespread dissatisfaction with promotion prospects amongst university academics: two-thirds of respondents in a survey of teaching staff disagreed with the statement ‘I have satisfactory promotion prospects at my current institution’, with disagreement highest in the pre-1992 universities and amongst senior staff. Given possible biases in the sample43, this suggests, at minimum, a substantial minority of teaching staff were not satisfied with their promotion prospects within their institution. Oshagbemi (1996) also found substantial dissatisfaction amongst UK university teachers with promotion (50 per cent dissatisfied and 26 per cent satisfied). More recently, the interviews conducted as part of HEFCE (2003) also noted dissatisfaction with promotion criteria, particularly the lack of transparency and the fact that part-time and fixed-contract staff were excluded from staff development and promotion opportunities. 2.4.8.3 Promotion criteria It is not merely the lack of promotions themselves which are seen as a problem by academics, but the criteria on which they are based (Oshagbemi, 1996). There appears to be a widespread view that research is weighted too heavily as a criterion by which promotion is awarded (Court, 1999; Coe and Boddington, 2003). Although it is widely believed that research is one of the positive aspects of working as an academic in higher education, many staff feel that, partly as a result of the RAE, HEIs concentrate too heavily on research as a criterion for recruitment and internal 42

The most important factor was pay. The other factors (in declining order of importance) were: supervision, the work on the present job, the job in general, co-workers, and the commitment of the respondents to the institution at which they worked. 43 The survey was of teaching staff who were AUT members with a response rate (by our estimation) of about 35 per cent. The profile of respondents, with a few exceptions, was similar to that of the population.

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promotion (Court, 1999). This will dissuade individuals who do not wish to pursue a research-led career, or who miss out on research opportunities because they are working part time (Coe and Boddington, 2003). Court (1999), based on a survey of teaching staff, and drawing on Halsey (1995), Henkel and Kogan (1996) and Fulton (1993), concluded that academics’ careers were strongly framed from the beginning by the RAE and that research excellence strongly affected recruitment and progression. This marked some change in emphasis (from teaching to research), particularly for the post-1992 universities (Henkel and Kogan, 1996). In his survey of academics from 23 universities in the UK, Oshagbemi (1996) notes that the reason respondents were dissatisfied with promotions policy were the bias in favour of quantity instead of quality of publications, the relative neglect of teaching and administrative responsibilities, the lack of vacancies at professorial level and the lack of clearly stated promotions policies. In his study of the views of UK academics on their career opportunities44, Court (1999) finds that over half of the respondents believe that promotion at their institution places too much emphasis on research and a quarter too much emphasis on administration, whilst few thought that too much emphasis was placed on teaching45. However, his findings suggest that the emphasis on research excellence caused dissatisfaction amongst a substantial percentage of teaching staff. The dissatisfaction with the research bias of promotions policies was stronger in the old universities than in the new ones, where dissatisfaction was rather with the emphasis on administration46. 2.4.8.4 The RAE As well as affecting promotion criteria, the RAE has been thought to have affected recruitment and retention, through its effect on satisfaction and morale and through increased competition for academics who will add to the RAE score. With respect to morale, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (2002a) found that: ‘41. The RAE can have a very damaging effect on staff morale. Being labelled 'research inactive' for tactical reasons can blight research careers, and even bring them to an end.’ … It is clear that the RAE has had a negative effect on university staff morale.’ Henkel and Kogan (1996) found that the RAE affected departmental pecking orders, which is likely to lead to a change in satisfaction, although whether to a net increase or decrease in satisfaction is not possible to predict, a priori. Court (1999) also found evidence of a minority of university teachers believing that normal recruitment and promotion procedures were circumvented in order to ensure that ‘stars’ were recruited or retained to boost ratings for the RAE. Whilst Court did not investigate the extent to which this caused dissatisfaction amongst existing staff, it may be a cause of dissatisfaction amongst some.

44

The survey is based on replies from 586 of 2000 staff contacted from AUT records and so may not be representative of the population as a whole. 45 The phrasing of his questions does not allow the opposite to be deduced, that those saying there was not too much emphasis believed the emphasis was correct. 46 Both of these differences were statistically significant using the Mann-Whitney test.

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PREST (2000) also concluded that the RAE had increased turnover, but with movement highest amongst those who were research active (PREST, 2000). PREST (2000) concluded that the RAE had led to institutions buying staff to boost their RAE score. However, such movement was rare and the significance of the ‘transfer market’ had been exaggerated (and the ‘one-year rule’, whereby staff who move in the year prior to the RAE may be cited by both institutions, should have reduced this). Analysis of the RAE database by HEFCE (2000) confirmed the fact that there was an increase in staff moving in the year immediately before the RAE, but that such movement was rare. HEFCE (2000) also noted that the percentage of research active staff moving to another institution in the year after the RAE was ‘significantly higher than the two years before it’ (Annex J, p. 4). This suggests that any incentives to retain research active staff for the RAE only had a temporary effect on their retention. 2.4.8.5 Gender Women are particularly under-represented at the higher levels in the HE sector. It is widely believed that this is not just a cohort effect (Dearden et al., 2003), but that women face particular difficulty in obtaining promotion. Women are certainly less likely to be promoted than men in some areas, such as economics (Booth et al., 2000). Blackaby and Frank (2000) identified a lower promotion probability for unmarried women (compared with unmarried men), although surprisingly, did not find this for married women. A number of potential causes of this disparity have been identified. First, the importance of research output as a criterion for progression may reduce women’s career progression. This is, in part, because women are more likely to undertake more teaching and pastoral work at the expense of the research (House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, 2002a) and, in part, because of career breaks (PREST, 2000), particularly as childbearing usually coincides with the most productive period of an academic’s life in terms of research output (Dearden et al, 2003)47. The RAE is thought to have exacerbated this as a problem (House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, 2002a). Second, the lower mobility of women reduces their opportunity to obtain a higher ranked job at another HEI (Booth et al., 2003; Coe and Boddington, 2003). This lack of mobility relates to what is called the ‘loyal servant hypothesis’ (Booth et al., 2003) and is suggested by Ward (2001) as a potential explanation, although it has not been rigorously tested. According to this hypothesis, women are less mobile than men because in married or cohabiting households where both individuals work, the woman tends to apply for jobs in the region where the husband works. This will cause women to apply for fewer jobs than men and to be less likely to leave their current employment. Third, some subjects and/or grades are not (or have not been considered) amenable to part-time employment or flexible working hours (Coe and Boddington, 2003). The age structures of staff may inhibit promotion and so be linked with discrimination against women who have had career breaks for child rearing (HEFCE,

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The prevalence of career breaks is not known. However, in a survey of HEI academics in the US, 4 per cent of men reported interrupting their career for health or family reasons compared to 25 per cent of women (Hagedorn and Sax, 1998).

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2003). Fourth, male senior staff may implicitly or explicitly wish to select staff in their own image (ibid). 2.4.8.6 Ethnicity Compared with academics as a whole, British ethnic minorities are concentrated in research and fixed-term contract jobs and are under-represented in lecturing posts and at senior levels (Carter et al., 1999). However, British ethnic minorities in academia have a younger age profile than British white staff (with 73 per cent aged 45 and under, compared with 55 per cent of British white staff) and it is unclear the extent to which this accounts for their under-representation in more senior jobs48. (Note that Blackaby and Frank, 2000, did not find ethnicity had an effect on grade for economists, although this study included non-British staff.) Certainly, in a survey of discrimination and racism in academia, 18 per cent of British ethnic minority staff considered they had experienced racism in promotion (Carter et al., 1999). 2.4.9

Factors affecting recruitment and retention: workload and hours of work One benefit of working in academia has been the degree of autonomy of the hours and pattern of working. Recent evidence suggests that, at least with regard to the number of hours worked, this is no longer (if it were ever) the case. Indeed, workload causes greater stress amongst academics than amongst people in a range of other public sector jobs (University of Plymouth, 2003). Stress is particularly high in this respect in the new universities. The Hay study reported in Bett (1999) found that, on average, academic staff spent 47-48 hours a week working49. This is more than the national average of 40.5 hours a week (p. F80, Bett, 1999), but similar to that of managers. (The Hay study notes that over 78 per cent of managers, nationally, worked more than 40 hours a week and 34 per cent more than 50 hours; source: Worrall and Cooper, 1998). Moreover, whilst over half of managers, nationally, worked in the evening and a third at weekends, academics had flexibility over their work patterns and this leads Hay to conclude that there was ‘no reason to regard higher education work as radically more or less demanding than work in the rest of the economy’ (p. F80, Bett, 1999). Indeed, they argued that the flexibility academics had in organising their work patterns compensated for the extra hours worked. Note however that there are negative aspects to this increased ‘flexibility’. In a study of stress and work-life balance in academic staff, Kinman and Jones (2004) found some worrying issues concerning work-life balance50. Their results suggest that the boundaries between home and work in the life of the academic are wafer-thin, particularly for the 20% of those polled who lived with another academic. On average, a quarter of academics’ work is done at home and around 10% of academics check their email five times a day at home. Whilst many people appreciate this flexibility in working, the blurring of the lines between home 48

Carter et al. (1999) report grade differences as remaining after adjusting for age. However, the adjustment is made using simple cross-tabulations. It would be useful to conduct a fuller multivariate analysis. 49 The Hay study includes both full-time and part-time staff, although less than 5 per cent of the jobs were part-time. 50 The study was based on 1,108 replies to 5,000 questionnaires sent to academic and academic related staff at UK HEIs who were AUT members, a response rate of 22%.

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and work may lead to stress particularly when those hours are in excess of a full working week in the university. The pattern of hours varies by activity. Those with teaching and research responsibilities had the longest hours, averaging 49.9 hours, whereas those with teaching only or research only averaged 45.3 hours and 44.4 hours (Bryson and Barnes, 2000a). Academics in new universities worked on average two hours fewer than those in old universities, in teaching and teaching and research posts, although slightly more in research only posts (ibid). These long hours may be a factor in the under-representation of women in HE, although this must be offset against the greater flexibility of hours (Appendix F, Bett, 1999). At the same time, it is not clear the extent to which women may reduce these hours through working part-time. Only 13 per cent of HESA recorded jobs were parttime. Although this is low compared with employees across all employment (of whom 24 per cent are part-time), part-time working for academics in HE is slightly higher than for all employees with a higher degree (11 per cent) (LFS Spring 2000). Moreover, the percentage of academics working part-time is under-reported due to the exclusion from the HESA data of those working less than 25 per cent full-time. At the same time, men comprised a much higher percentage of part-time employees than is the norm amongst employees with higher degrees (43 per cent and 28 per cent respectively). It is unclear whether the low level of part-time employment is due to lack of availability or lack of demand; if the former, then those wanting to reduce their hours seem more likely either to continue full-time or leave the labour force, rather than move to a different sector. Certainly, Dearden et al. (2003) suggest that although women may have the opportunity to reduce the hours of an existing job if required by family circumstances, this does not necessarily mean that they will be able to find a new part-time opportunity. It would be worthwhile to check the availability of part-time working for those who want it (and also to explore further the role of part-time work in male academics’ careers). Moreover, the variation in the proportion of women across departments may be due to differing working cultures (Coe and Boddington, 1999). Their qualitative research with academic chemists highlighted concern about the ‘24 hour culture’ in chemistry and laboratory-based subjects in general51. It is widely held that the workload of academic staff has been increasing. Certainly stress levels do appear to have risen between 1998 and 2004 (Kinman, 1998; Kinman and Jones, 2004). If so then we would expect this to increase staff exit from the sector. Certainly evidence from Kinman (1998) and Kinman and Jones (2004) suggest an increase in staff who had considered leaving higher education, from 44% in 1998 to 47% in 2004. However, evidence from Australia runs counter to this. The university system in Australia has undergone similar change to that of the UK. There has been a dramatic increase in student numbers, a reduction in per student funding and increased demand for accountability (Bellamy et al., 2003). Coaldrake and Stedman (1999) concluded that as a result of these changes there was growing pressure on time, workload and morale. McInnes (1999) noted an increase in stress and a drop in the general level of job satisfaction for Australian academics, but that 51

As part of their study Coe and Boddington (1999) conducted four discussion groups with staff in HE and two with graduates working outside HE. However, the total number of participants was only 42. Coe and Boddington (2003) conducted individual interviews with 35 women in seven chemistry departments.

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this had not led to an increase in academics seeking employment outside the sector. The reasons for this were explored by Bellamy et al. (2003). These seem to suggest a very strong attachment to academic employment. 2.4.10 Factors affecting recruitment and retention: security of employment Job security has declined in HEIs, with the abolition of tenure and an increasing use of temporary contracts. The abolition of tenure (by the Education Act 1988) affected permanent lecturing staff in the old universities. The growth in fixedterm contracts has been largely in research (and, therefore, mainly affecting old universities where most research posts are located). In the old universities, fixed-term contract research staff comprised 15 per cent of academic staff in 1978, rising to 28 per cent in 1988 and to 40 per cent in 1997 (Bryson, 1999). Furthermore, Husbands and Davies (2000) have noted the growing resort to using part-time adjunct teachers for the performance of conventional teaching. Although job security is an issue for permanent staff (indeed, it leads to much higher levels of stress amongst academics than amongst staff in a range of other public sector employment, University of Plymouth, 2003), the literature has concentrated on this issue for temporary staff, particularly, for contract staff52, and so temporary staff have to be the focus of the rest of the section. As two-thirds of academic staff on fixed-term contracts are research staff (Table 3.8), it may be assumed that, where literature does not explicitly state otherwise, that the findings either refer to or are dominated by the experience of fixed-term contract researchers. 2.4.10.1 Staff on temporary contracts The increased use of temporary contracts53 has been a major concern in studies of recruitment and retention and in studies of academics’ job satisfaction. It has often been cited as a reason for retention problems (Bett, 1999; Bryson and Barnes 2000a, b; UCEA, 2002). One in five personnel departments asked in the UCEA (2002) survey mentioned that fixed-term contracts were causing recruitment and retention problems in their institution. There may also be an impact on recruitment to permanent posts via the inflow of research staff (94 per cent of whom were on fixedterm contracts in 2001/02, Table 3.8), where this is often seen as a first step into an academic career, as in IT and computer sciences (EPSRC, 1999) or clinical science (Academy of Medical Sciences, 2000). Certainly the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (2002b, Summary) considered there was a major problem:

52

Other temporary employment includes hourly paid employment (mainly used for teaching). The increase in the proportion of total staff on temporary contracts has been driven largely (but not solely) by the increase in numbers of temporary research staff. The percentage of what HEFCE (2002) call ‘academic grades (lecturer and above)’ on temporary contracts rose from 14% in 1995 every year until 1999, when it was 16%, and fell to 15.6% in 2001 (note that all these figures relate to census counts of staff with FTE of 40% or more as of 1 December of the respective year and so will not be the same as those published by HESA; for more information see Appendix A of HEFCE, 2002). The percentage of ‘assistant academics (below lecturer)’ rose from 95.5% in 1995 to 96.2% in 1997, before it fell to 95.3% in 2000. Over this period, the proportion of staff who were academic assistants rose from 28.2% to 29.8%.

53

33

‘We found widespread dissatisfaction and demoralisation among contract researchers, some of whom have been employed on 20 different contracts in as many years. For many researchers there is no career structure and little hope of obtaining a permanent position…. Many researchers are either new in position or searching for their next contract. Research is left unfinished or unpublished…..’ Staff on temporary contracts have suffered a double disadvantage in respect of security. As well as their employment only being guaranteed until the end of their contract, they have also had fewer employment rights (HEFCE, 2003). Most HEIs have required them to waive their rights to redundancy pay (Bryson, 1999). Protection against unfair dismissal has also been waived. However, the EU Fixed-term Directive is likely to affect the use of such employment by HEIs (HEFCE, 2003)54. 2.4.10.2 The pattern of use of temporary contracts The staff survey conducted as part of Bett (1999) found that 56 per cent of clinical academics and 34 per cent of non-clinical academics were on fixed-term contracts. (These figures do not include researchers55.) The use of such contracts was much higher in old as opposed to new universities (18 per cent compared to 8 per cent). It is in research, however, where fixed-term contracts were in most use, with some 93 per cent of research staff being on fixed-term contracts. One result of the use of fixed-term contracts has been that such staff leave before the end of the contract (Bett, 1999). This is entirely rational behaviour if individuals have any doubts as to whether their contract will be renewed and something we investigate further in Chapter 7 and Appendix G. Women are more likely to be on fixed-term contracts than are men (House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, 2002b). It is unclear whether this is due to the increasing number of female entrants to the sector (since fixed-term contracts tend to be held at an early stage of the academic career) or difficulties in securing permanent jobs (House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, 2002b). However, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (2002b) identified other factors which might result in women being more highly represented on fixed-term contracts (and with the additional consequence that women would be more likely to leave academia). These include direct discrimination in recruitment to permanent posts, difficulties of return after maternity leave or a career break, less control over job mobility, leading to less choice over job, women’s academic achievement being rated less highly. Husbands and Davies (2000) have noted the growing resort to using part-time temporary teachers for the performance of conventional teaching. It is difficult to obtain a true figure for this because HESA do not collect data on individuals who are less than 25 per cent FTE (full-time equivalent) at some point during the academic year, or on a casual basis. However, according to the Bett report, a third of academics work part-time, with the figure for new universities (43.9 per cent) being roughly 54

The implementation of the Directive was delayed in the UK (Planned implementation was July 2001), but has now introduced the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002. 55 They therefore indicate a much higher use of contracts amongst lecturing staff than do the HESA data (see Table 2.1). It is unclear which is more accurate.

34

twice that for old (21.7 per cent), a finding mirrored in the survey of Bryson and Barnes (2000a). Note that the use of part-time staff does have positive aspects as it may allow women who would otherwise leave the labour market to care for children to remain in employment. 2.4.10.3 Findings from the study of contract research staff in Scotland A recent study of the careers of academic contract research staff in Scotland was conducted by Hasluck et al. (2001). Its most pertinent findings to the current study are highlighted below. In respect of the pattern of employment and careers, the survey found that 44 per cent of academic contract research staff had had more than five years experience in research employment. Most were concentrated in the lower grades: 79 per cent on Research grades IA and IB, with a further 10 per cent on Grade II. Interestingly, those on the higher grades tended to have had shorter research careers, and Hasluck et al. (2001) suggested they had probably taken fixed-term research contracts at a senior grade from employment outside higher education. This suggests that promotion within academic contract research is rare. Seventy-eight per cent of academic contract research staff were aged 25 to 39. Research interest is the main factor affecting the decision to enter academic contract research and remains of supreme importance. The main reason that people entered academic contract research staff was interest in research. The career intentions prior to entering were, primarily a research career: 66 per cent entered because they wished to pursue a research career and only 23 per cent had entered seeing it as a stepping stone to academic lecturing. However, 24 per cent had seen their initial contract research job as a stepping stone to a professional career. Once employed, research interest remains overwhelmingly important, with interesting and challenging work very important to 76 per cent of academic contract research staff, (along with other aspects of research interest, such as innovative work, time to pursue research interests) (Table 2.7). However, although only two per cent of academic contract research staff said their job did not provide this at all, fewer than half (44 per cent) said that their jobs were extremely interesting and challenging, suggesting potential dissatisfaction56. The next most important issue (amongst the attributes examined) was security of employment, very important to 38 per cent of academic contract research staff. At the same time, 36 per cent said this was not provided by their job at all and, as only one per cent said security was not at all important, it is likely that this was a cause of dissatisfaction amongst many.

56

Hasluck et al. (2001) identified the importance to contract researchers of a range of job attributes, together with respondents’ assessment of how much these attributes were provided in their job. Unfortunately the findings are not reported fully, reducing the conclusions which may be drawn by the report reader.

35

Table 2.7 Contract researchers: value of job attributes

interesting and challenging work the chance to do innovative work job security

76 42 38

not provided by job at all*, ** 2 4 36

continual skill development work making a positive contribution to society time to pursue my own research interests time to pursue leisure interests opportunities to take managerial responsibility autonomy

34 32 31 26* 25* 24*

7 4 16 12 33 5

competitive salary opportunities for promotion opportunities for international career working with people with whom I enjoy socialising competitive work environment

24 24 18* 16* 11

16 37 20 9 13

very important

*

Percentage is read from a graph and so may not be quite accurate. whether the job provided the attribute was ranked on a 5 point scale. Source: Hasluck et al. (2001)

**

Other possible areas of dissatisfaction are the opportunities for career progression (very important to 24 per cent and of no importance at all to only two per cent) and the opportunity to take managerial responsibility (very important to 25 per cent). Hasluck et al. (2001) also add pay to this list. Flexibility of the working environment and the scope for moving between jobs or projects, broadening experience and developing and absorbing new ideas were also identified, in qualitative research, as important attractive attributes of contract research. Despite some apparent dissatisfaction with the research interest of the job, the main reasons for leaving contract research tended to relate to the contractual status. Of most importance was insecurity. Seventy per cent saw obtaining a permanent job as important and academic contract research was seen as unsustainable as a career in the long term. Despite this, 34 per cent planned to remain in academic research. The results of insecurity can be seen in job search activity and career plans, with 43 per cent actively seeking their next post. The other main reasons for leaving contract research were limited scope for progression, the need for geographical mobility and difficulties developing more specialised knowledge. Although the long-term career plans of most academic contract research staff were to continue in academia (59 per cent), only 25 per cent saw this as in a traditional academic career, rather than contract research (34 per cent). The main planned careers leaving the sector were professional practice or management (12 per cent) and research in industry or commerce (11 per cent), with independent, public sector or voluntary sector research 6 per cent.

36

In the short term though, 40 per cent sought a further research post in HE as their next job and only 18 per cent of the contract researchers were aiming for a lecturing post in HE. However, 37 per cent wanted a job outside HE. 2.4.11 Factors affecting recruitment and retention: family-friendly practices There is almost no direct evidence relating to the effects of family friendly policies57. It is generally believed that conditions of work in HE are relatively familyfriendly, due to flexibility in working hours and relatively high holiday entitlement. Certainly the Hay Report found that over half of academics spent more than 20 per cent of their time ‘working on other sites, away from the university’ (Appendix F, Bett, 1999). On the other hand, there is little part-time employment, 13 per cent (see Section 4.7), and an ongoing study has identified juggling work/life balance as being more stressful for academics than amongst staff in a range of other public sector employment (University of Plymouth, 2003). It is more difficult to assess issues such as maternity leave, although in its 2003 letter to local representatives regarding the most recent regulations on maternity and paternity leave (the Employment Act 2002), the AUT noted that ‘it should be noted that some universities provide maternity and paternity leave arrangements equal to, or an improvement on, the new statutory rights set out in regulation’ (AUT, 2003). One advantage is that, when calculating entitlement to maternity pay, years of continuous service often begin when an individual enters service in HE, rather than the institution itself (NATFHE, 2001). Some interesting findings on the role of family and family-friendly practices come from the United States, where Hagedorn and Sax (1998) found that having dependent children had a negative influence on satisfaction, although marital status and having career interruptions for family or health reasons had no influence58. 2.4.12 Factors affecting recruitment and retention: other The literature provides some elucidation of a number of other factors which affect job satisfaction, stress at work or might affect recruitment and retention. These include discrimination, work relationships, physical conditions, resources, control and commitment. Discrimination may reduce recruitment from those groups discriminated against and increase their turnover. Discrimination in relation to pay and promotion has been discussed above, but discrimination may surface in other ways. Certainly, in a survey of discrimination in Higher Education, 23 per cent of British ethnic minority staff reported encountering race discrimination in recruitment and 20 per cent reported experiencing harassment in academia (Carter et al., 1999). Furthermore 32 per cent considered their institution not very or not at all committed to Equal Opportunities. Bagihole (2002) discusses a range of forms which gender discrimination may take and how the high degree of autonomy of staff in universities allows such discrimination to continue.

57

One respondent to the recruitment and retention survey reported in Bett (1999) reported the ‘lack of focus on family-friendly policies’ as an issue. 58 Based on a survey of 59,933 staff from 446 HEIs in the US, with a response rate of 42 per cent.

37

There is mixed evidence on the role of working relationships. Oshagbemi (1996) found that the majority of staff were satisfied with their supervision (52 per cent satisfied and 34 per cent dissatisfied) and with co-workers’ behaviour (70 per cent satisfied and only 17 per cent dissatisfied). However, work relations lead to higher stress amongst academics than amongst staff in a range of other public sector employment (University of Plymouth, 2003). Oshagbemi (1996) and the University of Plymouth (2003) also provide mixed evidence on physical conditions and working facilities. Oshagbemi (1996) found 57 per cent satisfied and 31 per cent dissatisfied with these, whilst resources and communication lead to higher stress amongst academics than amongst staff in a range of other public sector employment (University of Plymouth, 2003). In Australia, Bellamy et al. (2003) found autonomy to be an important retention factor (80 per cent of academics said it was an important reason for remaining). However, in the UK, academics appeared to feel similar degrees of control over their job as staff in a range of other public sector employment , although those in new universities experienced more stress in this regard (University of Plymouth, 2003). However, Bryson and Barnes (2000a) found that autonomy, a positive aspect of working in higher education, had been declining. Retention, in particular, is affected by the accuracy of prior expectations of the job. Doing a PhD may provide better knowledge of the job, particularly given the extent to which PhD students get involved in teaching. It would be useful to know the extent to which doing a PhD provides an appropriate induction into academic life and creates useful expectations of such work (and whether other employment does this to a lesser extent). It would also be useful to know whether this differs by discipline and in respect of new and old universities, particularly as most PhD experience will be at old universities. Little evidence exists on this subject, although Golde and Dore (2000) found in their study of US graduate students that graduate study is not enough to prepare students for an academic career59. One aspect which might encourage turnover is the degree of commitment that staff feel the university has towards them. This is relatively low, compared with that felt by staff in a range of other public sector employment (University of Plymouth, 2003). This is reciprocated by a relatively low commitment by academics to their organisation. At the same time, in Australia, Bellamy et al. (2003) concluded that academic staff remained in the sector (despite deteriorating working conditions and reduced job satisfaction) for the same reasons they join it, because being an academic is a ‘calling’ rather than just a job. Stress may also affect retention. An ongoing study is examining stress amongst HEI staff. This has found that, compared with a range of jobs in the public sector, academic jobs were, overall, less stressful (University of Plymouth, 2003). The study examined specific aspects affecting stress and these have been discussed at appropriate points above. Another study of stress in academia has been done in Australia (Winefield et al., 2002). This study found that around half of the Australian university staff studied were ‘at risk of psychological illness, compared with only 19% of the Australian population overall’. This level is even higher than that found in a study of Australian correctional officers (Dollard et al., 1992). Stress was found to affect middle-ranking academic staff, those with teaching duties and

59

Their study was based on a survey of 9,645 students in eleven disciplines at 28 major US research universities.

38

those in the humanities and social studies the hardest. The strongest influences on psychological strain were found to be job insecurity and work pressure. Bellamy et al. (2003) also found no evidence that staff (in Australia) remained in academia due to inertia (for those who have been in academia all their life) or that those well established are poorly skilled/suited (or believe themselves to be) to adapt to better paid jobs in other sectors at their stage of career, i.e. they cannot command a high wage outside HE. The paper finds that ‘poor job opportunities outside academia’ is the second least important reason (out of thirteen) for remaining in academia. Sixteen per cent of people cite it as an important reason for remaining.

2.5

Summary and conclusions

The extent of recruitment and retention problems faced by universities for academic staff is not entirely clear. Whilst there has been a growth in reported problems, the nature of difficulties seems to fluctuate. Moreover, turnover is similar to or only slightly higher than that for professional occupations generally. Difficulties appear to be concentrated in subjects where subject-specific knowledge is transferable to other sectors. This means that difficulties fluctuate with changes in economic activity in the relevant sectors. However, there was evidence that recruitment problems are being masked by universities being able to recruit but to a lower quality, i.e. there is a gradual decline in quality of academic staff. Thus, we would conclude that there are recruitment problems and that these vary by subject and seniority, but that problems are not severe. Whatever the current degree of difficulty, expansion of the sector (unless accompanied by a downturn in the economy) would increase any difficulties. Previous research suggests that pay is a major factor affecting the recruitment of academic staff and that pay and job satisfaction are major factors affecting retention. For contract researchers, interest in research is the main reason for entering academic employment. The evidence points to a decline in pay for UK academics relative to pay in other sectors in the UK (including in comparable jobs) and that, internationally, UK pay is relatively low. Using a standard measure of job satisfaction, academics appear to have relatively low levels of satisfaction, with comparatively low levels of satisfaction in respect of promotion and pay, in particular, and also with hours, the work itself (especially administration), job security and relationships with supervisors. The only aspect on which academics compare favourably is in respect of satisfaction with being able to use their own initiative. In terms of job content, academics were most satisfied with teaching. Discrimination (whether direct or indirect), if greater (or perceived to be greater) in academic jobs than in alternative employment, is likely to exacerbate recruitment and retention problems for the discriminated against groups. There is little robust evidence on discrimination in academic employment (i.e. evidence which takes into account differences in personal and academic characteristics). There is some evidence of both an ethnic and a gender pay gap, with the latter deriving from gender differences in promotion. The reasons advanced for the latter include men focussing more strongly on the career-enhancing aspects of the job (i.e. research), childbearing, married or cohabiting women’s lesser mobility, resistance in some jobs to part-time employment or flexible working hours and direct discrimination.

39

The use of fixed-term contracts, primarily for research staff, has been found to decrease retention in the sector. Whilst many contract researchers remain in the sector for several contracts, many of those who do not gain a permanent job leave due to insecurity. Other attractions of the job include working-time flexibility and pensions. Detractions of the job include physical conditions and working facilities. These, and other, issues were investigated further in the qualitative research at case study universities, through the staff and research student surveys and through analysis of relative pay, nationally and internationally and are discussed in subsequent chapters.

40

41

3

3.1

The structure of academic employment in Higher Education

Introduction

In 2001/02, 110,094 people worked in academic posts (of at least 25% fulltime equivalent, FTE) in English higher education institutions (excluding those on clinical grades)60, or 88,102 full-time equivalent staff (HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/02). This chapter provides an overview of the nature of their jobs and who they are. The next section describes the institutional structure of employment (across new and old universities and Colleges of Higher Education). Key contractual aspects of the job (grading, pay, contractual status, primary employment function and mode of employment) are described in Section 3.3. The chapter then turns to the characteristics of academic employees, describing their gender, age, ethnicity, nationality and qualifications. The final section provides a summary. Nearly all the evidence in this Chapter is based on analysis of the HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/02. Throughout the data refer to English HEIs and exclude those on clinical grades. Caveats to the Individualised Staff Record data have been described in Chapter 1, i.e. data actually relate to contracts, rather than individuals (which leads to double-counting of those with more than one post) and contracts which are for less than a 25 per cent full-time equivalent academic job are excluded. Due to this exclusion, the total number of staff is under-reported. (For further information see Appendix C.) The chapter also makes use of the staff survey data. This has been re-weighted to be representative of non-clinical grade academics, excluding hourly-paid staff in English non-specialist institutions with over 200 academic staff. (For further information see Chapter 1 and Appendix C.)

3.2

Institutional structure

In 1992, Higher Education in the UK underwent a major change, with polytechnics (and some other higher education institutions) converting to university status. Pre-1992 universities are commonly referred to as ‘old universities’ and those converting since 1992 as ‘new universities’. This altered their governance and financing. Despite continuing change in the finance and nature of universities, differences between old and new universities remain (e.g. in terms of research 60

To be precise, there were 110,094 contracts of employment with staff. For reasons of privacy the data supplied by HESA did not include staff identifiers and so, in common with most uses of the staff record (exception to this is HEFCE, 2002, who have access to the identifiers), we cannot exclude multiple contracts. HESA suggest that around three per cent of staff hold multiple contracts. Note that the University of North London was not included in either the staff or student data supplied by HESA because the university has asked that its individual data is not released.

43

intensity, academic status, size and internal governance) and so the term remains useful. Employment is concentrated in the old universities, which account for almost two thirds of total staff numbers (Table 3.1). The majority of the remainder is made up of employees at new universities. By comparison, Colleges of Higher Education and specialist institutions together employ only around 10 per cent of higher education institution staff61. Table 3.1 Employment by type of institution

Total HEI Type Old Universities New Universities Colleges Specialist institutions • •

3.3

Staff numbers 110,094

88,102

Parttime 14,453

64,780 34,239 4,352 6,723

52,333 26,995 3,585 5,188

7,086 5,495 630 1,242

FTE

Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refer to staff at English HEIs and exclude those on clinical grades

Job structure

In the previous chapter a number of factors were identified which had been found to affect recruitment (pay) and retention (pay and satisfaction, with satisfaction influenced by progression, job security and the nature of the job, amongst other factors). This section describes some of the key job structures which affect these: the grading structure (affecting progression), the pay structure, contractual status (affecting job security) and primary employment function (main job content). In addition, the mode of employment is described. 3.3.1

Grade structure Universities have a well-defined grade structure, which, below professor, is closely linked to pay. The structure differs between new and old universities. In old universities, the teaching grades are lecturer, senior lecturer and professor (with readers on the same scale as senior lecturers) (Table 3.2). In addition, some universities have ‘teaching fellows’, who are not expected to do research. In the case studies teaching fellows were found only in the old universities and could not rise beyond senior lecturer. Research grades run roughly parallel to teaching grades.

61

Colleges of Higher Education, 4% and Specialist Institutions, 6%. In terms of factors affecting recruitment and retention, colleges of Higher Education are likely to be similar to new universities. Specialist Institutions are so classified for financial purposes. They are mainly composed of old universities, research institutions, art, drama and music colleges. They also include colleges of Higher Education and agricultural colleges. About 3.6% of all staff are in Specialist Institutions which are similar to old universities (i.e. where research plays a major role e.g. constituent institutions of London University, Research Institutions).

44

Table 3.2 Salary scales from 1 August 2004 old universities Non-clinical grade academic staff* Grade

new universities Academic staff *

Research staff

Salary

Grade

Salary

Grade

Salary

Research staff Grade

Salary

27,390

12,887 13,953 14,751 15,699 16,773 17,601 18,777 19,614 20,540 21,640 22,507 23,643 24,450 25,432 26,671 27,390

28,360

28,360

A

IB

L E C T

23,643 24,820 25,699

A

27,116

27,116

27,989

27,989

29,128

29,128

30,363 31,544 32,666

30,363 31,544 32,666

L E C T U R E R B

P R O F min

19,460 20,540 21,640 22,507 23,643 24,820 25,699

S E N I O R

IA

II

34,227 35,883

34,227 35,883

37,558a

37,558c

39,114a 40,091a 41,212 42,573

39,114c 40,091c 41,212 42,573

43,513b

III IV min

43,513d

44,616

b

44,616

45,885

b

45,885d

L E C T U R E R

P R I N C I P A L

23,643 24,450 25,432 26,671

S E N I O R

B

29,479 30,363 31,544 32,364 33,260 34,227 35,208 36,428 37,226 38,142 39,114 40,091 41,212 42,059 43,037

d

*

Those on clinical grades in old universities have a separate grade scale. discretionary points, Lecturer B b discretionary points, Senior Lecturer c discretionary points, Research Grade II d discretionary points, Research Grade III Source: AUT a

In new universities, the teaching grades are lecturer, senior lecturer, principal lecturer and professor (with readers on the same scale as principal lecturer). Senior lecturers at new universities are fairly equivalent to lecturers at old universities in terms of pay. Research grades are limited to two, with the highest point similar to the top of the Senior Lecturer scale (or the bottom of the Principal Lecturer scale). Thus, for researchers, the progression opportunities (without moving into lecturing) in new universities are severely curtailed. The pattern of employment across these grades differs substantially between old and new universities (Table 3.3). ‘Researchers’ (all research grades except UAP 45

research grades III and IV, the senior research grades in old universities) are highly concentrated in old universities and rare in new universities and colleges. Although 29 per cent of all academic staff are ‘researchers’ (all research grades except UAP research grades III and IV), there are relatively few in new universities (nine per cent) and colleges of higher education (three per cent) whereas in old universities they represent the largest group of staff (43 per cent) (Table 3.3)62. Around nine per cent of staff are professors or UAP research grade IV, but this figure is much higher in old universities than other higher education institutions. Other than in old universities, lecturers (including senior lecturers on the PCEF scale) form the largest group of staff. Table 3.3 Staff grades (%) Total

Professors; researchers Grade IV (old universities) Senior lecturers & researchers Grade III (old universities); Principal lecturers (new universities) Lecturers (old and new universities); Senior Lecturers (new universities) Other researchers Other grades • • • •

HEI type Spec inst

n

%

Old

9,669

9

12

4

3

6

17,955

16

16

17

12

15

39,389

36

23

55

69

42

32,234 29 10,847 10 110,094 100

43 6 100

9 15 100

3 14 100

22 15 100

New College

Table shows the percentage of staff in each grade Breakdown based on Earl (2001) Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refer to staff at English HEIs and exclude those on clinical grades

The grade structure of employment suggests that progression opportunities differ between old and new universities. Focusing on teaching staff and senior researchers (i.e. excluding ‘Researchers’ and ‘other grades’ from Table 3.3), almost one quarter of posts in old universities are professorial (24 per cent), compared with five per cent at new universities (Table 3.4). Similarly, 31 per cent of posts at old universities are Senior lectureships or equivalent, compared with 22 per cent at new universities. Indeed, 72 per cent of teaching and senior research posts at new universities are at the lectureship (and equivalent grade), compared with 45 per cent in old universities.

62

In order to obtain a useful grouping of equivalent grades, we follow the categorisation suggested by HESA (Janet Earl, 2001, ‘Further Guidance on the Staff Individualised Record 1999/00 (C99021)’, KB Article 763, HESA). This classifies the PCEF, UAP, CSCFC, clinical and locally-determined scales into the five groups listed in Table 3.3.

46

Table 3.4 Staff grades lecturing and senior researchers (%) Total n Professors; 9,669 researchers Grade IV (old universities) Senior lecturers & researchers Grade III 17,955 (old universities); Principal lecturers (new universities) Lecturers (old and new universities); 39,389 Senior Lecturers (new universities) 67,013 • • • •

HEI type New College

%

Old

14

24

5

4

Spec inst 10

27

31

22

14

24

59

45

72

82

67

100

100

100

100

100

Table shows the percentage of staff in each grade Breakdown based on Earl (2001) Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refer to staff at English HEIs and exclude those on clinical grades

3.3.2

Pay structure Pay has been identified as a major influence on recruitment and retention. To provide an indication of the pay rates that academics face and the speed of increase, the pay scales for academics (from 1 August 2004) are given in Table 3.2. Academic staff can join a contributory final salary pension scheme. Old and new universities offer different schemes. However, pension scheme members who move between universities offering the other scheme have the option of remaining in their original scheme. 3.3.2.1 Additional earnings In addition to their salary, academic staff may have additional earnings from, for example, external work or royalties. Each university has its own rules on the amount of additional work which may be undertaken and, normally, for work related to university work, some of the earnings will go to the university. In the NIESR/DfES staff survey, 42 per cent of academic staff reported supplementing their salary with additional earnings in the previous year, although a further 13 per cent did not answer this question (Table 3.5). The likelihood of receiving additional earnings rose with grade, from 26 per cent of researchers to 69 per cent of professors (Table 3.6). It also varied by subject (Table 3.7). Staff in business and administrative studies were most likely to have additional earnings (61 per cent). Otherwise, generally, staff in other social sciences, arts and humanities and education more often had additional earnings (45 per cent to 54 per cent) than those in maths and sciences. In particular, additional earnings were least common amongst those in the physical sciences, engineering, medicine and dentistry and biological sciences (27 per cent to 34 per cent). This pattern is likely to reflect differences in the grade structure across subjects.

47

Table 3.5 Academic Staff: Gross additional earnings in the previous 12 months (%) All staff 50 37 13 100 2,783 2,779

no additional earnings additional earnings missing Total n (weighted) n (unweighted) •

Excluding missing 58 42 100 2,422 2,426

Source: NIESR/DfES Staff survey, 2004

For most staff, additional earnings were, at most, a small addition to their salary: 81 per cent had no additional earnings or earnings of £2,000 or less (Table 3.6)63. Only six per cent reported additional earnings of £5,000 or more in the previous year. The amount rose with grade, but, still, only nine per cent of professors reported receiving more than £5,000 in the previous year. Table 3.6 Academic staff: Gross additional earnings in the last year, by grade (%)

No additional earnings

31

Senior Lecturer/ Senior Researcher 49

Additional earnings

69

51

38

26

42

£1,000 £5,000 9 23

% of total staff earning: < £1,000 138

> £5,000 14

n (weig hted)

n (unweigh ted)

138

130

business and administrative studies

61

modern languages

54

29

10

61

5

61

52

education

53

18

11

172

6

172

161

other humanities

52

20

16

175

8

175

142

art and design

52

-

-

48

10

48

45

combined studies across subject groups

51

25

13

94

6

94

80

English literature and classics

50

-

-

46

4

46

36

architecture, building and planning social studies, including economics and social/economic geography mathematical sciences (excluding computing)

49

-

-

37

10

37

31

45

9

22

326

10

326

281

42

19

10

85

4

85

91

computing sciences

42

12

29

132

12

132

140

subjects allied to medicine

40

32

16

313

7

313

364

engineering

34

7

17

147

6

147

165

physical sciences

34

19

12

213

4

213

236

medicine and dentistry

27

-

-

121

5

121

126

biological sciences

27

21

10

253

3

253

284

42 19 17 2404 7 2404 Table excludes those who do not state whether they have other earnings; these account for 13% of the total population. Table also excludes 8 individuals who do not report their subject area. Cells with a base of less than 30 (un-weighted) observations are marked with a ‘-‘;agriculture and related subjects, librarianship and information science and other technology have been excluded due to small cell size for all data. These are included in the total. Source: NIESR/DfES Staff survey, 2004

2409

Total • • • •

3.3.3

Contractual status Job security is an important influence on job satisfaction and the use of fixedterm contracts has been identified as an important factor causing academics to leave the sector (see above). This section describes the pattern of use of different forms of contract.

49

There are essentially three types of contract: permanent, fixed-term and hourly paid . Below, the contractual pattern of employment is described using HESA Individualised Staff Record data. It should be remembered that this data excludes jobs which entail less than a 25 per cent full-time teaching or research job (i.e. those whose jobs include a substantial non-teaching and research element and/or work low parttime hours are excluded). Thus jobs with few hours are excluded. This will tend to exclude disproportionately the hourly paid. It is useful to describe briefly the types of jobs this might include. In the case study universities, in addition to lecturing grade staff and contract researchers, universities have ‘visiting’ lecturers (who include guest lecturers making one or two presentations a year to those with more regular work, sometimes covering for vacant posts) and other teaching staff (for example those solely taking tutorials, seminars or demonstrating). They also include stop-gap teaching roles to cover for illness, sabbatical or temporary shortages. The contracts such staff were on differed between case study universities. Hourly-paid or fixed-term contracts tended to be used for small amounts of teaching. Such services were provided by PhD students, researchers and people outside academia, amongst others. For this work, paid hours tended to be based on contact time (i.e. preparation and marking time was unpaid) and, in some cases, the contact time paid was adjusted downwards for teaching which required little preparation or no marking. 64

Excluding staff on clinical rates, in 2001/02, 41 per cent of English academic staff were on fixed-term contracts, with a further four per cent on hourly rates, Table 3.8. There are distinct differences between the terms of employment for staff whose function is teaching only, research only or both teaching and research. Those who perform both teaching and research are most likely to be on permanent contracts, with 84% on permanent contracts. Research only staff are almost exclusively on fixed-term contracts, with 94% on fixed-term contracts. Those whose only function is teaching appear fairly evenly distributed across contract types, although as many hourly paid/casual staff are teaching only staff and hourly-paid are under-reported in the HESA data, the real distribution may be more skewed towards hourly-paid. The number of fixed-term contract staff had increased by 34 per cent between 1994/95 and 2000/01 (House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, 2002b, Appendix 53). Table 3.8 Employment activity by contractual terms (%) Contract Permanent Fixed-term contract Hourly paid/Casual staff Total % by activity n • •

Teaching & Teaching research only 84 38 15 28 1 34 100 100 60 9 65,567 10,329

Research only 6 94 0 100 31 34,198

Total

n

55 41 4 100 100 110,094

61094 45073 3927 110,094

Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record Data refer to staff at English HEIs and exclude those on clinical grades

64

In the Individualised Staff Record, ‘fixed-term contracts’ includes rolling fixed-term contracts, but term-time only staff who are on open ended contracts are considered to be permanent.

50

Old universities use more staff on fixed-term contracts. This is likely to be due to the greater use of research-only contract staff (see Table 3.9 below). In new universities and colleges three-quarters of staff are on permanent contracts, whereas almost one-half are on fixed-term contracts in old universities and specialist institutions. 3.3.4

Primary employment function Job content is an important influence on job satisfaction. The Individualised Staff Record records the primary employment function of staff, which shows whether a member of staff chiefly teaches, conducts research or does both. The majority of staff perform both teaching and research duties (Table 3.9). This figure is much lower in old universities than it is in the other types of HEI. This is because a large portion of academic staff in old universities – where the majority of research takes place – perform only research. The majority of single-function staff are research only. Specialist institutions have the most even spread of staff. This is partly because this group is the most heterogeneous group of institutions – some are primarily focused on teaching, such as schools of music and art, whereas others conduct a great deal of research, such as medical institutes. Table 3.9 Breakdown of Staff by Primary Employment Function (%) Total Teaching & research Research only Teaching only • •

60 31 9 100

Old 49 45 6 100

HEI Type New College 78 87 10 3 12 10 100 100

Spec inst 43 25 32 100

Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refer to staff at English HEIs and exclude those on clinical grades

3.3.5

Mode of employment The availability of part-time employment can be a key factor in recruiting and retaining staff. Whilst this is most commonly important for mothers with young children, it can be important for all staff, enabling them to choose their work/life balance or to combine more than one job. Thirteen per cent of academic staff are working part-time65 (Table 3.10). Parttime working is least common in old universities, as is the use of hourly paid/casual staff. Part-time working is also twice as common among staff on fixed term contracts as it is among permanent staff.

65

In the Individualised Staff Record, term-time only staff who work full time during term time are considered to be full time. Therefore, an individual could be 30/52=58% FTE, but still be recorded as full time. Likewise, someone who works two days per week during term time would be 23% FTE.

51

Table 3.10 Mode of Employment (%) Total Full-time Part-time Hourly paid/casual • • •

n 91,202 14,453 4,433 110,094*

% 83 13 4 100

Old 88 11 1 100

HEI Type New College Spec inst 76 77 71 16 14 18 8 9 10 100 100 100

*

Note that this total does not tally as 6 staff are entered as ‘other’. Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refer to staff at English HEIs and exclude those on clinical grades

Table 3.11 Mode of Employment by Terms of Employment (%) Permanent Full-time Part-time Hourly paid/casual Total • •

91 9 0 100

Fixed term contract 79 19 2 100

Total 83 13 4 100

Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refer to staff at English HEIs and exclude those on clinical grades

Part-time working is most common among teaching only staff. This, allied to the fact that almost all hourly paid/casual staff are employed to conduct teaching only, suggests that such employment is undertaken to fill in gaps in teaching. Similar proportions of staff whose primary employment is either both teaching and research or research only work part time and almost no staff are employed on an hourly paid/casual basis for these types of jobs. Table 3.12 Mode of Employment by Employment Function (%) Teaching & research Full-time 88 Part-time 12 Hourly paid/casual 1 100 • •

Research only

Teaching only

All

87 13 0 100

40 21 40 100

83 13 4 100

Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refer to staff at English HEIs and exclude those on clinical grades

52

3.4

The characteristics of academic staff in Higher Education

The personal characteristics of employees may provide pointers towards factors which have affected recruitment and retention. For example, a high age profile may indicate future problems of a retirement bulge; a low percentage of women may indicate historical discrimination in recruitment, discrimination prompting leaving or a lack of family-friendly working. As these examples suggest, the pattern of employment by characteristics cannot identify factors affecting recruitment and retention, but can suggest issues for further examination. The structure of characteristics of employees can also indicate the types of practices which might be used to improve recruitment and retention, e.g. for retention, family-friendly practices are more important the higher percentage of women employed. This section describes selected characteristics of academics in higher education institutions, namely, gender, age, ethnicity, nationality and their qualifications. 3.4.1

Gender Women comprise 38 per cent of the academic workforce in higher education institutions (Table 3.13). This falls to 36 per cent of full-time equivalent (FTE) staff, because of the greater number of women working part time. However, the HESA data may underestimate the percentage of females, due to the exclusion of those working less than 25 per cent FTE. Table 3.13 Academic staff by gender

Men Women Total n • •

per cent FTE

per cent Part-time

per cent Total

64 36 100 88,102

42 58 100 14,453

62 38 100 110,094

n 67,741 42,353 110,094

Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refer to staff at English HEIs and exclude those on clinical grades

Although women are substantially under-represented in academia (38 per cent) compared with women in the labour force as a whole (46 per cent female), comparison with employees with higher degrees, of whom 41 per cent are women, suggests only a slight under-representation. Women’s under-representation varies across departments66. Part-time working is twice as common among women as it is men (Table 3.14). One-fifth of women work part time. (This rises to one quarter if one includes hourly paid/casual staff). Indeed, even though women represent 38 per cent of total staff numbers, they represent 58 per cent of part-time academic staff. 66

Figures in Coe and Boddington (1999) show that even within science subjects, the proportion of female employees by cost centre varies from 8% (in electrical, electronic and computer engineering) to 73% (in Nursing and Paramedical Studies) in the old university sector and by a similar amount among new universities.

53

Table 3.14 Mode of Employment by Gender (%) Full-time Part-time Hourly paid/casual Total • •

Men 87 9 4 100

Women 76 20 5 100

Total 83 13 4 100

Source: HESA Individualised Staff Record 2001/2 Data refer to staff at English HEIs and exclude those on clinical grades

For men, the proportion of staff in part-time employment increases slightly with age until they reach 60, when it more than doubles (Table 3.15). For women, the increase happens when they enter their thirties, and remains relatively constant until they reach their sixties. This is consistent with the view that women use part-time employment to balance work and family commitments. Table 3.15 Mode of Employment by Age and Gender (%) Men Full-time Part-time Hourly paid/casual Women Full-time Part-time Hourly paid/casual • • •

u (w0 , h0 , x0 , z i )

where w0 and u0 represent the pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits of the individual’s current state respectively145 and E[.] is an expectations operator. It is possible that u can vary across individuals, e.g. long hours may be less attractive for people with children. From this we can see that the worker will quit if they think there is an alternative job k such that (3)

E [u (wk , hk , xk , z i )] − q > u (w j , h j , x j , z i )

where q represents the costs associated with quitting for alternative employment. This model is closely related to the worker-side of the classic turnover model of Jovanovic (1979), where worker-firm matches are experience goods146. In Jovanovic (1979), dissatisfaction – that is, reality being worse than one’s expectation – reveals itself in a positive relationship between the probability of separation and firm-specific tenure at low levels of tenure. As the individual learns more about the 143

This assumption is generally only implicit, with studies taking u(.) as the starting point (e.g. Clark and Oswald, 1996). 144 Note that we will allow the impact of certain aspects of the job on other utility generating activities through u(.). 145 Note that in addition to the benefits of a current job, w0 could also be the benefits received in unemployment. 146 In Jovanovic (1979), the wage offered is based on the firms’ expectation of the individual’s marginal product.

264

job, they are more likely to find aspects of it fail to meet their expectations. After this learning period, where expectations are confronted with outcomes, the separation probability will decrease with tenure as those with a higher probability of leaving do so and those with a lower probability remain (this is also because little learning takes place and there is only a small probability that the expected marginal product will decline sufficiently to cause the worker to move to a new firm). Moreover, if there is heterogeneity in the rate at which individuals find out whether their expectations are true or not, the relationship between tenure and separations will be negative. This heterogeneity can be due to heterogeneity of workers themselves or due to some random influence on the hazard rate at which the true values of u(.) for the job are revealed. Because of the uncertainty surrounding which other jobs are available and the probability of actually obtaining them, we can generalise (3) to obtain (4)

P = f {− u (w j , h j , x j , zi ) + E [u (wk , hk , xk , z i )] − q}

That is, the probability of leaving UK HE, P, is a negative function of utility in the current job, a positive function of the expectation of utility outside UK HE, and a negative function of the costs of quitting147. As is common with studies of satisfaction, we evaluate u(wj, hj, xj, zi) using measured job satisfaction. When it comes to the elements of E[u(wk, hk, xk, zk)], this is rather more difficult. We do have a measure of what respondents expect that they could earn if they worked outside academia, E[u(wk)]. Other elements and the effects of the costs of quitting are more difficult, and we aim to pick these up with other variables, such as subject dummies and variables to account for whether individuals have experience of work outside academia. Moreover, it is likely that individuals’ expression of satisfaction may not only be influenced by their current job, but also by their expectations of alternatives.

G.2 The Job Satisfaction of Academics

Our model of job satisfaction is a generalisation of models such as Clark (1997), Ward and Sloane (2000) and Lydon and Chevalier (2002). Our model differs because it explicitly models the links between the influence of the characteristics of a job (i.e. the elements of job satisfaction) and intentions to the UK higher education sector. In our model, job satisfaction depends on a number of elements of the job, as outlined in Table 6.3 on page 136. Before entering employment, individuals will form an expectation of what academic and alternative jobs will yield in terms of these elements and choose the one which offers the best set of features. Following Clark and Oswald (1996), Clarke, (1997, 2001), Ward and Sloane (2000) and Lydon and Chevalier (2002), we call the job which offers the best set of features, the one that offers the highest utility. Once an individual takes up a job and experiences the true value of the elements of the job, they will remain in the job unless they think that

147

Note that in this report we are interested in the probability of leaving UK higher education rather than merely the probability of leaving the job.

265

there is an alternative job which offers a higher level of utility, once one accounts for the costs associated with searching for alternative employment and changing jobs. We have noted that our model links models of satisfaction with Jovanovic’s (1979) classic model of job-matching and turnover, where worker-firm matches are experience goods148. In common with this model and its descendants, dissatisfaction caused by reality being worse than one’s expectation leads to a positive relationship between the probability of leaving and experience at the early stages of workers’ time in a job because they are likely to find aspects of it fail to meet their expectations149. After this learning period, where expectations are confronted with outcomes, the likelihood of leaving will decrease, since dissatisfaction is caused by a dissonance between expectations and reality. The fact that average reports of satisfaction tend to be high can be due to the fact that either: (a) individuals do have some useful knowledge of what the elements of the job are and/or (b) those who are dissatisfied with their job tend to leave. The implication is that reported satisfaction will on average tend to increase with experience, with the exception of low levels of experience, where it will increase. G.2.1.1 The satisfaction of temporary staff We have so far assumed that individuals will be offered a job that they find satisfactory. However, universities are not entirely certain of the productivity of potential staff. This problem is particularly acute at the beginning of an academic’s career. Indeed, academia is one of the few sections of the labour market where there is a readily accessible measure of workers’ productivity – research output. Publications in peer-reviewed journals represent an instrument whereby potential employers can form expectations of future productivity. The outcome of the research assessment exercise (RAE) on the academic labour market has been such that university departments will tend to be populated by individuals of a similar academic standard (particularly in terms of the RAE assessment criteria). The RAE has created an incentive for departments to employ staff who are as good or better than the current average in the department, in terms of research output, and to dispense with staff who do not ‘make the grade’. The outcome of this state of affairs is likely to be university departments with similar levels of productivity150. The existence of such a metric of productivity creates a problem for individuals with low levels of academic experience, particularly new academics. This means that these may have to endure jobs with lower levels of job satisfaction than more experienced academics with similar levels of productivity, in order to obtain academic credentials. This may create a dissonance between the levels of satisfaction that they feel they ought to be experiencing and those which the market is willing to offer. This is a potential explanation for the high proportion of new academics in

148

In Jovanovic (1979), the wage offered is based on the firms’ expectation of the individual’s marginal product. 149 If an individual’s expectations turn out to be correct, they will of course not quit unless a new job comes into being that offers higher utility (after accounting for job search and moving costs). 150 Unfortunately, we do not have information on publications at the individual level, only departmental RAE scores.

266

fixed-term research posts, a group which suffers particular retention difficulties (Bett, 1999)151. G.2.1.2 Satisfaction in a dynamic framework Thus far we have concentrated on individuals’ short-term expectations about a job. They will also have longer-term expectations about their career paths. There are a number of reasons why they may have to reassess their situation: the nature and terms of the job may change152, they may not receive promotion or their own circumstances may change. For example, young, single academics may be willing to accept research or teaching assistant posts with a fixed term, because they place a lower value on their own time and require a lower level of consumption than those who have families. Indeed, early research posts may be seen as investments. These changes will affect the utility an individual gains from a job and thus their reported satisfaction with it and their propensity to search for alternative employment or quit for another post. Thus it can be seen that what is important for reported satisfaction is not merely the level of the factors influencing job satisfaction – the number of hours, the amount of time spent on certain aspects (research, administration etc) – but rather changes in them. These changes also include the change that comes about when a job is sampled and an expectation is revealed. G.2.2 Analysis We investigate the determinants of satisfaction using ordered probits. In order to account for potential correlations between the equations, we estimate them as a system of seemingly-unrelated ordered probits (Weesie, 1999). The variables used in the analysis are outlined in Table A.23. The dependent variables are ordered categorical variable denoting satisfaction with each aspect of the job where 1 = Completely dissatisfied, 2 = Mostly dissatisfied, 3 = Somewhat dissatisfied, 4 = Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, 5 = Somewhat satisfied, 6 = Mostly satisfied, 7 = Completely satisfied. Explanatory variables include terms for experience, staff grade, permanence of contract and hours worked. Because not all staff undertake teaching, research and administration, we include total hours and separate variables for hours of research and administration. In common with other studies of this nature (e.g. Lydon and Chevalier, 2002) we include these terms as logarithms (taking the value of zero where staff report that they do not spend any hours on them). We also include dummy variables to account for differences by subject area and university. Because only a little over half of our respondents report what they expect to earn if they worked outside higher education, we exclude this from our initial specification. We do however report results including this variable in our salary and total earnings equations in Table A.25.

151

Another explanation for universities suffering recruitment difficulties among fixed-term research staff is caused by the uncertainty of re-employment. If staff value the security that tenured positions offer, and the possibility of a permanent post following a temporary one is uncertain, it is entirely rational for individuals to increase their job search intensity as they approach the end of their contracts. 152 By job here we include other roles within the university that make up the expected career path that begins with the initial post the individual is hired to fill.

267

Table A.23 Variable used in the analysis of job satisfaction

Variable e e2 GProf GSLect Non-perm htotal hresearch hadmin RAE5* RAE5 RAE4 w w* Non-white Female Children Female×Children Num children Female×Num children Married Female×Married

Explanation Experience. Years employed in UK higher education Experience squared Grade = Professor or head of department Grade = lecturer Not on permanent contract Log of total hours of work Log of hours spent on research Log of hours spent on administration department rated 5* in last RAE exercise department rated 5 in last RAE exercise department rated 4 in last RAE exercise log of annual earnings log of annual earnings would expect to earn if worked outside academia Non-white ethnic group female Has children Female interacted with Children Number of children Female interacted with Num children Married Female interacted with Married

University dummies (baseline = old southern university 2) Old Sth uni 1 Old southern university 1 New Sth uni 1 New southern university 1 New Lon uni New London university New Sth uni 2 New southern university 2 Old Lon uni Old London university New Nth uni New northern university New Sth uni 3 New southern university 3 Old Nth uni Old northern university New Nth uni 2 New northern university 2 Subject area dummies (baseline = Subjects allied to medicine)

The results of our estimation on the full sample are set out in Table A.24 (those for the reduced sample are presented in Table A.25). At the bottom of the table are the Log-pseudo likelihood, the likelihood ratio χ2 test of joint significance of the coefficients and an R2 goodness-of-fit measure due to McKelvey and Zaviona (1975) for the independent equations to give us an indication of the fit of the model to the data153. These indicate that there is some variation in how our equations fit the data. 153

Note that the methodology used to estimate the satisfaction ordered probits as a system involves first estimating the individual models separately and then using the variance covariance matrices to calculate robust standard errors. The goodness of fit measures are calculated based on the independent estimates and so are likely to under report the fit of the more efficient final system of equations.

268

All of them are in the range one would expect for this type of ordered categorical data. The likelihood ratio test that the regressions are informative, the joint test of significance of the coefficients of each equation is accepted at the 1% level for all equations. First of all, we can see that our results support the earlier result that there are no significant differences between the satisfaction of men and women with many of the elements of the academic employment. It is only with respect to their salary and total earnings that women report significantly different levels of satisfaction. In both cases, women report higher levels of satisfaction (this is not the case when we reduce the sample to those who report what they feel they could earn outside academia (Table A.25) although married women are significantly more satisfied with their salary and total earnings in this case). Members of non-white ethnic minorities are less satisfied with the opportunity they have to use their own initiative, the hours they have to work and their relations with their colleagues than their white colleagues are. This may indicate one of two things – either non-white staff have higher expectations than white staff over these dimensions of the job or they find themselves in jobs where these dimensions are less satisfactory. It seems unlikely that the former is the case, and therefore suggests that they are finding themselves in less satisfactory jobs154. There is some evidence also that they are less satisfied with their salary and total earnings, although only the latter is statistically significant, and then only at the 10% level. The dissatisfaction with total earnings becomes stronger (and more significant from a statistical standpoint) when we confine our sample to those who report what they feel they could earn outside the higher education sector. The fact that non-whites feel less dissatisfied with their salary than they are with their total earnings suggests that there may be greater wage equality within higher education than there is in the areas where academics work to supplement their salaries. As we would expect, given our discussion above, the relationship between experience and job-satisfaction (where it is statistically significant) is non-linear. Satisfaction with the non-pecuniary aspects of the job tends to decrease with experience for the first half of academics’ careers but then increases. Whether this can be seen as a pure learning effect as noted in the introduction is unclear, as the results imply that it can take ten or twenty years to learn whether one likes the job or not. In a cross-sectional study such as ours, it is difficult to distinguish between true experience and other age-related effects, which may have a part to play in explaining jobsatisfaction among English academic staff. Two elements where experience does not have a significant effect are satisfaction with salary and total earnings. This is as we would expect, as the wage structures in UK HEIs are highly structured and pay scales can be seen by job applicants before they apply for and accept job offers. The one influence on earnings that the individual can predict less well is promotions and the coefficients are significant and of the expected sign; the non-linear relationship of satisfaction decreasing over the early career and then increasing is supported by the data. Professors and, to a lesser extent, senior lecturers are generally happier in their jobs than lower grades – particularly, and unsurprisingly, with promotions. Professors tend on the whole to be more satisfied with their jobs than senior lecturers. In

154

Our supposition is based on the lack of evidence that ethnic minority employees have higher expectations in these areas and that disadvantage in employment is common for ethnic minorities.

269

particular, professors are significantly more satisfied with their salaries and total earnings whereas senior lecturers are not significantly different from lower grade staff. One explanation for this result is that if all staff have similar levels of ability, but jobs are rationed so that only a lucky few get promoted, then those that do not get promoted will exhibit higher levels of dissatisfaction. Another extreme case is where the ability of staff varies and those that are promoted are the ones of the highest ability. In this case, if lower ability staff feel they are of the same ability as those who are promoted (or higher), they are will exhibit higher levels of dissatisfaction. The truth may lie somewhere between these two extremes. One area where senior lecturers are significantly more satisfied than professors and lower grades is with their physical work conditions. It may be the case that senior lecturers receive better offices etc than lower grades and are thus more satisfied than lower grades, but that professors do not receive an additional one and compare themselves with senior lecturers when considering their satisfaction. We suggested in the introduction that staff on non-permanent contracts are likely to be less satisfied with elements of their job than other staff because temporary jobs reflect an investment at the beginning of an academic career, rather than a career job in itself. Our results show that staff on non-permanent contracts are significantly less satisfied with their promotion prospects and their job security. They appear to be more satisfied with the actual work itself than permanent staff, although this result is only statistically significant at the 10% level. It is interesting to note that they are more satisfied with their earnings than permanent staff. This is consistent with the idea that they are willing to sacrifice earnings for other aspects of the job at this early stage of their career.155 There are few clear patterns in the variation in satisfaction across subject areas. Academic staff working in medicine and dentistry, biological and physical sciences are more dissatisfied with their job security than those working in other areas, although those in physical sciences appear to be more satisfied with their salaries and other earnings.

155

Note that staff on non-permanent contracts are, on average, ten years younger than permanent staff.

270

Table A.24 Results – satisfaction

Female Children Female× Children Num children Female× Num children Married Female× Married Non-white e e

2

Actual work Promotion itself prospects -0.112 -0.128

0.240***

Total earnings 0.205**

Rel. with manager -0.067

Job security 0.008

Use own initiative 0.087

(0.086)

(0.083)

(0.088)

(0.088)

(0.083)

(0.083)

(0.084)

(0.083)

(0.085)

(0.082)

-0.103

0.019

-0.056

-0.063

0.070

-0.028

0.038

0.007

0.106

0.049

(0.103)

(0.099)

(0.105)

(0.106)

(0.099)

(0.100)

(0.100)

(0.099)

(0.101)

(0.098)

0.226

-0.178

-0.258

-0.239

-0.196

-0.060

0.105

0.060

-0.133

-0.028

(0.161)

(0.154)

(0.164)

(0.164)

(0.154)

(0.156)

(0.156)

(0.154)

(0.158)

(0.154)

GSLect Non-perm

Rel. with colleagues 0.090

Hours 0.021

Physical work conditions 0.058

0.058

-0.044

0.006

0.028

0.003

0.018

0.014

0.027

0.022

-0.002

(0.038)

(0.037)

(0.039)

(0.040)

(0.037)

(0.037)

(0.037)

(0.037)

(0.038)

(0.036)

-0.035

0.083

0.049

0.039

0.042

0.002

-0.076

-0.015

0.002

0.008

(0.065)

(0.062)

(0.066)

(0.066)

(0.062)

(0.063)

(0.063)

(0.062)

(0.064)

(0.062)

*

0.006

0.084

-0.049

-0.019

0.007

-0.031

-0.096

-0.078

-0.010

0.138

(0.073)

(0.071)

(0.075)

(0.075)

(0.071)

(0.071)

(0.072)

(0.071)

(0.072)

(0.070)

0.074

0.065

0.110

0.147

0.105

0.193*

0.011

-0.176*

-0.014

-0.060

(0.105)

(0.101)

(0.107)

(0.108)

(0.101)

(0.102)

(0.103)

(0.102)

(0.103)

*

***

*

(0.101) ***

-0.024

-0.038

-0.102

-0.161

-0.014

0.034

-0.267

-0.154

-0.270

(0.083)

(0.081)

(0.085)

(0.085)

(0.081)

(0.080)

(0.081)

(0.081)

(0.082)

-0.019**

-0.058***

-0.007

-0.002

-0.045***

-0.024***

-0.012

-0.039*** -0.026***

(0.008)

(0.008)

(0.008)

(0.008)

(0.008)

(0.008)

(0.008)

(0.008)

(0.008)

(0.008)

0.001**

0.001***

0.000

-0.000

0.001***

0.001***

0.000

0.001***

0.001***

0.001***

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

-0.029

**

GProf

Salary

***

***

***

***

***

***

-0.069 (0.080)

-0.020***

0.183

0.991

0.319

0.370

0.368

0.645

0.326

0.086

0.071

(0.080)

(0.078)

(0.090)

(0.090)

(0.077)

(0.079)

(0.079)

(0.076)

(0.078)

(0.076)

-0.069

0.272***

0.084

0.069

0.076

0.169***

0.036

-0.107*

-0.092

-0.186***

(0.063)

(0.061)

(0.066)

(0.066)

(0.061)

(0.061)

(0.062)

(0.061)

(0.062)

(0.061)

-0.068

0.055

-0.079

-0.096

(0.062)

(0.061)

(0.062)

(0.061)

*

***

***

***

0.116

-0.475

0.356

0.316

0.022

-1.447

(0.063)

(0.061)

(0.068)

(0.068)

(0.061)

(0.065)

271

***

htotal hresearch hadmin

Actual work Promotion itself prospects 0.050 -0.250***

RAE5 RAE4 w Medicine and dentistry Biological sciences Agriculture and related subjects Physical sciences Mathematical sciences Computing sciences Engineering

-0.521***

Total Rel. with earnings manager -0.454*** -0.217***

Job security -0.148**

Use own initiative -0.149**

Hours -0.853***

Rel. with colleagues -0.108*

Physical work conditions -0.107*

(0.060)

(0.060)

(0.080)

(0.078)

(0.061)

(0.060)

(0.059)

(0.079)

(0.059)

(0.058)

0.069***

0.035

-0.054**

-0.058**

0.018

-0.015

0.067***

0.136***

-0.001

0.018

(0.022)

(0.023)

(0.023)

(0.022)

(0.024)

(0.024)

(0.023)

(0.023)

(0.023)

-0.135***

-0.027

-0.103***

-0.109*** -0.042

-0.054**

-0.072***

-0.205*** -0.111***

-0.078***

(0.028)

(0.027)

(0.029)

(0.029)

(0.027)

(0.027)

(0.027)

(0.028)

(0.027)

(0.027)

*

0.109

*

0.148

0.088

0.011

-0.002

(0.078)

(0.079)

(0.078)

(0.079)

(0.077)

***

RAE5*

Salary

**

**

(0.022)

0.253

0.191

-0.166

-0.101

0.135

(0.081)

(0.077)

(0.081)

(0.081)

(0.078)

0.168**

0.073

-0.177**

-0.141**

0.047

0.091

0.039

-0.061

-0.071

-0.073

(0.070)

(0.067)

(0.071)

(0.071)

(0.067)

(0.068)

(0.068)

(0.067)

(0.069)

(0.067)

0.062

0.031

-0.053

-0.015

-0.083

-0.144

**

-0.008

0.007

**

-0.169

-0.256***

(0.072)

(0.069)

(0.073)

(0.073)

(0.069)

(0.070)

(0.070)

(0.069)

(0.070)

(0.069)

-0.001

0.003

0.911***

0.795***

0.005

0.010*

0.000

0.001

0.004

0.002

(0.006)

(0.006)

(0.108)

(0.108)

(0.006)

(0.006)

(0.006)

(0.006)

(0.006)

(0.006)

0.050

**

-0.033

-0.099

-0.132

-0.149

-0.128

-0.269

0.010

0.075

-0.095

(0.115)

(0.110)

(0.118)

(0.120)

(0.110)

(0.111)

(0.112)

(0.111)

(0.113)

(0.109)

-0.132

-0.151*

0.008

-0.029

-0.167*

-0.348***

-0.050

-0.091

-0.093

-0.093

(0.093)

(0.089)

(0.094)

(0.094)

(0.089)

(0.090)

(0.090)

(0.089)

(0.091)

(0.088)

0.273

-0.100

-0.238

-0.314

0.085

0.096

0.208

-0.230

-0.048

-0.423**

(0.212)

(0.205)

(0.210)

(0.211)

(0.204)

(0.209)

(0.210)

(0.203)

(0.210)

(0.200)

**

**

***

0.136

-0.076

0.245

0.242

0.001

-0.288

0.130

0.083

0.065

-0.057

(0.101)

(0.096)

(0.102)

(0.103)

(0.097)

(0.097)

(0.098)

(0.097)

(0.099)

(0.096)

0.125

0.233*

0.134

0.114

0.111

0.057

0.253*

0.201

0.005

0.212

(0.135)

(0.129)

(0.136)

(0.136)

(0.131)

(0.131)

(0.133)

(0.131)

(0.133)

-0.055

*

*

0.215

0.117

0.030

0.059

0.064

0.191

-0.062

(0.129) *

-0.200

0.388***

(0.114)

(0.109)

(0.115)

(0.115)

(0.110)

(0.110)

(0.111)

(0.111)

(0.112)

(0.110)

-0.131

-0.062

0.079

0.033

-0.050

-0.068

-0.045

-0.179*

-0.073

0.048

(0.111)

(0.108)

(0.114)

(0.114)

(0.108)

(0.108)

(0.109)

(0.108)

(0.110)

(0.107)

272

Other technology

Actual work Promotion itself prospects 0.505 -0.055 (0.362)

(0.333)

-0.453**

-0.551***

0.192

Total earnings 0.234

Rel. with manager 0.343

Job security 0.091

Use own initiative 0.276

(0.349)

(0.350)

(0.341)

(0.339)

(0.342)

(0.334)

(0.344)

(0.328)

-0.179

-0.112

-0.220

-0.249

-0.213

-0.340*

-0.395**

-0.267

Salary

Rel. with colleagues 0.043

Hours 0.104

Physical work conditions 0.045

Architecture and planning

(0.192)

(0.190)

(0.196)

(0.201)

(0.186)

(0.189)

(0.188)

(0.188)

(0.190)

(0.185)

Social studies

-0.047

0.104

0.118

0.120

-0.110

-0.066

-0.091

-0.102

-0.221***

-0.091

(0.084)

(0.081)

(0.087)

(0.088)

(0.081)

(0.082)

(0.082)

(0.081)

(0.083)

(0.081)

Business and admin. studies Librarianship & info. science English lit. And classics Modern languages Other humanities Art and design Education Combined studies Old Sth uni 1

New Lon uni

**

-0.039

-0.213

-0.140

-0.093

-0.035

0.139

-0.077

-0.074

-0.243

(0.108)

(0.104)

(0.111)

(0.111)

(0.104)

(0.104)

(0.105)

(0.104)

(0.106)

0.159

0.234

0.223

0.072

0.660*

0.391

0.152

0.144

-0.387

-0.073

(0.372)

(0.347)

(0.383)

(0.383)

(0.363)

(0.362)

(0.358)

(0.347)

(0.359)

(0.349)

0.076

-0.038

0.187

0.108

-0.208

-0.271*

-0.175

-0.293*

-0.005

-0.210

(0.168)

(0.160)

(0.164)

(0.166)

(0.160)

(0.163)

(0.163)

(0.160)

(0.165)

(0.159)

0.288**

0.183

0.021

-0.057

0.002

0.036

0.101

0.224

0.243*

0.521***

(0.147)

(0.142)

(0.156)

(0.156)

(0.143)

(0.145)

(0.144)

(0.144)

(0.104)

(0.146) *

0.167

(0.142) **

0.046

0.139

0.141

0.132

0.011

-0.142

-0.123

-0.160

-0.196

(0.101)

(0.096)

(0.104)

(0.104)

(0.097)

(0.098)

(0.098)

(0.097)

(0.099)

(0.096)

-0.284*

-0.290*

-0.071

-0.152

-0.272*

-0.422***

-0.383**

-0.260*

-0.236

-0.302*

-0.134

(0.159)

(0.157)

(0.174)

(0.174)

(0.155)

(0.156)

(0.156)

(0.157)

(0.159)

(0.156)

0.265***

0.064

0.029

0.048

0.149

0.164*

0.170*

-0.048

0.033

0.105

(0.099)

(0.094)

(0.101)

(0.102)

(0.095)

(0.095)

(0.096)

(0.094)

(0.097)

(0.094)

0.039

0.037

-0.078

0.055

0.105

-0.056

-0.148

0.199

0.125

0.181

(0.124)

(0.118)

(0.124)

(0.124)

(0.119)

(0.120)

(0.122)

(0.119)

(0.123)

(0.119)

0.097

-0.291***

-0.248**

-0.186*

0.101

0.191*

0.284***

0.146

-0.088

0.116

(0.101)

(0.096)

(0.099)

(0.099)

(0.097)

(0.099)

(0.099)

(0.097)

(0.098)

(0.096)

*

*

***

New Sth uni 1

**

***

**

**

**

0.322

0.322

0.244

0.243

0.259

0.292

0.266

0.147

0.109

-0.174

(0.124)

(0.119)

(0.127)

(0.127)

(0.121)

(0.121)

(0.121)

(0.119)

(0.122)

(0.118)

0.065

-0.162*

-0.061

-0.034

0.005

-0.345***

-0.088

0.095

0.008

-0.888***

(0.101)

(0.098)

(0.105)

(0.105)

(0.098)

(0.098)

(0.099)

(0.098)

(0.100)

(0.098)

273

New Sth uni 2 Old Lon uni New Nth uni New Sth uni 3 Old Nth uni New Nth uni 2

τ1

Actual work Promotion itself prospects ** 0.231 0.091

-0.010

Total earnings 0.016

(0.094)

(0.091)

(0.097)

(0.097)

0.120

0.045

-0.230***

-0.211*** 0.283***

(0.079)

(0.075)

(0.080)

(0.080)

(0.076)

(0.076)

(0.077)

(0.075)

(0.077)

(0.075)

0.198

-0.083

0.089

0.026

0.213*

-0.589***

0.004

0.031

0.104

-0.607***

(0.128)

(0.122)

(0.136)

(0.122)

(0.122)

(0.123)

(0.123)

(0.125)

(0.122)

Salary

(0.136)

Use own initiative 0.025

(0.090)

(0.091)

(0.092)

-0.002

0.258***

Physical work conditions -0.163*

(0.091)

(0.093)

(0.090)

0.169**

0.101

-0.060

-0.052

0.157

-0.051

-0.162

-0.169

0.230

-0.000

0.089

0.039

0.308

(0.090)

(0.098)

(0.098)

(0.091)

(0.091)

(0.092)

(0.091)

(0.093)

-0.057

-0.046

-0.032

-0.070

0.215***

0.239***

0.077

0.067

0.059

-0.062

(0.066)

(0.064)

(0.067)

(0.068)

(0.064)

(0.065)

(0.065)

(0.064)

(0.065)

(0.063)

0.044

-0.096

0.077

0.111

-0.186

-0.519***

-0.147

0.245**

-0.103

-0.421***

(0.128)

(0.123)

(0.135)

(0.135)

(0.124)

(0.124)

(0.125)

(0.124)

(0.126)

-2.346***

-2.468***

5.946***

4.893***

-2.615***

-2.703***

-2.685***

-5.221*** -3.202***

-2.534***

(0.242)

(0.232)

(1.033)

(1.033)

(0.234)

(0.233)

(0.235)

(0.295)

(0.227)

-1.993

***

(0.241) ***

***

-1.947*** -1.364***

(0.231)

(1.033)

(1.033)

(0.232)

(0.231)

τ3

-1.453***

7.179***

6.147***

-1.750***

-1.852***

(0.230)

(0.230)

(1.034)

(1.034)

(0.231)

(0.230)

(0.228)

(0.290)

τ4

-0.974***

-0.871***

7.519***

6.544***

-1.364***

-1.413***

-1.496***

-3.641*** -1.763***

-1.057***

(0.229)

(0.229)

(1.035)

(1.035)

(0.231)

(0.230)

(0.227)

(0.289)

(0.224)

τ5

-0.224 (0.229)

(0.229)

(1.036)

(1.035)

(0.230)

(0.229)

τ6

1.509***

0.628***

9.142***

8.105***

0.097

0.162

(0.230)

(0.231)

(1.039)

(1.038)

(0.230)

(0.229)

Observations LPL

2,706 -3,464.2 215.6*** 0.087

2,662 -4,763.7 418.4*** 0.160

2,361 -4,257.9 245.8*** 0.106

2,339 -4,235.1 225.9*** 0.099

2,692 -4,630.7 204.2*** 0.073

2,695 -4,432.4 1082.8*** 0.354

χ2

M&Z R2 •

Robust standard errors in parentheses,

8.030

7.032

-0.983

***

-0.909

-2.224

(0.123)

-1.142***

***

-2.292

***

(0.090)

(0.232)

***

-2.156

***

-0.133

-1.733

***

5.513

***

***

τ2

-0.374

6.545

***

**

Rel. with colleagues 0.157*

Hours

(0.094)

***

*

Job security 0.031

*

***

*

Rel. with manager 0.062

-4.669

-2.668

(0.230)

(0.292)

(0.232)

-1.832***

-4.001*** -2.174***

***

-0.794

(0.230)

(0.224)

(0.228) ***

***

-0.539**

-3.187

-1.139

(0.226)

(0.288)

(0.227)

0.375*

-2.104*** 0.267

0.637***

(0.226)

(0.286)

(0.224)

2,705 -3,997.9 196.3*** 0.073

2,690 2,706 -4,567.0 -3,774.3 708.3*** 156.3*** 0.236 0.060

* significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%

274

(0.225)

(0.227)

(0.223)

2,698 -4,668.2 94.1*** 0.102

Levels of satisfaction with many of the job dimensions among staff at university 2 (one of the southern new universities) appear to be higher than those at the other universities (recall that the baseline is one of the highly-rated southern old universities). There seems no reason to believe this was merely a locational effect, as, whilst the location might be thought to be good, other case study universities were in good locations. It, therefore, was likely to be a function of the university. In the qualitative research, the main difference between this university and the other case study universities was that many respondents praised the ethos of the university and its treatment of staff, describing it as caring, respectful of individuals and flexible over individual needs. It is this, perhaps, that led to greater satisfaction amongst its staff. The universities where satisfaction with salary is lower are located in the south of England where living costs are higher. However, this dissatisfaction is not present at all of the southern and London universities. Indeed the satisfaction at the first of the highly-rated southern old universities (and the London one) is significantly higher than the other. There is a negative relationship between total hours worked and satisfaction with all elements except the actual work itself. This reflects the general premise that people generally prefer fewer hours of work than more. However, for those who do it, hours spent on research have a positive effect on satisfaction with the actual work itself, the ability to use one’s own initiative and with hours generally. Note that this is the effect of an hour of research, leaving the total number of hours worked unchanged. The net affect of an additional hour of research on satisfaction (i.e. accounting for both the coefficient on htotal and hresearch) is only positive with respect to the actual work itself. Hours of work spent on administration have a negative effect on satisfaction with all dimensions of academics’ job satisfaction, with the exception of their promotion prospects and relations with their managers. It may be the case that the positive benefits of administration with respect to these two factors offset the negative effects on general satisfaction. Alternatively, it may just be the case that there is no significant relationship between the amount of time spent on admin and satisfaction with promotion prospects and relations with one’s manager. The fact that the negative effect of hours spent on research and administration is greater than extra hours generally, suggests that staff who put in extra effort in these tasks do not feel that they are adequately rewarded. The fact that the more time staff spend on research the more satisfied they are with the actual work itself is consistent with the idea that research is a non-pecuniary benefit of academic work. That is, research is one of the factors that offsets the low salaries in academic relative to alternative employment. Conversely, hours spent on administration appear to reduce satisfaction almost across the board. Staff in five star departments tend to enjoy the work itself more than other staff (as, to a lesser extent, do staff at five-rated departments) and tend to be more satisfied with their promotion prospects, their relations with their manager and their ability to use their own initiative. This is consistent with the idea that staff wish to work at institutions of academic excellence, and the stability that the recognition of this excellence imparts is also appreciated by staff. Staff at five star departments are, however, less satisfied with their salaries (although not their total earnings). This may reflect the fact that the national pay scales in academia constrain institutions’ ability to reward the most productive workers. This conclusion is supported by the results reported in Table A.25, where the inclusion of a measure of individual staff’s own assessment of their abilities – the wage they would expect to command outside 275

academia – is included. In this case, the negative effect of RAE5* on satisfaction with salary and total earnings disappears. Earnings are not significantly correlated with satisfaction with any of the nonpecuniary aspects of the job. This suggests that staff are able to consider the pecuniary and non-pecuniary aspects of their job independently. This cannot, however, tell us whether lower wages are traded off with other aspects of the job, because there is not enough within-academia variation in these factors. In order to answer this question, one would have to have a sample that included responses for people in non-academic jobs. Apart from the effect of being in a five-star department noted above, the inclusion of the expected outside wage has little effect on the coefficients in the results for satisfaction with salary and total earnings except for that on current wages and experience. The constraint that the coefficients on w and w* are equal and opposite is rejected at the 1% level for both equations. We can, therefore, reject the hypothesis that it is only relative earnings that count for satisfaction with earnings. The lack of a significant effect of experience in these specifications may reflect the fact that individuals’ perception of their own worth outside UK academia diverge from their actual salaries over their career. Table A.25 Including alternative salary

Female

Salary 0.085

Total earnings 0.054

(0.105)

(0.105)

Children

0.018

-0.009

(0.129)

(0.129)

Female×Children

-0.286

-0.253

(0.214)

(0.214)

Num children

0.022

0.040

(0.050)

(0.050)

Female× Num children

0.045

0.028

(0.092)

(0.092)

Married

-0.106

-0.132

(0.088)

(0.088)

Female×Married

0.328**

0.352***

(0.128)

(0.128)

Non-white

-0.138

-0.210**

(0.102)

(0.102)

e

-0.014

-0.001

e

2

(0.011)

(0.011)

-0.000

-0.000

(0.000)

(0.000)

GProf

0.509***

0.536***

(0.117)

(0.117)

GSLect

0.115

0.084

(0.081)

(0.081)

Non-perm

0.294***

0.263***

(0.082)

(0.082)

htotal

-0.587***

-0.504***

(0.100)

(0.095)

hresearch

-0.043

-0.044

(0.030)

(0.030)

276

hadmin

Salary -0.085** (0.036)

(0.036)

RAE5*

-0.012

0.038

(0.097)

(0.097)

RAE5

-0.025

-0.003

(0.088)

(0.089)

RAE4

0.083

0.120

(0.089)

(0.089)

w

1.758***

1.474***

(0.152)

(0.149)

w*

-0.992***

-0.868***

(0.089)

Total earnings -0.091**

(0.089)

Medicine and dentistry -0.192

-0.190

(0.145)

(0.147)

Biological sciences

-0.069

-0.101

(0.113)

(0.113)

Agriculture and related subjects

-0.113

-0.239

(0.236)

(0.237)

Physical sciences

0.325***

0.316***

(0.122)

(0.122)

Mathematical sciences

0.216

0.241

(0.168)

(0.168)

Computing sciences

0.244*

0.293**

(0.134)

(0.134)

Engineering

0.058

0.023

(0.131)

(0.131)

Other technology

0.611

0.708*

(0.413)

(0.414)

Architecture and planning

-0.416*

-0.341

(0.239)

(0.247)

Social studies

0.204*

0.168

Business and admin. studies Librarianship & info. science English lit. And classics

(0.107)

(0.107)

-0.026

0.015

(0.132)

(0.132)

0.229

0.022

(0.511)

(0.510)

0.006

-0.066

(0.210)

(0.210)

Modern languages

-0.108

-0.154

(0.211)

(0.211)

Other humanities

0.145

0.164

(0.134)

(0.134)

Art and design

-0.053

-0.161

(0.215)

(0.216)

Education

-0.171

-0.113

(0.129)

(0.129)

Combined studies

-0.088

0.004

(0.155)

(0.154)

Old Sth uni 1

-0.166

-0.114

(0.117)

(0.117)

New Sth uni 1

0.338**

0.284*

(0.161)

(0.161)

New Lon uni

0.028

0.034

(0.132)

(0.132)

New Sth uni 2

0.116

0.144

(0.118)

(0.118)

277

Old Lon uni

Salary -0.119 (0.095)

(0.095)

New Nth uni

0.061

0.017

(0.175)

(0.175)

New Sth uni 3

-0.126

-0.127

(0.121)

(0.122)

Old Nth uni

0.015

-0.017

(0.080)

(0.080)

New Nth uni 2

0.300*

0.355**

(0.163)

(0.163)

τ1

3.964***

2.601*

(1.450)

(1.445)

τ2

4.616***

3.269**

(1.451)

(1.445)

τ3

5.296***

3.956***

(1.452)

(1.446)

τ4

5.654***

4.363***

(1.452)

(1.446)

τ5

6.208***

4.899***

(1.453)

(1.447)

τ6

7.309***

5.952***

(1.455)

(1.448)

Observations LPL

1,621 -2,839.295 326.64*** 0.204

1,610 -2,847.043 279.23*** 0.175

χ2

M&Z R2 • •

Total earnings -0.080

Standard errors in parentheses * significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%

G.2.3 Is there a single overall measure of satisfaction? Many studies utilise a single measure for overall job satisfaction, with the assumption (either implicit or explicit) that the factors mentioned above are intermediate determinants. This is sometimes done by extracting the first principal component of reported satisfaction with these elements. Beyond the statistical objection to performing factor analysis on categorical variables, our discussion above suggests that this may be an overly simplistic view of job satisfaction and that there may be a number of separate and possibly orthogonal elements that need to be considered. A more appropriate methodology is to perform a factor analysis on the predicted values of latent variables assumed to underlie these categorical reported measures of satisfaction and examine how much of the total variation in satisfaction with these ten elements can be explained by the extracted factors156. In this section we perform principal component analysis of the latent variable, calculated on the covariance matrix.

Because of the reduction in sample size imposed by the inclusion of w* in our analysis, we restrict our analysis here to the predicted values obtained from the analysis outlined in Table A.24. The results of performing principal-components factor analysis on our predicted values of the ten elements of job satisfaction are

156

For more on factor analysis, see for example Harman (1976).

278

reported in Table A.26. This table reports the factor loadings, along with the eigenvalues and the proportion explained by the factors extracted with eigenvalues of more than one157.

Table A.26 Factor loadings for overall job satisfaction

Element of satisfaction The actual work itself Promotion prospects Salary Total earnings Relations with manager Job security Being able to use own initiative The hours you work Relations with colleagues Physical work conditions Eigenvalue Proportion explained Cumulative

Factor 1 0.815 0.431 0.011 0.015 0.874 -0.045 0.892 0.801 0.736 0.751 4.158 0.416 0.416

Factor 2 -0.044 0.120 0.986 0.986 0.051 0.181 0.037 -0.124 -0.014 0.000 2.013 0.201 0.617

Factor 3 -0.201 0.800 -0.167 -0.161 0.139 0.917 0.107 -0.336 -0.066 -0.045 1.724 0.172 0.790

There are three factors with eigenvalues of more than one and together these explain 79 per cent of the variation in the ten latent satisfaction variables158. The first factor explains just over half of the common variance of the predicted satisfaction variables. The factor loadings suggest that this factor explains much of the variation of six of the factors: respondents’ relations with their manager, being able to use their own initiative, the hours they work, relations with colleagues and physical work conditions159. We label this factor ‘satisfaction with non-pecuniary elements of the current job’. The second factor merely reiterates what we saw in the analysis above, namely that the explanation for both salary and total earnings is highly correlated. Moreover, the analysis on the whole sample suggests that the pecuniary factors are quite separate from the non-pecuniary ones. The final factor in the analysis of the whole sample includes satisfaction with promotion prospects and job security. We call this factor ‘longer-term prospects’.160 These results suggest that there are in fact three separate sets of factors which determine the job satisfaction of academics. The most important from the viewpoint of most economists, namely earnings, is distinct from the other dimensions of the job. Satisfaction with their longer-term prospects explains almost as much of the total variation. The majority of the variation in six of the job dimensions is explained by a 157

The so called ‘Kaiser-Guttman rule’ after Guttman (1954) and Kaiser (1970). In what follows, we will refer to the ten predicted latent satisfaction variables as ‘predicted satisfaction variables’ for brevity. 159 It also explains some of the satisfaction with promotion prospects. 160 Note that promotion prospects also enter into the principal ‘non-pecuniary’ factor, although with a lower factor loading than the other non-pecuniary factors. 158

279

single common factor, which we call ‘satisfaction with non-pecuniary elements of the current job’. It is important to note that these proportions of variance explained are not the same as weights – they do not rank the relative importance of these factors. However, the influence of these factors on the likelihood of leaving can be assessed and this is explored in the next chapter (see Section G.3.2).

G.3 Factors affecting the likelihood of leaving Higher Education G.3.1 Introduction In this section we examine the influence of reported satisfaction, wage differentials, experience and other characteristics on the likelihood of leaving UK higher education of academics. Our survey asked how likely staff thought it was that they would leave UK higher education161. Their responses are summarised in Table 7.5. We will investigate the influence of job satisfaction and a number of other elements on this likelihood of leaving by means of ordered probits, as used in the analysis above. The variables included in the analysis are set out in Table A.27. Table A.27 Variables used in analysis of likelihood of leaving

Variable w w* No w* S1 S2 S3 Age 55+ Non-white Female Married Female×married Children Female× Children Num children Female× Num children EU Pass OZNZ USA

Explanation log of annual earnings log of annual earnings would expect to earn if worked outside academia Individual does not report w* First factor of satisfaction (non-pecuniary elements) Second factor of satisfaction (pecuniary elements) Third factor of satisfaction (longer-term prospects) Aged 55 years or over Non-white ethnic group female Married female interacted with married Has children aged 16 or under Female interacted with Children Number of children aged 16 or under female interacted with children Holds non-UK EU or EEA passport Holds Australian or New Zealand passport Holds US passport

161

Due to concern about the reliability of responses to a question on the likelihood of leaving, respondents were also asked to describe their job search activities. The relationship between responses to these questions and to the likelihood of leaving was tested and the likelihood of leaving reflected job search activity. However, analysis similar to that which follows was conducted using job search activities as the dependent variable. The results were similar (in the same direction) to those using the likelihood of leaving variable, but tended to be insignificant. Therefore, we report the analysis using the likelihood of leaving only.

280

Variable Foreign HQ UG HQ Masters T HQ Masters R Study PhD e e2 Break from academia Non-UK HE Career change Prof: manager Prof: prof Prof: assoc Prof: admin Prof: other PT Non-perm End of contract

Explanation Holds other foreign passport Highest qualification = UG degree Highest qualification = Taught masters Highest qualification = Masters by research Is studying part time for PhD Experience. Years employed in higher education Experience squared Has taken career break from academia

Has worked in non-UK HE for more than one year Has changed career to enter academia Occupation prior to HE: Manager or senior official Occupation prior to HE: Professional Occupation prior to HE: Associate professional Occupation prior to HE: Administrative or secretarial Occupation prior to HE: Some other job Working part-time Not on permanent contract Months to end of contract (fixed-term contracts only) Staff-type (baseline = teaching staff) Researcher-only Staff type = researcher only Lecturer/researcher Staff type = lecturer and researcher GProf Grade = Professor or head of department GSLect Grade = lecturer htotal Total hours worked hresearch Hours spent on research hadmin Hours spent on administration RAE lowers sat RAE lowers satisfaction a lot QAA lowers sat QAA lowers satisfaction a lot The general direction of higher education policy lowers Policy lowers sat satisfaction a lot Teach no Would prefer to spend no time teaching Research all Would prefer to spend all time on research Admin no Would prefer to spend no time on administration Workload to high Consider total workload to be very much too high Find decisions on either individual pay, recruitment to senior posts Not fair or promotion at current university not at all fair RAE 5* department rated 5* in last RAE exercise RAE 5 department rated 5 in last RAE exercise RAE 4 department rated 4 in last RAE exercise Subject dummies University dummies

G.3.2 Results The results of estimating our ordered probit model of the likelihood of leaving UK higher education are presented in Table A.28. We estimate four specifications of

281

the model. Because of the large numbers who do not report w*, the first specification includes a dummy variable for these non-reporters (No w*) and the second excludes these. The goodness-of-fit statistic suggests that the latter is marginally a better fit to the data. The third specification replaces the w and w* with the second principal component factor from the satisfaction analysis – satisfaction with pecuniary factors (salary and total earnings). The fit of this equation is slightly lower than the first two specifications. Finally, because of the co-linearity between w and w* discussed below, we include a further specification with the difference between current and expected alternative salary, w-w*. The effect of both current earnings (w) and expected non-HE earnings (w*) on the likelihood of leaving UK HE is negative, with the latter being slightly smaller than the former. One reason for this result is that it is due to the high degree of co-linearity between the two terms – individuals who earn more in UK academia expect to earn more outside UK academia162. Because of this, in the final column of Table A.28 we report the results of a specification with the difference between current and expected earnings w–w*. This term is almost always negative163, implying that most academic staff feel they can earn more outside UK academia. The sign on the coefficient of the wage difference variable is positive, implying that the likelihood of leaving UK academia falls the greater current earnings are relative to expected earnings, the coefficient is, however, not significant. When w and w* are replaced with the satisfaction with earnings factor (factor 2), this is found to be negatively related to the likelihood of leaving – i.e. the more satisfied an academic is with their earnings, the less likely they are to leave. Turning to the other satisfaction factors, the first factor – satisfaction with non-pecuniary elements of the current job – has a negative and statistically significant effect on the likelihood of leaving UK HE. Thus the more satisfied academics are with the elements of their job such as the actual work itself, relations with managers and colleagues and hours, the less likely they are to leave the sector. This is not true for the third factor – longer-term prospects. The effect of this on academics’ propensity to leave UK HE appears to be positive – that is, the likelihood of their leaving actually increases with their satisfaction with their longer-term prospects – although the statistical significance of the term is not robust to specification. This result may be because what is important is factors such as the permanency of academics’ jobs and the amount of fixed-term contract remaining for non-permanent staff that are the important influences on the likelihood of leaving the sector; both terms are statistically significant and of the expected sign (see below). In periods of staff shortages, it is common to look abroad for solutions. What implication does this have for the future supply of academics in the UK? Do foreign academics remain? Our results are unambiguous: Academics from other EU (and EEA) countries, Australia, New Zealand and the US are more likely to leave UK HE than UK (and other foreign) academics. Our results support the hypothesis that these staff enter academic employment in the UK after completing a higher degree in the UK, but ultimately intend to return to their home country. If this is the case, such staff will only represent a short-term solution for lower-level jobs in UK higher education unless they can be persuaded to remain in the UK.

162 163

A regression of w* on w yields a coefficient on w of 1.03 and an R2 of 0.999. It is only positive for ten per cent of those for whom it can be calculated.

282

Previous work on employee turnover suggests that the likelihood to leave jobs generally and possibly UK HE in particular would decline with tenure (see Farber, 1999; Gibbons and Waldman, 1999). Our results support this hypothesis, with the likelihood of leaving UK HE falling with experience, although doing so at a decreasing rate. The effect of experience on quits declines for the first thirteen to seventeen years, depending on the specification, and remains negative until experience hits the mid to late twenties. There is evidence that individuals who have had a break in their academic career are more likely to leave again, suggesting that these staff are indeed more peripatetic in nature. This may be because of the individuals’ preferences themselves or because they work in an area where there is more flow backwards and forwards between academia and the rest of the economy. There is little evidence that those who have previous experience of working in other countries’ HE systems are less likely to leave, ceteris paribus, although note that it relates to UK academics; the combined effect of being from another EU or EEA country, Australia, New Zealand or the US and having worked in a foreign HE institution on the likelihood of leaving UK HE is still positive. Although the effect of the ‘longer-term prospects’ factor on the likelihood of leaving UK academia appeared counter-intuitive, the permanency of academics contracts and the contract time remaining were important. Staff on non-permanent contracts are significantly more likely to leave UK HE than their colleagues on permanent ones. Furthermore, as the end of a fixed time contract approaches, the more likely an academic is to leave. The negative significant coefficient on End of contract implies that the greater the amount of time left a contract has to run, the less likely the individual is to leave UK HE. Academics who work longer hours are more likely to leave UK HE, although the statistical significance of this varies across specifications. This is less true for hours of research than hours spent on teaching or admin. Note that this effect on leaving is over and above their influence on job satisfaction. When we consider the aspects of academic employment that staff feel is important for their satisfaction, we find that few of them appear to affect their likelihood of leaving. Those who say that the RAE, the QAA and the general direction of higher education policy lowers their satisfaction by a lot are no more likely to leave UK HE than those who do not. The exceptions to this are those who feel that their workload is too high and those who feel that decisions on either individual pay, recruitment to senior posts or promotion at their current university are not at all fair, who are both more likely to leave UK higher education. There is evidence that the likelihood of leaving UK higher education is higher in the areas with strongest competition from outside academia. The likelihood of leaving is highest among staff working in other (non-engineering) technology and medicine and dentistry. It is lowest in English literature and other humanities. There is little difference in the likelihood of leaving UK academia when one compares staff across institutions, ceteris paribus, although staff in two of the new universities, one northern and one southern feel that they are more likely to leave.

283

Table A.28 Results – Likelihood of leaving UK higher education w

full -0.297*

reduced -0.307**

wage dif -1.446

wage sat -0.148***

(0.155)

(0.155)

w*

-0.221**

-0.226***

(0.882)

(0.054)

(0.086)

(0.087)

0.123

w – w*

(0.083)

No w*

-2.497***

S1

-0.776**

-0.696**

-0.836**

(0.326)

(0.323)

(0.325)

(0.922)

-0.838*** (0.325)

-1.218**

S2

(0.505)

0.591

0.843*

1.029**

S3

0.711 (0.450)

(0.446)

(0.447)

(0.449)

Age 55+

-0.185***

-0.176***

-0.202***

-0.190***

(0.065)

(0.065)

(0.065)

(0.065)

Non-white

-0.242

-0.164

-0.269

-0.344*

(0.203)

(0.203)

(0.203)

(0.204)

Female

0.356

0.270

0.431

0.413

(0.272)

(0.270)

(0.270)

(0.271)

Married

0.126

0.119

0.140

0.127

(0.099)

(0.098)

(0.098)

(0.099)

Female×married

-0.257

-0.224

-0.289*

-0.222

(0.159)

(0.158)

(0.158)

(0.162)

Children

-0.090

0.116

-0.101

0.112*

(0.064)

(0.144)

(0.063)

(0.064)

Female× Children

-0.107

-0.155

-0.125

-0.109

(0.089)

(0.257)

(0.089)

(0.089)

Num children

-0.078

0.069

-0.061

-0.058

(0.116)

(0.063)

(0.116)

(0.116)

Female× Num children

-0.253

-0.077

-0.307

-0.188

(0.220)

(0.089)

(0.219)

(0.224)

EU Pass

0.293***

0.314***

0.287***

0.296***

(0.092)

(0.092)

(0.092)

(0.091)

OZNZ

0.721***

0.715***

0.697***

0.706***

(0.246)

(0.245)

(0.242)

(0.245)

USA

0.401*

0.363

0.408*

0.382*

(0.231)

(0.232)

(0.231)

(0.231)

Foreign

-0.119

-0.087

-0.117

-0.119

(0.118)

(0.120)

(0.117)

(0.117)

HQ UG

0.111

0.136

0.132

0.104

(0.091)

(0.091)

(0.091)

(0.091)

HQ Masters T

0.173

0.197

0.191

0.165

(0.144)

(0.143)

(0.144)

(0.144)

HQ Masters R

0.162**

0.186**

0.168**

0.166**

(0.074)

(0.075)

(0.074)

(0.074)

Study PhD

-0.142

-0.163*

-0.124

-0.134

(0.087)

(0.088)

(0.086)

(0.087)

e

-0.026**

-0.025**

-0.033***

-0.026**

e

2

Break from academia

(0.013)

(0.013)

(0.013)

(0.013)

0.001**

0.001**

0.001***

0.001**

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

0.269***

0.280***

0.259***

0.265***

(0.090)

(0.090)

(0.089)

(0.089)

284

Non-UK HE

full -0.172

reduced -0.220

(0.275)

(0.271)

(0.272)

(0.272)

Career change

-0.029

-0.025

-0.036

-0.035

(0.066)

(0.066)

(0.066)

(0.066)

Prof: manager

0.001

-0.000

-0.004

-0.008

(0.117)

(0.116)

(0.117)

(0.117)

Prof: prof

0.143*

0.158**

0.139*

0.146**

(0.074)

(0.074)

(0.074)

(0.074)

Prof: assoc

0.034

0.044

0.046

0.042

(0.105)

(0.105)

(0.104)

(0.104)

Prof: admin

-0.134

-0.143

-0.105

-0.105

(0.150)

(0.152)

(0.150)

(0.151)

Prof: other

0.105

0.118

0.117

0.117

(0.098)

(0.097)

(0.097)

(0.097)

PT

-0.169

-0.193

0.034

-0.190

(0.125)

(0.125)

(0.108)

(0.124)

Non-perm

1.769**

1.607**

2.043***

2.136***

(0.694)

(0.687)

(0.685)

(0.684)

End of contract

-0.020***

-0.020***

-0.020***

-0.020***

(0.003)

(0.003)

(0.003)

(0.003)

Researcher-only

0.134

0.167*

0.159

0.155

(0.097)

(0.098)

(0.097)

(0.097)

Lecturer/researcher

0.187**

0.194**

0.174**

0.175**

(0.084)

(0.083)

(0.084)

(0.083)

GProf

-0.454

-0.348

-0.769*

-0.495

(0.469)

(0.464)

(0.452)

(0.470)

GSLect

-0.384

-0.323

-0.508*

-0.440

(0.275)

(0.273)

(0.271)

(0.273)

htotal

0.541***

0.450**

0.318

0.304

(0.200)

(0.220)

(0.200)

(0.213)

hresearch

-0.185***

-0.094

-0.210***

-0.053

(0.070)

(0.078)

(0.071)

(0.076)

hadmin

0.277*

0.098

0.195

-0.017

(0.144)

(0.155)

(0.141)

(0.150)

RAE lowers sat

0.063

-0.060

0.033

0.056

(0.166)

(0.081)

(0.168)

(0.166)

QAA lowers sat

-0.157

-0.128

-0.142

-0.148

(0.324)

(0.110)

(0.326)

(0.328)

Policy lowers sat

0.000

-0.128*

0.007

-0.006

(0.151)

(0.068)

(0.152)

(0.151)

Teach no

0.086

0.121

0.076

0.098

(0.160)

(0.077)

(0.158)

(0.159)

Research all

-0.225*

0.084

-0.222*

-0.226*

(0.135)

(0.055)

(0.135)

(0.135)

Admin no

0.152

0.034

0.155

0.148

(0.097)

(0.054)

(0.097)

(0.096)

Workload to high

0.248***

0.159***

0.249***

0.239***

(0.070)

(0.052)

(0.070)

(0.070)

Not fair

0.268***

0.249***

0.276***

0.261***

(0.055)

(0.056)

(0.055)

(0.055)

RAE 5*

0.049

0.043

0.043

-0.023

(0.115)

(0.115)

(0.115)

(0.117)

RAE 5

-0.005

-0.008

-0.016

-0.096

(0.096)

(0.096)

(0.096)

(0.100)

RAE 4

-0.212**

-0.213**

-0.220**

-0.263***

(0.100)

(0.101)

(0.100)

(0.101)

285

wage dif -0.142

wage sat -0.162

norae

full -0.006

reduced -0.011

wage dif 0.007

wage sat -0.009

(0.071)

(0.072)

(0.071)

(0.071)

Medicine and dentistry

0.351**

0.315*

0.407**

0.311*

(0.162)

(0.162)

(0.162)

(0.166)

Biological sciences

0.004

-0.028

0.049

0.018

(0.118)

(0.118)

(0.117)

(0.118)

Agriculture and related subjects

-0.084

-0.089

-0.098

-0.215

Physical sciences

(0.205)

(0.208)

(0.200)

(0.208)

0.474*

0.408

0.559**

0.640**

(0.253)

(0.252)

(0.252)

(0.251)

Mathematical sciences

0.229

0.195

0.269*

0.292*

(0.164)

(0.163)

(0.163)

(0.164)

Computing sciences

0.126

0.098

0.150

0.237*

(0.129)

(0.130)

(0.129)

(0.134)

Engineering

0.055

0.067

0.058

0.068

(0.138)

(0.138)

(0.138)

***

(0.139)

Other technology

1.090

1.007

1.188

1.282***

(0.403)

(0.399)

(0.398)

(0.405)

Architecture and planning

-0.480

-0.446

-0.463

-0.541*

(0.301)

(0.307)

(0.305) **

**

**

***

(0.307)

Social studies

-0.431

-0.411

-0.445

-0.439**

(0.192)

(0.191)

(0.192)

(0.192)

Business and admin. studies Librarianship & info. science English lit. And classics

-0.118

-0.116

-0.129

-0.181

(0.143)

(0.141)

(0.142)

(0.144)

-0.812

-0.851

-0.851

-0.783

(0.531)

(0.528)

(0.529)

(0.532)

-0.516***

-0.556***

-0.454**

-0.432**

(0.193)

(0.189)

(0.192)

(0.192)

Modern languages

0.086

0.020

0.199

0.135

(0.327)

(0.328)

(0.327)

(0.325)

Other humanities

-0.496***

-0.484***

-0.482***

-0.469**

(0.185)

(0.183)

(0.185)

(0.186)

Art and design

-0.392

-0.405

-0.351

-0.461*

(0.256)

(0.258)

(0.253)

(0.256)

Education

0.308**

0.291**

0.307**

0.356***

(0.135)

(0.134)

(0.134)

(0.136)

Combined studies

0.340

0.288

0.405*

0.425*

(0.246)

(0.243)

(0.244)

(0.244)

Old Sth uni 1

0.352*

0.308

0.380*

0.304

(0.194)

(0.193)

(0.194)

(0.196)

New Sth uni 1

0.038

0.026

0.020

0.122

(0.158)

(0.158)

(0.156)

(0.164)

New Lon uni

-0.117

-0.140

-0.132

-0.147

(0.126)

(0.127)

(0.127)

(0.126)

New Sth uni 2

0.068

0.033

0.075

0.077

(0.120)

(0.119)

(0.120)

(0.120)

Old Lon uni

0.262

0.228

0.255

0.206

(0.173)

(0.172)

(0.172)

(0.175)

New Nth uni

0.536*

0.461*

0.658**

0.641**

(0.279)

(0.277)

(0.275)

(0.276)

New Sth uni 3

0.398*

0.343*

0.436**

0.384*

(0.209)

(0.208)

(0.208)

(0.210)

Old Nth uni

-0.088

-0.099

-0.091

-0.107

(0.084)

(0.084)

(0.083)

(0.084)

New Nth uni 2

-0.088

-0.124

-0.029

-0.041

(0.211)

(0.209)

(0.209)

(0.209)

286

**

τ1

full -7.538***

reduced -7.601***

wage dif -2.301***

(1.789)

(1.794)

(0.701)

(0.825)

τ2

-6.544***

-6.602***

-1.310*

-2.369***

(1.787)

(1.793)

(0.700)

(0.824)

τ3

-5.951***

-6.007***

-0.718

-1.777**

(1.787)

(1.793)

(0.700)

(0.824)

τ4

-5.380***

-5.437***

-0.149

-1.208

(1.788)

(1.793)

(0.701)

(0.825)

τ5

-4.837***

-4.893***

0.392

-0.667

(1.787)

(1.793)

(0.700)

(0.825)

τ6

-4.539**

-4.594**

0.688

-0.370

(1.787)

(1.793)

(0.703)

(0.827)

Observations LL M&Z R2

2,312 -3699.2 0.195

1,600 -3692.9 0.200

1,600 -3705.0 0.190

2,312 -3703.0 0.192

Standard errors in parentheses * significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%

287

wage sat -3.362***

288

Appendix H: Recent and proposed policy developments The following lists Higher Education initiatives since the survey fieldwork and relevant to recruitment and retention. The list was drawn up by the DfES. RAE: following the review by Sir Gareth Roberts on research assessment in 2002 and wide ranging consultation, the UK published the arrangements for the RAE 2008 in February 2004. Information on the 2008 RAE

The Science and Technology Select Committee published its report on the RAE in September following two Inquiries. The link is: http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm/cmsctech.htm#reports The OST administered New Academic Fellowships scheme to help improve the career prospects of PhD researchers in the UK was launched in May 2004. Relationship between Teaching and Research: In November 2003 Alan Johnson (then Minister of Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education) and Lord Sainsbury (Minister for Science and Innovation) set up the Higher Education Research Forum to consider, among other things, the relationship between teaching and research. The Forum produced its Advice to Ministers in July. Link to the site is:

On 11 March the European Commission adopted a European Charter for Researchers and a Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. The Link is: http://europa.eu.int/eracareers/index_en.cfm?l1=15&CFID=8202636&CFTOKEN=15187d400069ad2-165f-127a-94f7-8307fc480000

The Science and Technology Committee published its report on its Inquiry into ‘Strategic Science Provision in English Universities’ in April 2005. Bureaucracy and administrative burdens:

i) The Regulatory Impact Assessment process led by the Cabinet Office requires a regulatory impact assessment to be conducted on the impact of any new regulations (including HEIs). More information on: http://www.brtf.gov.uk/docs/pdf/localdeliveryres.pdf http://www.brtf.gov.uk/pressreleases/2005/lessismore.asp

289

ii) The HERRG is an independent 'gatekeeper' group for higher education established in summer 2004 by the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education. Its remit includes scrutiny of new initiatives and existing burdens on higher education with a view to minimising bureaucracy: For more information please visit: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/hegateway/hereform/improvingregulation/index.cfm" Teaching and Quality Developments Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs)

There are amongst 74 Centres to be created across England, with a total funding allocation of £315 million over five years, from 2005/06 to 2009/10. This is HEFCE’s largest ever single funding initiative in learning and teaching. The CETLs are designed to promote excellence across all subjects and aspects of teaching and learning in HE. Funds awarded are to be used to recognise and reward excellent teachers, and to enable investment in staff, building, and equipment to support successful learning. www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/tinits/cetl/final HE Academy

The Higher Education Academy was launched in October 2004, to work with the higher education community to enhance all aspects of the student experience. It aims to provide, a UK-wide focus for enhancing the student experience, and to help institutions, subject communities, individuals, the Government and funding bodies to provide a helpful environment for student learning. www.heacademy.ac.uk HE Leadership Foundation

The Leadership Foundation was established in spring 2004 and is a joint initiative of Universities UK and HEFCE. The Foundation aims to improve the supply - and demand - of leadership development opportunities in HE, identify and disseminate good practice and raise the profile of HE leadership, governance and management. http://www.lfhe.ac.uk/ HEFCE workforce report

From Autumn 2005 the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) will produce an annual report providing a broad strategic review of workforce issues in HE. Analysis in the report will be based on the Higher Education Statistics Agency’s new Individualised Staff Record. The intention is that the first report will be published on HEFCE’s website by Autumn 2005.

290

Copies of this publication can be obtained from: DfES Publications P.O. Box 5050 Sherwood Park Annesley Nottingham NG15 0DJ Tel: 0845 60 222 60 Fax: 0845 60 333 60 Minicom: 0845 60 555 60 Oneline: www.dfespublications.gov.uk © National Institute of Economic and Social Research 2005 Produced by the Department for Education and Skills ISBN 1 84478 523 8 Ref No: RR658 www.dfes.go.uk/research