Bloomingdale, IL (Sept. 22, 2005)—Leading universities in the United States are building flexibility into the tenure-track career path, according to the results of a survey of 26 first-tier higher education institutions released today in advance of the conference Advancing an Agenda for Excellence: Creating Flexibility in Tenure-Track Faculty Careers.

The conference, sponsored by the American Council on Education (ACE) and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, will offer chief academic officers, provosts, faculty senate members and other institutional leaders an opportunity to explore changes and develop more flexible models for tenure-track faculty career paths. The two-day conference is being held Sept. 22 and 23 at the Indian Lakes Resort in Bloomingdale, IL.

“Flexibility in the tenured faculty career path is increasingly a story of good news,” said Claire Van Ummersen, vice president and director of the ACE Office of Women in Higher Education.  “It is good to see such a large number of institutions offer extensions to the tenure- track career path; however, there is still much work to do.  Colleges and universities need to reconsider their positions on issues such as opportunities to move between full-time and part-time status, granting leaves for care giving and childbirth, and job sharing.”

Among the findings of the survey, limited to the 26 institutions participating in the conference:

• Although tenure clock adjustments are common (96.2 percent of institutions), they are rarely automatic policies.
• Half of the institutions report that three or more leaves of absence may be granted over the course of the tenure-track probation period.
• The majority of the responding institutions will grant only two extensions to the tenure clock over the course of the probationary period.
• The ability to move between part-time and full-time status for tenured and tenure-track faculty is rare in this sample (30.8 percent of institutions offer this option).
• Less than one quarter of institutions offer emergency/sick childcare (23.1 percent of institutions).
• Nearly three-quarters of institutions offer domestic partner benefits (73.1 percent of institutions).
• Phased retirement is common but still not the norm (61.5 percent of institutions).

“Colleges and universities need to address both the structural and cultural issues necessary to provide flexible career paths which meet the needs of both the institution and the faculty,” said Kathleen Christensen, program director for Workplace, Workforce and Working Families at The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "Policies alone will not achieve the flexibility to attract and retain the best and the brightest and to remain competitive in the global economy. What is needed is a profound change in cultural norms in which flexibility is viewed as a strategic means to achieve institutional excellence."

The conference will provide a forum for university leaders to discuss and strategize on lessons learned from their own institutions, with a focus on addressing three areas of the tenure-track faculty career:   pre-tenure stages and accepted paths to tenure; post-tenure stages and available options for professional renewal and leadership; and changes in the norms, values and traditional cultural practices of the institution.

The conference is the result of the release earlier this year of    An Agenda for Excellence: Creating Flexibility in Tenure-Track Faculty Careers, in which ACE and a national panel of university presidents and chancellors, with support from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, outlined an ambitious agenda to reform and enhance the academic career path for tenured and tenure-track faculty.

The panel concluded that institutional leaders must act immediately to attract the best faculty to the tenure-track professoriate at research universities. As student enrollments of women and people of color continue to grow—both at the undergraduate and graduate levels—these demographic groups will represent a substantial proportion of the pipeline to the professoriate. However, current data show that women tend to be less likely to pursue tenure-track faculty positions at research universities after earning doctorates, and anecdotal evidence suggests the same is true for Ph.D.s of color.

The institutions and university systems participating in the survey and the conference are:

Participating Institutions