Partner FAQs

The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education is a research-practice partnership based in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. COACHE studies the work lives of faculty with a focus on actionable data to support academic administrators. Studies are conducted in partnership with college and university leaders (both faculty and administrative) with an emphasis on using the data collected to improve the academic workplace.

A research-practice partnership (RPP) is an organization that convenes researchers studying a particular problem with practitioners who co-investigate a topic in a way that is methodologically rigorous but also practitioner focused. RPPs are becoming increasingly important in education where the gap between scholarly work and educational professionals can be significant. To learn more about RPPs visit the William T Grant Foundation.

Faculty are the heart of every college and university. Their commitment and relationship to their institution is distinctive from other types of employees as well as students. In many cases, they will work at an institution for their entire professional career. Also, because of their shared governance responsibilities, the relationship between faculty and administration can be difficult to manage. In those ways, a typical workplace survey would never fully address the needs of the faculty. COACHE believes this so strongly that as an organization, we have decided not to survey other constituent groups in higher education.

Academic Affairs and Institutional Researchers are being pulled in so many directions that taking the time to develop and execute a robust survey about the faculty workplace could take months of staff and faculty time. COACHE also provides robust comparative data in its reporting and analytics including the option to self-select five peer comparison institutions. Our robust reporting platform provides powerful diagnostics which are intuitive and professional. Most importantly, COACHE continues to work with partners for two years after data collection to interpret results, disseminate the findings, and develop policy solutions.

Please write to us at coache@gse.harvard.edu to request a PDF copy of our surveys to review.

To determine if COACHE is right for your institution, we start with a briefing call. We typically encourage representation from the Chief Academic Officer, Institutional Research, and a faculty leader as part of the call. To proceed, please contact us at coache@gse.harvard.edu to arrange a time to speak with a member of our senior leadership team.

Institutions become members of COACHE for a whole host of reasons but here are just a few to consider:

• To get a better sense of faculty perceptions of the workplace relative to the national labor market.
• To support the accreditation process
• As an assessment for an NSF grant
• As part of a strategic planning process
• To provide incoming leadership with some sense of faculty dispositions

Workplace climate studies typically focus on experiences and perceptions of underrepresented groups on campus. Climate surveys can be powerful but COACHE takes a different approach to its work. The Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey assess the academic workplace broadly and then, uses the disaggregation of the results to raise questions about the workplace climate. We find this approach generates a broader level of engagement from the campus both in survey participation and in the work that comes after the results are delivered. Bringing more constituents to the table means that COACHE results can have a greater impact on issues of workplace climate and diversity.

COACHE’s Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey is distinctive to the work of faculty which allows it to dive deeper into the issues that matter most to faculty. Support for teaching, research and service, shared governance, and appreciation and recognition for work are just some of the topics covered in the instrument. The survey is designed pragmatically. Every question links to practical campus issues.

As a broad omnibus survey, the Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey assess a range of topics. That means the results can inform an entire suite of different and better practices. To see what some of our partners have done with COACHE results, look at our partners page.

The instrument is designed to assess the experiences of all full-time faculty. Because part-time faculty are an increasingly important area of study, we believe that a distinctive instrument is warranted. Because the Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey looks at all ranks, and appointment types, the survey has specific adaptive branching for each population.

Your institution will be asked to provide an Excel or SPSS file containing information on the faculty and who are eligible to participate in your institution’s survey. Take note: these data are not merely names and e-mail addresses, but an array of variables that will allow for robust analysis. All information will be transferred using our secure file-sharing portal that meets the standards of protection for “Level 3 High-Risk Confidential Information,” as directed by Harvard University’s Committee on the Use of Human Subjects. Once your CAO (or other designee) sends these faculty a message announcing your work with COACHE, our team handles the rest.

We believe that working with a team is an effective strategy for deploying the survey and ensuring that the data are put to good use after the results are in your hand. Teams need a variety of skills and capabilities but as a general rule, we encourage teams to include a designee from the CAO Office, Institutional Research Office, and representative from faculty leadership. Other institutions include communications staff as well.

Survey administration begins in February each year, but preparations begin in the fall. Typically, the survey closes in April and reports are delivered in the summer.

Results are delivered in two formats. A summary PDF report looks at high level results and global questions. A full digital report disaggregates results by race, gender, rank, tenure status, and discipline.

The base fee for participating depends on institutional type. For current pricing, please see the "Cost to Participate" section on the Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey webpage. Pricing for state system and consortial engagements yield economies of scale that may result in discounted base fees for member institutions. To receive a quote for your system or consortium, please email us at coache@gse.harvard.edu. 

In a recent flurry of articles, KerryAnn O’Meara and colleagues have challenged some of the commonly-held attitudes of administrators and faculty about the reasons why faculty leave. An institution’s tendency to blame “heaven” (better opportunities) or “hell” (the “writing on the wall”) insulates them from any personal or institutional responsibility for the faculty member’s untimely exit (O’Meara, Lounder & Campbell, 2014). The reasons for such departures are, in fact, nuanced, subject to influence and, perhaps, predictable. They include (in a list compiled from O’Meara’s extensive research, from the TIAA Institute, and from our own interviews with senior academic administrators at a large, public system of higher education):

• Better opportunity
  • Higher salary, more resources
  • More prestigious department, institution (increasingly international)
  • Administrative appointment (e.g., dean)
  • Position outside academe
  • Additional education or training
• Location and family
  • Career opportunities for spouse, partner
  • Better policies related to childcare (e.g., tuition remission), parental leave
  • Desirable geographic location
  • To be closer to family
• Work environment and fit
  • Better campus climate for, e.g., women, URM, GLBTQ faculty
  • Intellectual fit
  • Lack of collegiality in unit
  • Potential for better work-life balance in a different type of position
• Retirement
  • “Natural” retirement
  • Early retirement, but for another position
  • Negotiated exit for misbehavior
• Writing on the wall
  • Not well suited to faculty career
  • Poor likelihood of tenure, promotion, contract renewal
• The reasons actual faculty “leavers” provide for seeking employment elsewhere suggest an institutional culpability due to departmental cultures and processes—factors within the power of faculty and administrators to change.

There is no national or even state-wide dataset that adequately captures the mobility of faculty from and within the academy. At one large system, however, we found that on an average per campus, per year basis, there are just 12 resignations. Even at the largest campus, only about 20 faculty resign each year. Concerning retirements, we found (on a per campus basis) barely more than 2 retirements per year under the age of 60, and just over 20 retirements over that age.

Not counted in these figures are the successful retention efforts of each campus. One system’s administrators reported retention rates ranging from 75% to 90%. While these estimates may not have included involuntary separations (e.g., tenure denials and negotiated retirements) and others for whom no retention effort was made, still, they suggest a population of retained faculty who could contribute to our understanding of the costs of departure intentions and of the reasons why faculty seek to leave their institutions.

Many examples of the utility of exit data emerged in our interviews with senior academic administrators at institutions already conducting this work and at those seeking to mount such an effort. Some benefits redound to a system or consortium of universities, while others are realized by individual campuses. Knowledge from analyses of faculty departures has helped or could help by:

• Suggesting improvements to chair training and development in the handling of faculty intent to leave;
• Revealing whether or not universities are effectively carrying out their missions;
• Identifying more quickly than could a single institution any resignation patterns with respect to disciplinary cultures, gender, and URM status;
• Merging data across campuses to find out if particular competitors in the faculty labor market are offering particular inducements that make a difference in successfully “poaching” one’s faculty;
• Informing decisions regarding the (re)appointment of chairs, reviews of deans, and allocation of FTEs to departments;
• Educating deans about the efficacy of “home field advantage” in preemptive retention actions and counteroffers;
• Giving budget officers the basis for projections about where new hiring opportunities should be made available;
• Providing fundable propositions for interactions with foundations (e.g., Sloan, NSF ADVANCE);
• Creating compelling cases to donors in the name of retaining the best and brightest talent, for example, by endowing chairs, funding a school for children of faculty, allowing more teaching on recall, or subsidizing faculty housing.
• Offering sound research—colored with poignant anecdotes—in support of appropriations requests to the state legislature.

Your institution will be asked to provide an Excel or SPSS file containing information on the faculty and former faculty who are eligible to participate in your institution’s survey. Take note: these data are not merely names and e-mail addresses, but an array of variables that will allow for robust analysis about the real costs and causes of faculty departure. All information will be transferred using our secure file-sharing portal that meets the standards of protection for “Level 3 High-Risk Confidential Information,” as directed by Harvard University’s Committee on the Use of Human Subjects. Once your CAO (or other designee) sends these faculty a message announcing your work with COACHE, our analysts handle the rest.

Two contacts should liaise with COACHE on the planning, data collection, analysis, and reporting processes: the first, an administrator or faculty leader responsible for faculty development, faculty affairs or academic personnel; the second, an institutional research officer or other “honest broker” of sensitive data in the CAO’s office. Together, this team will work with deans, associate deans, and department chairs to get the data COACHE needs about your departures and retentions.

After you have signed our research participation agreement, the preparation of the faculty population file may take several weeks (depending on your existing capacity for administrative data about faculty). Our phased survey launch and administration spans two months. Data cleaning, analysis, and reporting—to the extent that reporting in the first year is possible—will take another 12 weeks.

With so few eligible faculty (pilot institutions averaged 30 records), reliable findings will take time to accrue. You will receive only a brief summary at the end of the first year, but each year, your reports will become richer with disaggregated and comparative results. Initial COACHE analyses will explore the factors compelling faculty to accept the outside offer or stay at their home institution; later, we will report on differences by gender, race/ethnicity, and rank.

The annual participation fee is $1,500 plus $100 per record in the eligible faculty population file. Participating institutions may add up to 15 custom questions to their survey at a cost of $500 per block of five.

Reports are delivered as means and frequencies tables in spreadsheet format (Excel). Each school or college will receive a separate file.

Reports will be delivered to a central, pre-designated recipient on your campus who will then distribute the documents to their appropriate owners. We will use our secure file-sharing platform, NextCloud, to deliver these documents, as we do with the Chief Academic Officer Report.

Larger institutions, such as research universities, benefit most from these data because they have multiple schools/colleges large enough to disaggregate data without compromising the respondent identities. Liberal arts colleges and community colleges interested in this level of reporting should reach out to us to discuss your options.

Each report is a standalone product offered at a different price point:

• Tier 1 (internal comparisons + cohort + 5 self-selected peers) = $5,000 ea.
• Tier 2 (internal comparisons + cohort) = $3,000 ea.
• Tier 3 (internal comparisons only) = $1,500 ea.

Simply send us an email requesting an order form. Our team will then send you a spreadsheet containing all of your schools and colleges, as delivered to us in your population file, in which you will indicate which level of report (if any) each school/college is opting to receive. If a school/college wishes to receive a Tier 1 report, there will also be a space for you to input the five selected peers.

Once you receive your order form:

Go to the Summary Sheet tab. Here, you will see your institution’s list of schools/colleges (“Divisions”) and Division Codes. Each Division Code has a corresponding tab in the spreadsheet. For example, code 1201 includes all schools of business. Clicking on that tab will show you the list of divisions included in the cohort data as well as the divisions that can be selected for a peer (Tier 1) report. You may share this list with your deans so they can decide which report type and peer list makes the most sense for them. After you and your deans have decided on report types, use the pulldown menu to select the appropriate report type for each school/college. The fee will automatically populate in the next column. If you opt for a report with peer data, you should list the five peers in the columns to the right of the report column. Return the completed form to COACHE via email at coache@gse.harvard.edu. COACHE will generate a short-form contract that includes the report selections and total cost. Once the contract is fully executed, COACHE will produce reports and invoice your institution.

All invoices from COACHE will be sent to the Provost’s Office or equivalent. We do not (yet) bill to individual deans’ offices; your institution must determine whether and how to distribute the cost of each of your school/college’s reports.

Although there are no discounts available, we are capping the total cost to your institution for all Deans’ Comparative Reports at $30,000. This can include any combination or number of reports.

Institutions may opt to receive as many reports as they would like. Costs for the total order are capped at $30,000 (e.g., if an institution has 10 schools or colleges requesting Tier 1 reports, its total cost would be $30,000.)