Who is eligible to take the survey?

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.