From closing equity gaps to clarifying the process for promotion to improving governance, COACHE partners are using the data and insights from their Faculty Job Satisfaction Surveys to drive progress at their institutions. 

The COACHE Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey provides both quantitative and qualitative data for leadership, with a focus on various themes that reflect faculty perspectives on their workplace. These themes include nature of work: research, teaching, and service; tenure and promotion; personal and family policies; and institutional governance, among others. 

Below are six examples of how institutions have used their COACHE data to help create positive change: 

• ... Read more about 6 Compelling Ways Institutions Are Using Their COACHE Data to Drive Impact

By Todd Benson

A provost at a COACHE partner institution recently asked me about the best strategies for disseminating data to faculty. Her team was weighing the risks and benefits of sharing all of the comparative data available in their COACHE report. Some in the group...

by Shabreena Danz Lopez

At COACHE, we understand that many things – from culture to leadership to funding – can have a direct and potent impact on the ability to recruit, retain, and support faculty.  

“When COACHE talks about faculty experience, it’s vital to recognize the importance of studying different groups and types of institutions for their unique perspectives,” says Todd Benson, executive director and principal investigator at COACHE. That’s one of the reasons why COACHE recently undertook some targeted analysis on data from faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). 

HBCUs play a significant role in producing some of the nation's most talented graduates as well as in allowing Black students to enter a more inclusive higher education community¹. HBCUs also have a higher percentage of Black faculty members who often serve as mentors for their students and less senior faculty members (56% compared to 5% Black or Hispanic faculty at primarily white institutions in according to the most often-cited research from 2001²).  

... Read more about What HBCU Faculty Members Would Change at Their Institutions

Salary, quality of colleagues, and the reputation of the department or institution are the top reasons given by faculty to either leave or stay in their position in higher education. 

The findings are according to results from the 2021-2022 COACHE Faculty Retention and Exit Survey — the only multi-institutional survey of faculty retention and departure in US higher education.  

According to the 2022 COACHE Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey, “culture” tops the list of responses from faculty who were asked to identify the one thing their institution could do to improve the workplace for them.

The five most-commonly cited issues were coded by COACHE researchers from open-ended responses, with 30% of respondents pointing to culture in their answers. The other most-commonly cited areas were leadership (28%), support for work generally (26%), compensation (25%) and facilities and resources for work (23%). More than 12,680 faculty from 31 colleges and universities completed the survey.  

... Read more about COACHE Data: Faculty Says Culture is the Top Thing to Address to Improve the Workplace

The new COACHE Impact Report “Partners in Progress” is now available online. Exploring a range of issues and types of institutions, the report highlights insights from leaders of colleges and universities who have utilized the COACHE survey process and data to drive measurable improvements in areas most impactful to their individual institutions.

... Read more about COACHE Launches New Impact Report: "Partners in Progress"

by Todd Benson

One of the hallmarks of COACHE’s work is listening. Perhaps the clearest example of COACHE listening to its partners is the development of our COACHE Comparative Data for Deans, otherwise known as Deans’ Reports.  These reports were built because of our partners’ feedback that drilling down and deploying data at a divisional level is an effective strategy to get even more valuable insights from their COACHE results. Here’s why:

... Read more about Why Deans’ Reports? How to Gain In-Depth Insight at a Divisional Level

by Kiernan Mathews, Todd Benson, Sara Polsky, and Lauren Scungio

Since 2005, the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education’s (COACHE) Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey has been systematically listening to faculty and, campus by campus, revealing inequities in the faculty experience. The survey results illuminate disparities in perceptions about the academic workplace between faculty of different racial and ethnic backgrounds—and also demonstrate, amid a nationwide conversation about inclusion, that white faculty’s perception of diversity and inclusion efforts on campus still outpaces genuine progress.

 COACHE’s Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey provides academic affairs leaders with valuable information on their faculty’s experience in the workplace. The insights gained through the customized, adaptive report helps senior leaders identify areas of improvement and take meaningful action.

The survey provides insights into a number of themes, but over the past two years, COACHE has incorporated a new set of questions related to disability status:... Read more about Recognizing Faculty with Disabilities: Data and Considerations from the Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey [Infographic]

2018 here at the Collaborative brought with it growth far surpassing our faculty surveys. We collaborated with the Harvard Institutes for Higher Education (HIHE) to launch the first ever Seminar on Leadership of the Faculty, a three-day workshop for academic leadership. An introduction between Harvard Club of New York, HIHE, and COACHE partners at the CUNY system led to a $100,000 grant for CUNY to invest in developing diverse faculty leadership. Data from the Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey yielded an exploration of mid-career faculty, an going pursuit to prevent mid-career malaise and provide support. The Faculty Retention and Exit Survey revealed the risk that a “counteroffer culture” poses to faculties’ home institutions during salary negotiations. Finally, an overhaul of our data dissemination process has made it easier for researchers to access our data in order to implement institutional changes.

... Read more about 2018 Year in Review: COACHE Reflects on Accomplishments and Findings

The 2016-17 academic year was a time of exponential growth here at the Collaborative. We welcomed our largest and most diverse cohort of Faculty Job Satisfaction partners to-date with over 60 higher education institutions -- public and private, two- and four-year -- joining our ranks. After a successful pilot, we nationally launched the the first ever multi-institutional study of Faculty Retention and Exit to 12 institutions in the spring and 22 in the fall. And to complement our survey offerings, we adapted our reporting platform to be more robust than ever.  

... Read more about 2017 Year in Review: COACHE Reflects on a Year of Transformation