Context

This page is best viewed in Internet Explorer.

   In 1998, Franklin Search, a division of The Franklin Consulting Group, undertook a year-long project to develop a means to improve faculty and administrator recruiting. We were encouraged in this effort by several presidents of public and private institutions and by officers at higher-education associations, particularly ACE, CIC, and AASCU. Our focus was on public and private colleges and universities whose primary missions are undergraduate education. Our thesis was that the qualities recruited in the next generation of faculty and administrators will be critically important to these kinds of institutions in realizing a strategic "vision of the future" and creating new learning environments.

   What has emerged from the project is Successful Recruiting, a unique training program for search committees. In the process of developing this program, we recognized that forecasting personnel turnover is an important factor in improving institutional recruiting. We also encountered great variations in the ways colleges and universities manage personnel recruiting, especially from the aspects of written policies and legal exposure.

   This report and attached data sheets summarize information from recent surveys that identified these variations and further confirmed the value of the training program. The information was presented at The Council of Independent Colleges´ (CIC) National Institute, held in St. Louis on June 2-5, on the theme of creating new "campus cultures of learning."

• Capability to project personnel vacancies is an important factor in institutional planning and recruiting. However, according to researchers we contacted at AAUP, CUPA, AAHE, and other sources, there are no reliable forecast data on personnel turnover for either the public or private sector of higher education. Thus, in preparation for our presentation at its national institute, CIC approved our conducting a preliminary, 9-question survey on faculty turnover and search procedures at member institutions. We faxed the survey to 60 chief academic officers (CAO's) at randomly selected CIC institutions and received 30 responses.
• Early this year, Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, a risk management firm, published results of a 1998 survey of some 500 private and public colleges and universities. Like two predecessors, this survey covered claims filed during a five-year span (1992-1997) in all areas of risk other than personal injury and property damage. Some 30% (approximately 155) of the institutions were 4-year public institutions; over half (about 285) were 4-year private institutions. Slightly more than half of all responses came from institutions with 2,500 or fewer students.
• The Sorochty-deGarcia data highlighted here are from a 1996 survey of 89 colleges and universities (77% public, 23% private, and 96% four-year), conducted in preparation for Stetson University's Law and Higher Education Conference, in 1997.

1. Faculty turnover, especially for private institutions, offers a strategic opportunity for change. Half or more of the presidents and chief academic officers occupying these positions at CIC institutions during the next 5-7 years will oversee replacement of nearly half the full-time faculty roster. How this opportunity is addressed will significantly affect the institution's character and success for many years to come.
2. The management of risk in faculty and administrator recruiting is inadequate at many public and private institutions. In one survey, only 58% of respondents have written policies covering personnel recruiting that are also regularly audited for compliance with federal and state regulations and good practices. In the same survey, 12% have policies that are not regularly audited, and 30% have no written policies. In our survey of CIC institutions, 23% have no written policies covering search processes.
3. Furthermore, training in sound search procedures appears to be minimal. Only 7% of the institutions in the Tillinghast-Towers Perrin survey provide mandatory training of search committees to ensure that they comply with recruiting policies and follow legally appropriate procedures. 76% of the respondents provide no training. These percentages also apply to the training of committees that handle rank/tenure review and personnel grievances. (See Selected Legal Liability Data I.)
4. Institutional vulnerability to formal grievances or litigation in faculty and staff recruiting is a major, and costly, issue. The CIC and Sorochty-deGarcia surveys indicate that 17% and 40%, respectively, of their respondents have experienced grievances or other legal challenges to search practices during the last five years.

1. Personnel Turnover: Full-Time Faculty
   
   The thirty chief academic officers in our CIC survey were asked to report their full-time faculty recruiting for 1998-1999 and 1999-2000 and to project vacancies for the following three years. See Preliminary Survey on Recruiting for a summary of data presented in this section.
   
   1. The combined 1998-1999 full-time faculty roster of the 30 reporting institutions was 2,290. Over the 5-year period surveyed, total current-and-future turnover will affect at least 36% of that roster. However, 11 of the CAO's indicate that faculty turnover at their institutions will exceed 40% during this period.
   2. Faculty turnover appears to be a steady stream, not a huge wave. For 1998-1999 and 1999-2000, years in which vacancies are precisely known, the annual replacement rate is 9%. For the three years 2000-2003, projected turnover will average only 6% annually. However, this projection is of course only for anticipated vacancies -- i.e., those based on known faculty birth dates and realistic assumptions about retirement.
   3. The range of turnover is considerable, varying from one institution that is replacing only 15% of 145 full-time faculty to another replacing 64% of 92 full-time faculty.
   4. Significantly, the CAO's believe that more than 90% of these full-time vacancies will have been filled with full-time appointments, not with part-time/adjunct faculty. The CAO's did not indicate what portion of these predicted full-time appointments will be made on tenure or non-tenure tracks.
   5. As noted above, one overriding conclusion seems warranted from even this small sampling of institutions, namely that many private college presidents and chief academic officers who occupy these positions for the next 5-7 years will be responsible for appointing nearly 50% of the full-time faculty.
   
   NOTE: We have not yet surveyed personnel turnover at regional 4-year public institutions. Nor did our CIC survey explore staff turnover which, owing to the nature of administrative functions and appointments, may be impossible to forecast. However, based on several institutional anecdotes, we believe that the replacement rate for senior and mid-level administrators will probably also be quite high at most private institutions over these 5 years.
2. Problems with the Recruiting Process:
   
   The CIC survey asked respondents to indicate the extent to which campus search committees lack sufficient understanding of and/or experience in six key recruiting activities. Their responses are summarized on the data sheet Search Committee Competence.
   The Sorochty-deGarcia survey explored the same issue from a different aspect, asking which search procedures might be improved if there were assistance from a search consultant.
   
   1. Some searches fail because the institution and hiring unit are not in initial, clear agreement about what is needed for the position. Thus, integrating or "harmonizing" institutional and departmental position qualifications and selection criteria ("A") turned up as a major problem for half of the CAO's.
   2. In the Sorochty-deGarcia survey, 35% of respondents said search committees need help to ensure that position descriptions better reflect institutional goals and unit needs.
   3. CAO's believe that recruiting a strong pool of candidates ("B") is not a major concern, whereas networking to find diversity candidates ("C") is. In our experience, however, many departmental search committees are satisfied simply to advertise in the Chronicle of Higher Education and other print media and wait passively for the mail to deliver applications. Taken together, "B" and "C" suggest that generating a quality candidate pool is an activity in which a lot of search committees continue to need help.
   4. Half the CAO's think committees lack sufficient experience in good background referencing ("D"). The Sorochty-deGarcia survey echoes some of this concern, with 40% of respondents "wanting more help in obtaining information from candidates' references."
   5. CAO's believe that search committees do a relatively good job in interviewing candidates ("E"), a view our consulting experience confirms. Effectiveness in interviewing may reflect general faculty experience in Socratic dialogue and other teaching techniques as well as expertise in interviewing skills which Human Resources directors often have acquired and may be sharing with search committees.
3. Legal Liability and Cost Aspects of Recruiting:
   
   Some part of each survey was devoted to legal aspects of personnel recruiting. The following highlights of legal issues can be noted in "Search Committee Competence" (F) and the three data pages headed "Selected Legal Liability Data I, II, III."
   
   1. With regard to avoiding potential legal pitfalls, 53% of the CIC academic officers indicate that search committees are insufficiently experienced. See Search Committee Competence (F). For three reasons, we regard this percentage response as still being relatively low and suspect that Human Resources or Personnel directors might rate the problem as more serious.
      
      1. First, 5 of the 30 CIC respondents (17%) indicate they have recently dealt with recruitment grievances involving ethnicity, gender, or age discrimination.
      2. Second, 40% of the respondents in the Sorochty-deGarcia survey (see Selected Legal Liability Data II) had actually experienced formal grievances or legal challenges to search procedures during the past 5 years. One HR director reported that "in a span of one year the institution had three challenges around the issues of ethnicity and gender."
      3. Third, the Tillinghast-Towers Perrin survey reports that 42% of respondents have either out-dated or un-audited search policies, or have no policies. (See Selected Legal Liability Data II.) This is a high percentage of deficiency for so critically important an area of risk management.
      
      Of equal concern, however, is what search activities are actually included under policies. It may be reasonably assumed that nearly all written policies directly relate to federal and/or state statutes and regulations in such areas as affirmative action, equal opportunity employment, or disabilities employment. But some recruiting activities only indirectly relate to such external mandates and thus may not be covered at all. For example, whether to retain or return unsolicited applications received by an academic department may seem an innocuous, optional decision for the department and may not be spelled out in written policy. Nevertheless, in certain recruiting contexts the failure to have returned an unsolicited application that was received earlier can lead to a formal grievance about search procedures.
      
      One of the more telling comments in the Tillinghast-Towers Perrin report is that "few colleges have instituted training programs for their administrators, faculty and staff to ensure that written policies are followed. . . for instance, more than 75% do not provide training for such critical committees as search, rank and tenure, and grievance."
   2. The costs of "failed" searches can usually be attributed to some combination of the absence of clear policies, of sound procedures, and of search committee training.
      
      1. Searches can fail for a variety of obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. They may collapse at any point in the process and have to be re-opened later. Or, the appointee may turn out, despite professional competence, not to be an institutional "good fit" and soon be gone -- albeit not without an expensive negotiated departure. Or, perhaps worse, the appointee may hang around for years, contributing nothing to the institution.
      2. Selected Legal Liability Data III-A and Selected Legal Liability Data III-B indicate that, in the Tillinghast-Towers Perrin survey, recruiting represents a relatively low percentage among all risk-management areas for private and public institutions. Nevertheless, both the CIC and Sorochty-deGarcia survey data indicate serious potential for legal liability. Certainly, a lack of attention to the legal aspects of search is one contributing factor in (1) more than doubling the average annual number of claims per private institution and quadrupling that number for public institutions, and (2) more than doubling the average annual legal costs per institution in both the private and public sectors.
      3. Tangible costs can range from a few thousand dollars to large settlements to avoid litigation. [The three examples cited in the data sheet The Costs of Unsuccessful Recruiting are drawn from our knowledge of actual cases.]
      4. Many public and private colleges and universities who are committed to quality education for undergraduates are developing new curricula, pedagogies, and learning venues and delivery systems. In doing so, they are creating new campus cultures. For these institutions, the intangible costs of unsuccessful recruiting are even greater -- in the form of lost institutional opportunity and momentum in realizing strategic goals, a "vision of the future," and distinctive learning environments for students.

   Colleges and universities generally recruit personnel in a short-term context. Too many hire new faculty and staff as a replacement function, doing so piece-meal, unit by unit, without reflecting on the accumulative institutional impact. This short-term view is often exacerbated by the fact that some vacancies occur without much warning, with consequent pressure to replace the professional competencies quickly. But search committees also have a habit of looking for clones or antitheses of departed incumbents to satisfy personal comfort levels in working relationships, without asking what new talents the institution needs for future vitality.

   Recruiting at a college or university, especially one facing 35%, 40%, or 50% in turnover among faculty and administrators, ought to be perceived much differently -- as a long-term investment in a new generation of campus leaders, "one person at a time." The accumulative effect of bringing on board new knowledge, talents, perspectives, and attitudes would be to fundamentally re-shape the structure and character of the institution's educational endeavor and thus to create a distinctive learning experience for future generations of students. If personnel recruiting were so understood and practiced by search committees, it would cease to be a job-replacement activity and become an act of institutional stewardship.

E-Mail: info@FranklinGroup.com
The Franklin Consulting Group
1 Daylilly Court
Wilmington, DE 19808
302-998-3759

This site is Copyright © 1997 The Franklin Consulting Group and Creative Technology Solutions

Search the Internet better: