Social Science Grant Examines Budget Cuts and Stress on Faculty Performance and Retention
Proposal Title: Evaluating the Effects of the Budget Crisis and Economic Stress
on the Performance and Retention of WSU FacultyProject Overview
on the Performance and Retention of WSU Faculty
PI: Tahira Probst, Professor of Psychology, WSU Vancouver
Funded: 2010
Project Overview
Detailed survey data were gathered from 61 chairs, 647 tenure track and non-tenure track faculty, and 1071 staff/AP employees at WSU in order to identify attitudinal, behavioral, and health-related outcomes of the repeated budget cuts and the process by which they were implemented. Additional analyses focused on the experiences of STEM faculty women.
Relevant Faculty Findings
- Department chairs, deans, and academic directors are overwhelmingly concerned that the budget cuts have negatively affected the morale of faculty. They are also concerned that faculty may be seeking positions at other universities and that the budget situation makes it more difficult to attract highly qualified candidates to WSU.
- These worries appear to comport with the data gathered from faculty, which indicate extremely high levels of turnover intentions, placing them at the 95th percentile among comparison organizations. Ten years earlier, WSU faculty ranked at the 65th percentile.
- Faculty exposed to more budget cuts or more negatively impacted by them report:
- More work-family conflict
- Greater erosion in the relationship between them and WSU
- Less loyalty to WSU and greater turnover intentions
- Less work engagement and more burnout
- Less job security
- Less satisfaction with pay and promotion opportunities (but not coworker or work satisfaction)
- Lowered scholarly productivity (as measured using annual review ratings)
- Faculty who report being more concerned about their job security indicate that they are devoting less time to providing service within WSU (e.g., serving on internal committees) and more time to providing service to their professional organizations (e.g., editorial work, conference reviewing). This may be an additional indicator of lowered commitment to WSU and increased turnover intentions.
- Interestingly, faculty reacted more negatively to the budget cuts when they were in departments that were less affected by the budget cuts, possibly due to contrast or relative deprivation effects.
- In general, compared to women in non-STEM fields, STEM faculty women report being less affected by the budget cuts in terms of amount of exposure to the cuts and perceived impact.
- However, they have more negative reactions to such cuts than women in non-STEM fields
- greater feeling of erosion, less commitment, more burnout, worsened professional networking opportunities, and less job satisfaction in response to the cuts
Implications and Recommendations
- Not surprisingly, the repeated budget cuts appear to be taking a significant toll on the attitudes and behaviors of faculty. Interestingly, though, exposure to budget cuts may be interpreted as a greater “psychological contract breach” by STEM faculty than non-STEM faculty.
- However, analyses also indicate that one variable in particular may attenuate some of these negative reactions to the budget cuts. Procedural justice is the extent to which faculty perceive the budget cutting process to be fair, transparent, and open to faculty input. Faculty who perceived high procedural justice or who were in departments where collectively faculty felt there were opportunities for voice had fewer negative reactions to the budget cuts.
- Thus, any additional efforts WSU can do to make improvements in these areas may be beneficial in terms of faculty attitudes, turnover intentions, and performance, particularly since faculty perceptions of procedural justice were low.
