Intention to Leave Academia and Job Satisfaction Among Faculty Members: An Exploration Based on the International CAP Survey

Abstract

This chapter addresses the importance of faculty job satisfaction as a key variable for understanding the intention to leave academia. It highlights the importance of working conditions and organizational variables that might influence the academics’ decision to work outside the higher education sector. As higher education has become increasingly more diverse, for both, students and professors, the academic profession has become less satisfying and more demanding, particularly for junior academics, within a context of constrained budgets and greater accountability. According to the CAP results, the 19 countries that participated in the international survey were organized into four groups depending on the percentage of academics who reported they had considered working outside higher education/research institutions, ranging from 45 % in the first group to 7 % in the fourth. In 11 out of these 19 countries, this percentage was significantly higher for junior faculty. A binary logistic regression model was built to explore the variables related to this issue. Results showed that the intention of faculty to leave their institutions was related to job satisfaction, which in turn was mediated by job stability, as well as the existence of adequate working conditions. Young faculty members were more prone than seniors to leave the academic profession. Although results of the study point only to a small and limited number of organizational variables that were significantly related to the intention to leave academia, it is contended that they are central in explaining academic job satisfaction (AJS), which in turn is related to leaving academia.