The Faculty Shortages of Faculty Issues
Faculty Recruitment Issues
Throughout history, Canadian university nursing administrators have experienced difficulty in securing faculty qualified to teach in university programs. This situation first occurred during the establishment of baccalaureate programs within universities and is now encountered by administrators attempting to staff developing doctoral programs with qualified faculty (Wood and Ross-Kerr, 2003).
Wood and Ross-Kerr believe that only part of the situation results from a supply and demand issue. They challenge administrators to be perceptive and aggressive in recognizing the skills and potential of faculty members, so that those who show promise can be encouraged and supported in their continued career development.
Other issues that challenge nursing administrators when staffing doctoral programs include the fact that there are more attractive payment opportunities in the public and private sectors than those offered to new academic faculty. For example, there may be limited start-up funding for research program development as well as decreasing numbers of faculty support services.
Benefits for new as well as continuing faculty members seem to be decreasing as fiscal challenges face universities in general. Unlike Europe, some of the longstanding attractive benefits such as staff and family tuition fee remission in North American universities are being eliminated from benefit packages.
Recruitment efforts have been largely unsuccessful in filling the current and predicted faculty vacancies as well as the new faculty positions being added to promote growth of nursing programs. As a result, some university schools of nursing have sought qualified academics from outside of Canada. Such recruitment efforts bring both benefits and challenges.
The benefits include the blending of new, fresh ideas from other parts of the world with more traditional North American ways of managing nursing education and research. However, there are many challenges to consider when recruiting faculty from other parts of the world.
First, the learning curve for faculty coming from other countries is steep and the adjustments required of the faculty member and any associated family members are challenging. The time it takes such faculty members to become fully contributing is often longer than that required for new faculty from the same country. In addition, there is a concern that such recruitment efforts may ‘poach’ excellent faculty from other parts of the world where their leadership skills are also desperately required.
Finally, the provincial/state RN licensing body requirements are often difficult for academics from other counties to meet. Many have been more involved in research than in direct clinical nursing while they studied in their own doctoral programs. Therefore, intense study time and additional clinical practice are sometimes required to gain current clinical knowledge.
Some new faculty members from other countries speak two or three languages but English is usually not their first language. However, North American licensing exams are written in English, so new faculty members are required to write their examinations in a language other than their own.
This can be a greater challenge. Others are quite challenged by the exam format. Some are more comfortable with essay-type exams than they are with the multiple-choice type exams that are standard in the North American systems for registration. While recruitment of faculty from other countries can be beneficial in the long run, the initial investment is greater for both the individual faculty member involved and the host school of nursing.
The Pool for Nurse Faculty: The Pipeline Problem
For years, when faced with a shortage of any kind, the US response has tended to be to find money as a way of solving the problem. An important concern with regard to faculty shortage has been how to increase the pool from which faculty are drawn, in other words, how to address the ‘pipeline’ problem.
A national initiative is now under way to recruit doctoral students from those who are graduating from their basic programs, and get them excited and interested in graduate work even while they are early in their undergraduate years.
Faculty are now being assigned to mentor highly promising students and incorporate them into their research teams, providing them with stimulating opportunities so they can see the possibilities of nursing research for developing nursing science and improving the health of citizens.
This type of early coaching and guiding has yielded a pool of young and energetic applicants to doctoral programs. This group promises to energize our doctoral student body and create a new pool of future academics who will be ready to assume positions in their late twenties or early thirties.
Funds are being sought from private foundations as well as the National Institute of Nursing Research to support such individuals during their doctoral work (Hinshaw and Ketefian , 2001).
This path is not without its problems. It proposes a break from the old tradition, to establish a new tradition in nursing. In some institutions we see a situation that while one group of faculty are working towards recruiting strong undergraduates towards early doctoral work, another group of faculty, mainly those who supervise students’ clinical work, are counseling these same students that they should first graduate and work for a while to gain experience.
It is therefore critical that a faculty group discuss these issues and come to philosophical agreements about the approach being so that as a group, they speak with one voice.
The idea of having some experience in nursing at the start of one’s career is one that has merit. In a practical discipline, the problems that arise in practice are a crucial starting place for generating research questions for investigation that will then have real impact in improving the health and quality of life of citizens.
The challenge is how experience is interpreted and operationalized, and how much experience is deemed sufficient. Some institutions that admit these young graduates to their doctoral programs are working out arrangements with health facilities to employ these students as part-time interns, with pay, and are pairing them with experienced and highly professionalized staff nurses who will serve as excellent role models for these novices (Hinshaw and Ketefian , 2001).
This type of mentored experience can continue for a year or two until the new graduate has a solid grounding in an area of practice, and has sufficient familiarity with the context of care. When she or he is ready to begin research, there is sufficient appreciation of practical issues and problems so that the individual can draw on these in formulating research questions.
Other institutions are developing other solutions to these problems. We are in an exploratory mode as far as this issue is concerned; While the solutions and answers are not signed up, the awareness of the problem is present and being actively addressed.
Within the USA there have been dramatic increases in the number of doctoral programs over the past 20 years. However, neither the number of overall enrolled doctoral students, nor the total number of graduates each year has shown appreciable increases. For example, in 1997 there were 68 doctoral programs, with 433 graduates nationally, while in 2002, with 81 doctoral programs reporting, there were 457 graduates overall (Berlin, 2003).
This picture suggests that there is inefficiency in the system, with increasing numbers of doctoral programs recruiting faculty, to in effect educate the same number of overall students system-wide. When one considers the anecdotal reports regarding the increased number of international students studying within the USA for their doctoral degrees (exact numbers are not available), the picture becomes even murkier.
Institutions are recruiting faculty from two distinct pools at present: one is the pool of new doctoral graduates; and the second is from faculty members who are already functioning in faculty roles in other institutions and are of senior rank.
In an effort to attract from the second pool especially, many institutions are offering attractive packages, such as promotion/tenure, prestigious endowed professorships, start-up funds for research, lab space and facilities for research, better pay, and the like. However, none of these strategies helps increase the available pool of faculty.
Another interesting phenomenon that has exacerbated the insufficiency of the traditional pool of new doctoral graduates available for recruitment is an increase in the percentage of doctoral graduates indicating plans for employment outside education.
For the 1980–1984 graduates, 15.5% expected to be employed outside education, while for the 1995–1999 graduates, 26.9% expected to be employed outside education (National Opinion Research Center, 2001). Unlike the USA or Canada, movement of faculty across Europe is not common. This is mainly due to language barriers and differences in legislation and regulations. However, within countries it is common for university schools of nursing to poach faculty from other schools.
Possession of a doctorate and a good publication and grant award record make faculty attractive to other universities. Incentives are often offered in terms of tenure, pay, research and secretarial support. Furthermore, it is often easier to get promotion in another university than in one’s own and this sometimes stimulates movement of faculty from one school of nursing to another.
There is a lot that can be done to encourage recruitment of students into doctoral programs and from there into faculty positions. However, many of these lessons have yet to be learned. For instance, on graduating, high-performing students in many European schools of nursing are not encouraged to begin doctoral studies.
Rather, they are told to gain three years’ experience as a nurse in a clinical setting. For many reasons including marriage and career advancement, most of these students do not return to the university to study or to work. As in the USA and Canada, some nursing schools are beginning to encourage these graduates to stay on and undertake a doctorate part-time while building up their clinical experience.
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