Faculty Shortages Faculty Retention and Returning Creative Solutions
Faculty Retention Issues
Retaining good faculty members is the next challenge facing university nursing administrators once successful recruitment has occurred. With increased competition for qualified faculty, excellent faculty members are in a ‘recruitable’ position, especially after some academic experience in their first appointment.
To retain excellent faculty, schools of nursing need to invest heavily in faculty development and continuing professional development program opportunities. In addition, efforts to mentor, coach, and support developing academics is crucial. More seasoned faculty members need to be encouraged to see faculty development as part of their roles and rewarded for their efforts in this area.
Retention of good faculty members is especially important as increasing demands for productivity are being placed on new academics. The requirements to obtain research funding and to publish in peer-reviewed journals continue as always, but the competition surrounding these marks of success has become increasingly severe.
As well, other scholarly pursuits, a good teaching record, and useful community service are expected of new faculty members. Added to these expectations are the increased requirements for an active clinical practice that relates to one’s research program and the need to work collaboratively within interdisciplinary research groups.
Mentorship is desperately needed but often lacking for the development of new faculty members for all of these roles. But, in addition to learning these new roles, faculty members need the guidance of more seasoned academics so that they learn to live satisfying, balanced lives in the midst of such heavy career demands.
Sometimes, because of inadequate ‘manpower’ or lack of succession planning, new academics are catapulted into leadership roles almost the moment they complete doctoral education. In addition to placing them in these roles before they may be ready, this action jeopardizes their potential to develop a strong research career during the initial years in academia.
Neither the nursing profession nor the individual’s career benefits from such hasty movement into leadership positions. This situation is a special problem in countries where the number of individuals with doctoral preparation is small; upon return to their country from overseas study, many face a ‘reality shock’ and are expected to carry heavy teaching and advisory loads, thus delaying the initiation of research and scholarly activities for many years, and engendering a degree of alienation and frustration that is counterproductive.
Returning Faculty
In parts of Europe there is a policy of encouraging faculty who have resigned or retired to return to work. Many of these individuals had left jobs in education because they wanted to raise a young family or because they had moved elsewhere because their partner had changed jobs. As alluded to above, others had taken early retirement due to work pressures.
The stimulus for encouraging their return is not just the shortages of faculty but the experience and knowledge that these people bring back with them. Young faculty need mentoring from such experienced colleagues and because of their experience they can often take on administration roles, which free up younger faculty to focus on research and completing their doctorates.
Universities need to put together a portfolio of incentives to attract faculty back to work. These include child care, good pay, flexible working such as job sharing, family-friendly hours and duties and promotion criteria that take into account part-time faculty. In the USA, nurses working in clinical settings can earn higher salaries than nursing faculty.
Currently, this is not the case in Europe; However, because of the shortage of clinically based nurses, some European governments are introducing improved terms and conditions for practicing nurses. It is predicted that this will cause major recruitment and retention problems for universities.
For instance, in the UK, there are 6900 full-time university-based nursing faculty; losing even a small proportion of these to clinical roles could threaten the viability of some educational and research programs.
Effects Of Faculty Shortage on Students In Doctoral Programs
The goal of doctoral study is to prepare scholars and scientists who will develop knowledge for their discipline and who will be leaders. Research training occurs best using an apprenticeship model. Students in such an education program are expected to be involved in their faculty supervisor’s research program.
The research program provides the context for the student’s socialization into research and scholarship (Wood and Ross-Kerr, 2003). Shortages of faculty prepared to offer leadership in doctoral programs directly translate into a limited number of research programs to which graduate students can connect.
Furthermore, with few faculty and a limited number of research programs in many countries, faculty members are increasingly required to take on more student supervision than may be academically sound.
With increased numbers of doctoral students per faculty member, there could be decreased time for individual student attention and direction, and increased time to completion of the doctoral degree as a result, and in some cases, compromise quality.
Creative Solutions to The Problem Of Faculty Shortage
Several recommendations are proposed below in an effort to address the faculty shortage issues. Different solutions are likely to be appropriate for different settings and situations. Further, it should be noted that each suggested approach may give rise to new problems that need to be recognized and addressed.
- Recruit faculty worldwide—some countries have more doctorly prepared nurses than needed (limited number of positions in small number of universities).
- Seek a work-life balance whereby faculty are not overwhelmed between their home life and pressures for research, teaching, administration and clinical work.
- Introduces family-friendly working hours and conditions to recruit, retain or encourage faculty to return to work.
- Use adjunct faculty appointments to engage doctorly prepared people from the public and private sectors in co-supervision of doctoral students or for serving on doctoral supervisory committees.
- Develop creative educational programming especially for doctoral programs but also in terms of moving nurses more quickly from basic nursing programs to completion of doctoral programs.
- Convince governments to collaborate to fund nursing scholarships and bursaries equivalent to 50% or more of tuition for nurses studying in master’s and doctoral programs (Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, 2002).
- Keep national inventories of tenure track positions available across countries.
- Improve access to educational programs in areas that do not have ready access to universities—governments and university nursing programs can collaborate to maximize technology (ie distance education) and inperson opportunities for nurses in remote and rural settings (Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, 2002 ).
- Promote academics in nursing as a career path (Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, 2002).
- Promote partnership posts with clinical settings. This increases the credibility of the faculty member to students, allows access to research subjects in clinical settings and forges strong links between health facilities and universities.
- Investigate and promote non-traditional approaches to graduate education with regard to alternative admission requirements and flexible delivery modes for instruction (Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, 2002).
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