Percent of faculty who are senior faculty

<p>Here is a list of top colleges sorted by the percent of full-time faculty who are associate or full professors.</p>

<p>From IPEDS.</p>

<p>Is a high percentage good or bad? Does a high percentage of senior faculty mean more experienced and competent teachers and researchers? Or, does it mean more dead wood and faculty who are past their prime? Is it better to be somewhere in the middle? Does it mean that working conditions are favorable and faculty tend to stay? Does it mean that there is little pressure on faculty to work hard and produce? </p>

<p>Virginia Military Institute 78.4%
Davidson College 77.2%
Hanover College 76.8%
Presbyterian College 75.3%
Ohio Wesleyan University 75.0%
Wofford College 74.5%
Mills College 74.4%
Birmingham Southern College 74.0%
Austin College 73.7%
Furman University 73.1%
Wheaton College 73.0%
Auburn University Main Campus 71.4%
Scripps College 71.1%
Smith College 70.5%
Illinois Wesleyan University 70.2%
Oberlin College 69.7%
Bard College 69.3%
Brandeis University 69.0%
Brigham Young University 68.7%
Trinity College 68.7%
University of Notre Dame 68.7%
Randolph-Macon College 68.1%
Bates College 67.9%
New College of Florida 67.6%
George Washington University 67.2%
Kenyon College 67.1%
Worcester Polytechnic Institute 67.1%
Harvey Mudd College 67.0%
Hamilton College 67.0%
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus 66.8%
Swarthmore College 66.3%
Ohio State University-Main Campus 66.3%
Hollins University 66.3%
Sewanee: The University of the South 66.2%
University of Wisconsin-Madison 66.2%
University of Virginia-Main Campus 66.0%
College of Saint Benedict 66.0%
University of Connecticut 65.9%
DePauw University 65.7%
Washington and Lee University 65.7%
Juniata College 65.4%
Hope College 65.2%
Hendrix College 64.8%
Saint Johns University 64.7%
Colorado College 64.6%
Dartmouth College 64.5%
Reed College 64.4%
College of William and Mary 64.3%
Colby College 64.1%
Southwestern University 63.9%
Syracuse University 63.9%
Carleton College 63.7%
Colgate University 63.6%
Millsaps College 63.3%
College of the Holy Cross 63.1%
Centre College 63.1%
Willamette University 63.0%
Lafayette College 62.9%
Haverford College 62.8%
University of Delaware 62.7%
Michigan State University 62.0%
St. Olaf College 61.8%
Union College 61.8%
Macalester College 61.8%
Bowdoin College 61.6%
Wells College 61.4%
Pitzer College 61.3%
Drew University 61.3%
Wheaton College 61.0%
SUNY at Binghamton 60.9%
University of Iowa 60.7%
Allegheny College 60.5%
Vassar College 60.4%
Williams College 60.4%
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 60.4%
Claremont McKenna College 60.2%
Pomona College 59.8%
Texas A & M University 59.7%
Middlebury College 59.6%
Pepperdine University 59.5%
University of California-Santa Barbara 59.4%
Mount Holyoke College 59.3%
Earlham College 59.3%
Occidental College 59.2%
Connecticut College 59.0%
The University of Tennessee 58.9%
Bucknell University 58.8%
Augustana College 58.4%
The University of Texas at Austin 58.4%
Agnes Scott College 58.3%
Tufts University 58.3%
University of Washington-Seattle Campus 58.2%
Clark University 58.1%
Indiana University-Bloomington 57.8%
Fordham University 57.6%
Kalamazoo College 57.6%
Gustavus Adolphus College 57.5%
Beloit College 57.5%
Gettysburg College 57.3%
Hobart William Smith Colleges 57.2%
Amherst College 57.2%
Knox College 57.1%
Boston College 57.1%
Wabash College 57.0%
St Lawrence University 56.7%
Wellesley College 56.6%
Purdue University-Main Campus 56.4%
Miami University-Oxford 56.4%
Muhlenberg College 56.4%
The College of Wooster 56.3%
Rutgers University-New Brunswick 56.1%
Case Western Reserve University 56.0%
Ursinus College 55.8%
Northwestern University 55.7%
Sweet Briar College 55.6%
Wesleyan University 55.4%
Bryn Mawr College 54.9%
University of Southern California 54.8%
Wake Forest University 54.7%
Franklin and Marshall College 54.7%
University of Richmond 54.4%
Clemson University 54.1%
Whitman College 53.9%
Southern Methodist University 53.8%
University of Puget Sound 53.8%
University of California-Los Angeles 53.6%
Boston University 53.3%
Grinnell College 53.2%
University of California-Berkeley 53.2%
University of California-Davis 52.7%
Tulane University of Louisiana 52.7%
St Mary's College of Maryland 52.6%
Saint Louis University-Main Campus 52.6%
Lehigh University 52.6%
University of California-San Diego 52.5%
Marquette University 51.7%
Dickinson College 51.7%
University of Georgia 51.6%
Skidmore College 51.2%
Baylor University 51.2%
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 50.9%
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 50.8%
Duke University 50.7%
Rhodes College 50.7%
University of Florida 50.5%
Lawrence University 50.3%
Denison University 50.2%
University of California-Santa Cruz 50.0%
Columbia University in the City of New York 49.9%
University of California-Irvine 49.5%
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 49.5%
Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus 49.4%
Stevens Institute of Technology 49.3%
Georgetown University 49.2%
Brown University 49.2%
University of Denver 48.3%
Spelman College 48.3%
University of California-Riverside 48.0%
Rice University 48.0%
New York University 47.8%
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 47.0%
Albion College 46.7%
University of Pennsylvania 46.3%
American University 45.5%
Barnard College 45.5%
Stanford University 45.3%
Cornell University 43.2%
University of Maryland-College Park 43.2%
Yeshiva University 42.9%
Goucher College 42.5%
Vanderbilt University 42.5%
Carnegie Mellon University 42.3%
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 41.9%
University of Rochester 41.6%
Princeton University 41.6%
University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus 41.3%
Washington University in St Louis 41.1%
Emory University 40.2%
Johns Hopkins University 40.0%
Harvard University 38.7%
Iowa State University 38.6%
University of Miami 38.1%
University of Chicago 36.4%
Yale University 35.7%
University of Colorado at Boulder 34.5%
University of Missouri-Columbia 34.4%
California Institute of Technology 25.6%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 17.3%</p>

<p>I guess it depends on the procedure for gaining tenure. Procedures probably vary considerably across colleges and universities.</p>

<p>I think typical of IPEDS there are major glitches in the data. Much of that just does not make sense. I think many at the lower %age are counting lots of clinical or adjuncts that are not included in others.</p>

<p>Plus the seniors at some privates may be more scare in the classroom than at the publics. From Inside Higher Ed Today</p>

<p>"Indeed, private universities not only tempt faculty with bigger salaries, they often offer lighter teaching loads that public institutions simply can’t provide.</p>

<p>“What the privates are doing with teaching loads, we can’t do financially and morally,” says Goldstein, citing the unique teaching missions of public universities.</p>

<p>[In</a> Recruitment Wars, a New Front :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education’s Source for News, Views and Jobs](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/24/poaching]In”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/24/poaching)</p>

<p>The first list was based on academic rank. The following list is based on percent tenured.</p>

<p>From same IPEDS data.</p>

<p>Tulane University of Louisiana 77.5%
Ohio Wesleyan University 77.2%
Davidson College 75.4%
Birmingham Southern College 73.0%
Furman University 71.9%
Austin College 71.6%
Mills College 71.1%
Scripps College 71.1%
Auburn University Main Campus 71.0%
Illinois Wesleyan University 69.6%
Presbyterian College 68.2%
New College of Florida 67.6%
Trinity College 67.6%
Hanover College 67.4%
University of Notre Dame 67.2%
Smith College 67.0%
Hollins University 66.3%
Oberlin College 65.8%
Millsaps College 65.6%
Worcester Polytechnic Institute 65.4%
DePauw University 65.3%
Kenyon College 65.1%
Swarthmore College 64.9%
Harvey Mudd College 64.8%
Hamilton College 63.9%
Randolph-Macon College 63.7%
College of Saint Benedict 63.3%
Wofford College 63.2%
Reed College 63.1%
Carleton College 62.8%
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus 62.5%
Juniata College 62.5%
Willamette University 62.5%
Brigham Young University 62.3%
Colorado College 62.3%
College of William and Mary 62.2%
University of Connecticut 62.1%
Lafayette College 61.9%
Sewanee: The University of the South 61.8%
Saint Johns University 61.8%
Wheaton College 61.7%
Colby College 61.7%
Hendrix College 61.5%
College of the Holy Cross 61.4%
Wells College 61.4%
Ohio State University-Main Campus 61.3%
Pitzer College 61.3%
Bates College 60.9%
Southwestern University 60.7%
University of California-Santa Barbara 60.2%
Bowdoin College 60.0%
Syracuse University 59.8%
Williams College 59.6%
Colgate University 59.5%
Drew University 59.4%
Occidental College 59.2%
Centre College 59.2%
University of Delaware 59.1%
Augustana College 59.0%
St. Olaf College 58.9%
Vassar College 58.7%
Bucknell University 58.5%
Middlebury College 58.5%
The University of Texas at Austin 58.4%
SUNY at Binghamton 57.8%
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 57.6%
Kalamazoo College 57.6%
Macalester College 57.3%
Gettysburg College 57.3%
Agnes Scott College 57.1%
Miami University-Oxford 57.0%
Wabash College 57.0%
Pomona College 56.9%
Amherst College 56.7%
Washington and Lee University 56.5%
Brandeis University 56.4%
Michigan State University 56.2%
Mount Holyoke College 56.2%
Clark University 56.0%
Texas A & M University 55.9%
Muhlenberg College 55.8%
St Lawrence University 55.6%
Gustavus Adolphus College 55.4%
Allegheny College 55.4%
Wesleyan University 55.4%
Wellesley College 55.1%
The College of Wooster 55.1%
Hobart William Smith Colleges 54.9%
Bryn Mawr College 54.9%
Wheaton College 54.6%
Fordham University 54.5%
Connecticut College 54.4%
Beloit College 54.3%
Purdue University-Main Campus 53.9%
Haverford College 53.7%
Knox College 53.6%
Ursinus College 53.3%
The University of Tennessee 52.8%
St Mary’s College of Maryland 52.6%
Southern Methodist University 52.6%
Hope College 52.2%
Claremont McKenna College 51.9%
Rutgers University-New Brunswick 51.9%
Franklin and Marshall College 51.7%
Sweet Briar College 51.5%
Lehigh University 51.2%
University of California-Berkeley 51.1%
Clemson University 51.0%
University of Richmond 50.7%
Denison University 50.7%
University of Virginia-Main Campus 50.3%
University of Iowa 50.3%
Dartmouth College 50.2%
George Washington University 50.0%
Earlham College 50.0%
Indiana University-Bloomington 49.9%
University of Georgia 49.9%
Marquette University 49.8%
Boston College 49.7%
Lawrence University 49.7%
University of California-Santa Cruz 49.6%
Dickinson College 49.3%
University of Wisconsin-Madison 49.2%
Virginia Military Institute 49.1%
Pepperdine University 49.0%
Grinnell College 48.9%
Skidmore College 48.8%
Whitman College 48.7%
University of Denver 47.9%
University of California-Riverside 47.8%
Rice University 47.5%
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 47.4%
University of Puget Sound 47.1%
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 46.7%
Baylor University 46.4%
Georgetown University 46.3%
Brown University 46.0%
Albion College 45.9%
Spelman College 45.3%
University of Florida 45.0%
Bard College 44.7%
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 44.2%
Rhodes College 44.0%
Northwestern University 43.2%
Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus 43.1%
American University 42.7%
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 42.6%
Tufts University 42.1%
University of California-Los Angeles 42.0%
Case Western Reserve University 42.0%
University of California-Davis 42.0%
Princeton University 41.6%
Barnard College 41.4%
University of California-Irvine 40.4%
Cornell University 40.3%
Goucher College 40.2%
Saint Louis University-Main Campus 39.3%
University of Maryland-College Park 39.0%
University of California-San Diego 38.9%
New York University 38.5%
University of Southern California 37.4%
Iowa State University 37.3%
Carnegie Mellon University 37.2%
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 35.5%
Duke University 34.7%
University of Colorado at Boulder 34.2%
Wake Forest University 33.1%
University of Washington-Seattle Campus 33.1%
Union College 32.7%
Stanford University 31.9%
Washington University in St Louis 30.5%
University of Pennsylvania 30.4%
Vanderbilt University 28.9%
University of Missouri-Columbia 28.3%
Stevens Institute of Technology 28.1%
Emory University 28.0%
Harvard University 27.1%
University of Miami 25.9%
University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus 25.6%
Yeshiva University 25.4%
California Institute of Technology 25.3%
Boston University 25.0%
Columbia University in the City of New York 24.9%
University of Rochester 24.8%
Johns Hopkins University 24.3%
University of Chicago 23.1%
Yale University 20.8%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 15.4%</p>

<p>When you look at all the different classes of faculty at UM it gives an idea how hard it is to classify them as % senior faculty. Clinicals are important to med students but nobody else and don’t tteach undergrads at all in most cases. </p>

<p><a href=“http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_hrdef_faculty_07.pdf[/url]”>http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_hrdef_faculty_07.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>^^ I don’t think these data are particularly meaningful. To get meaningful comparisons across institutions, you’d need to break it down by discipline and job category: so, for example, “tenured faculty as a percentage of all tenured and tenure-track faculty in the Arts and Sciences.” Some disciplines like law and medicine also use a lot of clinical faculty, who typically aren’t tenured or tenure-track; other disciplines may rely on a lot of non-tenured lecturers from practice, and so on. </p>

<p>It’s curious, though, that in your listing of “percent tenured” there’s a heavy concentration of the most prestigious research universities at the bottom of the list: MIT, Yale, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, CalTech, Harvard, Penn, Stanford, Duke, Michigan all toward the bottom, Cornell, Princeton, Northwestern, UCLA, Brown and UC Berkeley all somewhere around the middle. Who knows what this means, except that these are huge, complex institutions with multiple classifications of employees, including multiple classes of instructional personnel. Those with the highest percentages of tenured faculty are mainly LACs, but maybe that makes sense: they’re generally fairly simple in their institutional structures and almost all in conventional art & sciences fields. I’d be curious to see how the arts & sciences faculties at the major research universities compare with those at LACs, something you can’t tell from the data.</p>

<p>As for the general question, I think it’s good to have a balance of tenured and (untenured) tenure-track faculty. The older people lend experience and institutional continuity, while the younger people typically bring energy, enthusiasm, and fresh ideas. You need both. It’s often new faculty freshly minted from the top graduate programs who are on top of the latest cutting-edge developments in the field, and (depending on the discipline) often doing the most creative new research. Schools that fail to renew themselves by making entry-level hires can ossify over time, and get stuck in old rutted ways of thinking. On the other hand it typically takes faculty a number of years to fully hit their stride as mature scholars and skilled teachers. The problem comes when people start into the downward slope of the productivity and effectiveness curve in the later stages of their academic careers, as many (but by no means all) do. If you’ve got too many in that range, you’re in trouble.</p>