Are you telling me that there are no great colleges to work for in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, and New Mexico? (And the others?)
I do think readers might be surprised at the number of jucos, though.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Great Colleges To Work For.
The Chronicle has released its 2011 list of "Great Colleges to Work For." I always groan at this map, at entire states without a single dot.
Are you telling me that there are no great colleges to work for in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, and New Mexico? (And the others?)
I do think readers might be surprised at the number of jucos, though.
Are you telling me that there are no great colleges to work for in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, and New Mexico? (And the others?)
I do think readers might be surprised at the number of jucos, though.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
There were a lot of interesting things on their list. Not only were there a fair number of two-year schools, a disproportionate number of the schools on the list had religious affiliations, while almost no elite four years (only five in all that I could see) made the cut. So my takeaway is that it is better for your job satisfaction to work at a select number of small two year and and religiously affiliated four year colleges, mostly outside metro areas. Maybe I'm going to have sit down with the grad students in September and tell them that they need to reorient their ambitions.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, the one name that did make make the cut that really shocked me was Harvard. Given that "tenure clarity and process" was one of the criteria they purportedly weighed. Although I guess "don't ask, don't hope," and "associate proffie is an untenured rank, so don't get to feeling secure or anything" both represent a kind of clarity. I guess their compensation and benefits were sufficient to outweigh that.
It seems like you have to register your school and that the rankings would be based on surveys of the faculty/staff. That could explain the types of schools on the list.
ReplyDeleteBut why, Archie, should the "elite" universities should automatically be on the list? If respondants aren't more statisfied that the rest of us with a particular category, then they shouldn't be on the list. Some of those categories aren't the sorts of things that you can throw money at to fix.
That's a much more interesting grouping of colleges than I've ever seen before. Bravo at least for scoring satisfaction of proffies differently than similar lists.
ReplyDeleteThe survey results would be remarkably easy for a small school to manipulate. Each college "randomly" selected employees across the three categories, and small schools could submit all. I can absolutely imagine some types of administrators exhorting the masses to be a team player and get their school on the list.
ReplyDeleteNot because I've ever personally sat through any all-campus meetings where that type of thing was done. . .
I wasn't saying that they had to be on the list, just that it was interesting how incredibly underrepresented they were. One reason might be that such schools aren't bothering to register for the survey. For example, it might be that the schools that do register for the survey see it as a kind of recruiting tool, which is something that elite schools need never worry about. But may also be that our faculty are just as dissatisfied as those in any other group of schools, or perhaps even more so. Who knows. It was just interesting is all.
ReplyDeleteOne of my alma maters is on the list. My current workplace is not. I was one of those randomly selected to participate in the survey. It was difficult because my college is part of a system in which the system is becoming entirely too intrusive. It has been sad to watch a place that routinely has multiple faculty and staff get 40-year service awards turn into a sinking ship because of the working conditions the system is imposing on us. Between retirements and nontenured faculty looking for jobs elsewhere (none of whom are being replaced), there will soon be few of us left to defend what little we still have. I'm watching my college's culture become dismantled brick by brick.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that my current university is on this list. I guess raise freezes for 6 years is part of the ranking process.
ReplyDeleteI have a former employer on the list.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's a repeat offender, too. (It was on the list last year.) I liked it while I was there, so no hard feelings.
I was excited, and honestly not surprised, to see my main university on this list. I love tesching there, have a supportive chair and actually agree with a lot of what the presidents who have been in charge over my time teaching there have done. Most of my gripes are with the students and second university I teach at.
ReplyDeleteKinda annoyed that they only have names and URLs. I can't figure out which university in my area is marked on the map -- I certainly don't recognize it in the list and feel like googling each and every one would be more work than it's worth to find out which area institution won the gold.
ReplyDeleteOh well.
Note the high incident of Florida unis. That surprised me -- they've just been practically defunded, Rollins College is a joke, Florida International ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Maybe the warm weather counts double?
@Monkey
ReplyDeleteIf you go to the Chronicle link, you can zoom in on the map so the schools are all visible.
"Maybe the warm weather counts double?"
ReplyDeleteTwo possible answers: the guys who made the page are Scientologists or they really like hunting for `gators on the bayou.
No surprise that not a single campus in my huge, formerly glorious state system is listed. People used to yearn to come into the system and stay there for life. Now we're hemorrhaging faculty.
ReplyDeleteMy undergraduate alma mater made the list, which does not surprise me. It's a great, underrated school that flies well below the radar. My evil graduate school is not on the list--which also does not surprise me.
ReplyDeleteNor am I surprised that my current workplace and my immediately previous employer are not on the list.
Hey Frog, maybe we live in the same state. Not a single campus (out of 26--both 2 and 4 year) in my state system made it. In fact, not a single school in my state made it. Our system has been the places to cherry-pick good proffies because our compensation sucks and our benefits, which used to be seen by most of us as deferred compensation, now cost us more of our shitty compensation than they did previously (like 12% more). So I guess the eastern seaboard is where I should be looking for my next job.
ReplyDelete