Developing Benchmarks for Faculty Hiring. AIR 1997 Annual Forum Paper

This study analyzed 13 national datasets and evaluated their utility for addressing policy questions concerning college faculty availability (such as minority hiring, affirmative action, supply and demand in specific disciplines) and the overproduction of Ph.D.s. Each dataset was evaluated for its utility in modeling faculty availability. Also documented were the types of assumptions which need to be addressed in building models based on these datasets. Every national survey instrument related to faculty was reviewed, along with information about the data element dictionary, the value labels for categorical variables, the sample size, the population size, error estimates and weighting procedures. Analysis of the datasets suggests that, while many important policy questions may be studied with the data, it is not currently possible to complete the critical cross-tabulation of gender within ethnicity by rank within tenure status by discipline at the institution level. It is recommended that the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System expand its survey to include a table on full-time instructional, research and service faculty. The table should be broken out by gender within ethnicity by rank within tenure status by discipline clusters. (Contains 55 references.) (DM)