As the economy has started to recover from its 2008 collapse, universities have begun heavily investing in faculty recruitment and retention. With budget cuts seeming to be the norm in Chapel Hill, UNC must come up with creative ways to keep faculty at the University.
Only a third of University faculty who received outside job offers this past academic year chose to stay in Chapel Hill. This marked the first time in a decade that UNC lost more faculty than it was able to keep, a huge red flag for a university in the midst of campus-wide financial constraints.
In terms of dealing with the faculty retention problem, it seems that UNC is behind the eight ball compared to its peers across the country. While the administration is pointing toward budget cuts and seeking to quiet skeptics, other top universities are taking pre-emptive measures — including salary boosts and faculty development.
The economy and budget constraints are sometimes hard to predict, so the University must use other measures to ensure higher retention rates. For strong examples of creative ways to convince faculty to stay, UNC should look to its peer institution, the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
That school employed a small salary bump this year, after several years of pay freezes. However, this isn’t the reason faculty has stayed around. Innovative measures like development programs that support faculty-led initiatives and address equity gaps in salary have kept retention upward of 70 percent. By providing other means of training and benefits to UNC faculty, the University can ensure higher retention rates.
UNC prides itself on being an innovative, research-driven university with top-tier faculty. In order to maintain this image, faculty retention must be a priority.
