Students are well aware of the stress of their classes. In one week, they might have three midterms, a group project and a 10-page paper due.
But professors and other faculty face the same stressors as students. Professors, especially those on the tenure track, overwhelmingly report feeling professionally burnt out.
Initial findings of an ongoing study on faculty at Boise State University released in 2014 found that many professors reported working an average of 61 hours per week with a large portion of the time not spent teaching, but doing administrative tasks such as corresponding with students and colleagues or over email and attending meetings.
Noel Radomski, a director and associate researcher for the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, said the hardest time for professors is the first few years. Research and grant writing are “front-loaded” into professor’s contracts. Later, however, they face an increase in their “required credits taught.”
“[Universities] expect [new professors] to come in and write grants and write articles in the top journals both to publish in the best journals and to get as much research grants as possible,” Radomski said.
The stress for most faculty comes from the ability to meet their three big requirements: research, teaching and university service in the form of committee work, Radomski said. Most assistant faculty have a mentor to guide them through the most stressful first few years. By that point, departments begin assessing whether an assistant professor has the potential to reach tenure.
“If you make it past the probationary period around years four and five, you see a light at the end of the tunnel,” Radomski said.
Recently, an increasing number of non-tenure track faculty have been hired, which adds its own set of stress, Radomski said. With high teaching loads and short-term contracts that are based solely on teaching performance, student evaluations have a huge impact on temporary faculty members’ job security. This can lead to teachers tailoring their classes in order to get more positive evaluations and increase likelihood for another contract.
Contingent faculty, or staff not on the tenure track, made up about 70 percent of university positions, according to a 2015 Department of Education study. Universities have hired more contingent faculty because of the lower cost of these faculty who sometimes don’t have benefits or offices and earn much lower salaries, Radomski said.
Radomski added that UW-Madison has better working conditions, salaries and benefits for full-time non-tenured staff and they don’t have “excessive” teaching loads like 9-12 credits per semester.
