Public Colleges Fight Raids on Faculties

With the economy down, poaching attempts go up

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By AUDREY WILLIAMS JUNE

Public colleges and universities are girding themselves to win the war for tenured talent. And some are succeeding.

State budget woes and a rocky economy have shaken public colleges and universities. One of the most noticeable shudders has been a pervasive "brain drain," as many state institutions face competition for their best faculty members from more prosperous institutions, both public and private.

Chief academic officers, deans, and department heads at those institutions are now using specific incentives, careful nurturing, and, of course, cold cash as weapons. They are also making hard decisions about whether some offers are worth matching — and about the long-term consequences of the faculty arms race.

Some flagship public institutions can already point to victories in the struggle to keep professors on board.

The University of Georgia succeeded in keeping roughly 75 percent of faculty members whose offers from other institutions it countered over the last year. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill retained 69 percent of faculty members to which it gave counteroffers in the 2007-8 academic year. The most recent figures for the University of Illinois's three campuses showed it holding on to 75 percent of faculty members whose outside offers it countered.

"We're doing well now, but we expect to be waging the recruitment and retention battle for a time to come," says Bernadette Gray-Little, executive vice chancellor and provost at Chapel Hill.

Pre-emptive Measures

To be sure, some faculty members do engage in the age-old tactic of pursuing outside offers to increase their current salaries. But administrators who find their institutions under concerted external attack by poachers say that prevention is the key to successful retention.

In part, that means paying careful attention to the academic grapevine for whispers (or outright declarations) that a professor is job hunting. But it also means creating a supportive environment for research and teaching, and recognizing and rewarding key faculty members before recruiters come calling.

"We're trying to be proactive and make it less interesting for someone to get a counteroffer," says Ms. Gray-Little. At Chapel Hill, 51 faculty members got offers from other universities in the last academic year. The university made counteroffers to 26 of those professors and held on to 18.

Some institutions are setting aside new reserves of cash for pre-emption and retention. Last week the chancellor of Florida's university system, Mark Rosenberg, recommended that the Legislature appropriate $65-million to raise faculty salaries across the board as a preventive measure.

The University of Georgia has budgeted such increases for the last few years. Arnett C. Mace Jr., the university's provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, says that administrators made 161 counteroffers in the last year, resulting in the retention of 120 professors. Over the last four fiscal years, he says, the university has allocated nearly $6-million to give to deans to help them retain faculty members who "are among their best and their brightest and their most productive — the ones that they thought and knew were being courted by other institutions."

A substantial portion of that merit-raise and retention money has been designated for associate professors whose "compressed salaries" — salaries equal to or hardly greater than those of their recently hired colleagues — are more likely to prod them to look elsewhere. The university is also identifying disciplines in which its average salaries are significantly lower than what peer institutions pay, and it plans to ask the University System of Georgia for a one-time allocation of money to close the gap in those areas.

"When I see a faculty member who I know has a very compressed salary and whose productivity clearly warrants an investment," says Garnett S. Stokes, dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia, "I will try to put something together for that individual because it's a chance to correct the compression."

Keeping the best faculty members isn't simply a matter of salary. Intangible factors also play a role in professors staying put.

Mrinalini C. Rao, vice president for academic affairs of the University of Illinois system, says that some enticements include reduced workloads, more graduate students and support staff, time to do research, larger stipends, leadership opportunities, or even a coveted parking space on campus.

Juan R. Garcia, the University of Arizona's vice president for instruction, agrees.

"It's not always about money," says Mr. Garcia, who served as vice provost for faculty affairs before being named to his new job this year. "There were other things that we were able to do for faculty to convince them to stay. They want improved lab space, improved equipment, more operational funds." And sometimes, he says, faculty members are reluctant to leave behind colleagues. "You want to be among people who understand your work."

For Nicolette I. Teufel-Shone, an associate professor in the University of Arizona's College of Public Health, the university's accommodation of her extensive travel to do research in Native American communities in the state has made it easy for her to decline other offers. She is allowed to teach all of her courses in one semester each year, and her support staff, she says, excels at helping her conduct business long distance.

"I don't know if I went somewhere else that I'd be able to do that, and that's my top priority," she says. "If I were to leave, it wouldn't be for the money." In addition, when Ms. Teufel-Shone was recently promoted to a tenure-track position, she "benefited from them seeing the inequity of my salary and making the case for me to get more."

When to Say No

Sometimes institutions decide that matching or beating an outside offer doesn't make sense in advancing the school's fiscal health or mission.

Pramod P. Khargonekar, dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Florida, says outside offers from less prestigious institutions often don't warrant a response. He also observes that, in some instances, a counteroffer cannot make a difference. "I had a junior faculty member who I really hated losing, but it was a situation where his wife didn't have a tenure-track opportunity here," he says. "There was nothing I could do."

Officials agree that setting aside money in a cash-strapped environment to retain faculty members can be a problem.

"These are dollars that could have been used to recruit new faculty or for other types of initiatives," says Mr. Mace.

Another risk is increasing overall wage inequality. "You have star faculty and it's a no-brainer that they will probably be recruited by someone else," says Ms. Rao. "The question is how do you make them happy without necessarily making them a prima donna."

Joan Shaver, dean of the College of Nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago, tries to keep the number of counteroffers down by focusing on "the subset of faculty that would be considered high productivity. You know, the people who are the most visible to the outside world." Even something as simple as letting certain faculty members know that she is going to push for them to get the largest merit raise possible, she says, can go a long way toward retaining talent.

Making Ends Meet

Despite some successes in keeping key faculty members, officials at many public institutions say that finding the necessary resources is tough. Many top public universities continue to rely on private fund raising as a key mechanism.

Almost a year ago, the University of California at Berkeley landed a $113-million gift from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation that will keep professors' salaries competitive with those of elite private institutions.

When Berkeley received the gift, its news release said it had been able to retain 70 percent of 236 professors with outside offers over a six-year period, but only "through extraordinary efforts and cost-cutting measures that cannot be continued over time."

Keeping up overall morale is also a key factor in the battle.

At the University of Florida, where administrators recently slashed the college's budget by $47-million and oversaw staff and faculty layoffs, J. Bernard Machen, the president, says that he wants to signal to faculty members that "we're not in shutdown mode because of economic times." Just last month, the institution announced that it would use $11-million in tuition revenue to give faculty members merit raises and staff members cost-of-living increases.

"Faculty are much more willing to endure hardship if they feel like the institution is moving forward and that they can still develop as scholars," he says. "We've tried to keep academic initiatives moving forward."

Mr. Khargonekar, the engineering dean, makes about three or four counteroffers a year. "I don't think that we have lost anyone once we started negotiations," he says. He expects the merit-raise program to be helpful.

He also tries to keep his 270 faculty members focused on the future: "I tell them this is a growth state and we've seen this happen before."