Hawes worked at four institutions and often felt that talking about her future was “very secretive.” She experienced a different approach to talent management when she moved to a large professional-services firm: “When someone asks, What do you want to do next? I’m like, Am I allowed to talk about what I want?” She’s come to believe “the whole model of ‘we want you to grow, we want you to be fulfilled in your career’ is so foreign to higher education.”įaculty members aren’t immune to feeling like they’re in a career cul-de-sac. And we’d ask, ‘Why don’t we do that here?’” She told me that she and her co-author interacted frequently with employers and “would see what recruiters were offering to students. Talent management was front of mind for Hawes, who moved from higher education to the corporate world. workers left their jobs in 2021, “no opportunities for advancement” was second only to low compensation. In an article for the National Association of Colleges and Employers on strategies for retaining employees, Carrie Hawes and Samara Reynolds suggested that college leaders “make talent management and development priority one.” They pointed to a Pew Research Center survey showing that, among the top reasons why U.S. “It just started really feeling like … you have to move outside of the institution to find any type of upper movement in advising.” “Every single one of my friends and colleagues who applied and were full-time employees,” she recalled, “none of them got those positions.” Instead, the college’s leaders shifted employees from other areas into the openings. When I spoke to her, she said that advising became a cornerstone of her institution’s quality-enhancement plan, and new middle-management positions were created in her office. Katrina Bailey, for example, who worked in an academic-advising office in a community college, wrote about the frustration she had seen firsthand. Stories of promised advancement that never materialized. Stories of administrative assistants who earned graduate degrees and new skills but could never be viewed as anything except secretaries. Contingent faculty facetiously asked: “What is a career ladder?” People shared stories of “promotions in title only,” in which a person earned additional responsibilities but no additional pay. Advising, admissions, advancement, and academic departments all got called out. When I floated the idea of dead-end jobs in higher education on Twitter, I was floored by the volume and breadth of responses. The first time my future was explicitly mentioned was in a surprise meeting with a dean informing me of the institution’s intent to end the program.Ĭampuses have largely outsourced or ignored the professional growth and learning of their employees. If I excelled at my job, I would advance exactly to where I already was. Yet a career ladder was never discussed because there was none. At some point, I would want to grow and maybe even be considered for a promotion. But I couldn’t be expected to stand in the doorway of my career forever. It was early in 2009, and I was happy to have a job. As the only full-time employee in an office on the outskirts of the organizational chart, I reported to an associate director who had no plans of leaving and whose experience and education placed that person several pay grades above me. I was the third coordinator in five years, and my training consisted of a binder my predecessor left me. All those hours didn’t change a fundamental fact: It was a dead-end job. That love propelled me to pour my time into the program, logging hours on nights and weekends. My first full-time job in higher education was coordinating a global-studies living-learning program, and I loved it. This essay is excerpted from a new Chronicle special report, “ Solving Higher Ed’s Staffing Crisis ,” available in the Chronicle Store.
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