Some sociology faculty salaries edge up: New research brief

The ASA Department of Research has released its 2012-2013 analysis of salary trend data for the academic sociology profession and other social sciences. Among our findings: average annual faculty salary changes between Academic Year (AY) 2011/12 and AY 2012/13 show slow or no growth in salaries at public institutions, compared to private institutions.

FACULTY: What happened in the past academic year to salaries at your institution?  Why?

Pathways to Full Professorship: What Do the Data Tell Us About the Role of Gender?

Contrary to what we all hear and say anecdotally, women and men academics in some disciplines advance to full professor at the same rate. Data from the American Historical Association’s (AHA) 2010 Career Paths survey indicate that academic historians reach full professor in the same amount of average time, regardless of gender (Townsend 2013). The differences, however, were found in the different pathways that lead women and men to the upper ranks of academia.

Townsend attempted to explain this discrepancy by not only looking at the total time it took to advance, but also the number of years between each rank, how marriage and/or family and childcare issues affected promotion, amount of time spent on professional activities, amount of productivity, and other factors. Townsend found that married male historians in this sample were promoted faster than women who were married. And although women survey respondents reported spending more time on child and other family care than men reported, the amount of time they each spent on professional activities was the same. Although there was no direct comparison of the mothers and fathers in this sample, mothers moved through the ranks faster than women who did not have children. Data from an ASA survey of the 1996/97 cohort of sociologists support this notion (Spalter-Roth and Van Vooren 2012).

Is this true across disciplines?  A forthcoming study from ASA’s 2012 Time in Rank survey of full and associate professors in sociology will further explore this question, including whether there is a significant difference between the amount of time it takes men and women sociologists to advance to full professor. As we examine the data from the Time in Rank survey of sociologists, we will look at these and other factors to uncover the pathways men and women take to reach full professor and the different challenges they overcome in order to do that.

The ASA’s–as well as the AHA’s studies–are based on responses to questionnaires.  What would you add to such as study? Comment below and share your thoughts with us.

Help with Departmental Assessments

According to the most recent academic Department Survey, more than eight out of 10 sociology departments carry out departmental assessments that are often demanded by college or university administrators.  Faculty members have mixed feelings about doing such assessments, especially when they are ordered from the top down.

The ASA Research Department on the Discipline and the Profession has just added a new PowerPoint presentation—Program Assessment with Benchmarks: Using Data from the ASA—to our collection of free downloads.  The presentation describes how ASA resources—especially data collected from our Bachelor’s and Beyond Survey, can be used to “solve” common assessment problems.  These problems include the following:

• Lack of faculty time to work on assessment
• Lack of departmental consensus about what should be assessed
• Lack of student commitment to engage seriously in assessment activities
• Lack of comparative data
• Concern about reliance on “self reports”

The presentation provides examples of how these survey data can be used and how they can be enhanced through combining them with questions that test students’ conceptual and methodological knowledge.

An example of data on assessment activities.

Source: Spalter-Roth and Scelza, 2009. What’s Happening in Your Department with Assessment? Washington, DC: American Sociological Association.

We’d like to hear from you about the issues that you are having with doing assessments.  Also, are you adapting or have adapted the Bachelor’s and Beyond survey or other ASA data for your department’s assessment needs?  If so, how?  Was this effort successful? 

PhDs in the Job Market: Comparing Sociology With Other Disciplines

We began the new year with our annual study of the sociology job market. In this two-part study, we will first be looking at the number and types of jobs advertised through the ASA in 2011. Findings will be reported this year. For the second part of the study, we will be surveying departments that advertised assistant rank positions to determine how many searches were conducted and jobs were filled in 2011. Survey results will be reported this summer. (Findings from last year’s study is available on our website).

In the meantime, early data from this study was reported in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education article on job market trends in select disciplines. **Please note that you will need an account to view the article.

Looking for Data on Sociology?

Want to know how many bachelors degrees were awarded in sociology in 1990? Or maybe how sociology faculty salaries compare to political science? You can find this, and other data on sociology and social science degrees and enrollment, employment, funding, and sociology programs, as well as ASA membership on our Trend Data page. Links to similar datasets can be found on our Data Resources page.

Join the Discussion: Motherhood’s Impact on the Academic Sociology Career

A QUESTION TO OUR READERS: The majority of respondents to an ASA survey say that motherhood has a negative effect on women’s careers in academic sociology.  What are your experiences?

Click Add Comment below to post your comment. Please do not leave your name if you wish to remain anonymous.

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The Demands of an Academic Career

In their article, “Figuring Out Flexibility,” (published May 7, 2009 in The Chronicle of Higher Education*), Anne Gallagher and Cathy A. Trower discuss pre-tenure faculty members’ wants and needs to be successful in their academic careers.

“We are often asked why many young faculty members don’t consider an academic career to be flexible, when it appears to be one of the few flexible options for someone with an advanced professional degree, as compared with, say, a career in law or medicine. People unfamiliar with tenure-track life imagine professors enjoying long and numerous breaks throughout the academic year, summers off, and the ability to work from home. But as most faculty members can attest, that popular (mis)representation has little in common with the reality of their own situations.”

Because of these demands, the academy has been described as a “greedy institution,” and the lack of fit between parental responsibilities and successful academic careers are based on the conflicting responsibilities of each. (See our research brief, “The Best Time to Have a Baby: Institutional Resources and Family Strategies Among Early Career Sociologists”). In their annual interviews with assistant professors, Gallagher and Trower found that the new generation of faculty members desire more flexibility in their careers, particularly with the ability to work towards tenure at their own pace and establish a manageable balance between careers and family life.

The Mother and the Academic

The conflict between work and family demands has been a continuous theme in our research briefs from a longitudinal study of a cohort of sociology PhDs. The ASA’s Research Department examined questions like,’When is the best time for female academics to have a baby?’ (“The Best Time to Have a Baby: Institutional Resources and Family Strategies Among Early Career Sociologists”) What work-family policies are available and who takes advantage of them? (“Resources or Rewards? The Distribution of Work-Family Policies”) Are mid-career parents satisfied in their work and family lives?  (“PhDs at Mid-Career: Satisfaction with Work and Family”). And, does the availability of formal family-oriented policies attract candidates at smaller institutions? (See “What’s Happening in Your Department? Department Resources and the Demand Side of Hiring”).

We pose this Question of the Week specifically about the impact of motherhood on academic careers because a substantial proportion of early career sociology academics are female. In 2008, women represented more than 60 percent of PhDs awarded in the discipline. Moreover, women also tend to be the primary caregiver.

As Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden found in their study of PhD recipients between 1973 and 1999, having babies and raising children does impact the female academic’s career. (See “Do Babies Matter? The Effect of Family Formation on the Lifelong Careers of Academic Men and Women”). In particular, raising children has a negative effect on women’s, but not men’s career, trajectories. For example, men who have children early in their career are far more likely than women to achieve tenure who have done the same. Although, in our own study of mid-career PhDs we found high rates of satisfaction with work and family, female respondents still echoed this conclusion. As one wrote:

“Don’t get me wrong, I think that being a parent has made me a better sociologist and a better person. I think that I made the right choices for me and I’m not bitter about it. But, I think that there are still tremendous structural constraints for women in academic positions, particularly at research universities. I see this with my female colleagues. It may be the 21st century, but on average, male assistant professors can have babies and it doesn’t hurt (may even help) their careers and it slows women down.”

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Join the Discussion

We invite readers to share their experiences, comments and questions on this topic. Click Add Comment below to post your comment. Please do not leave your name if you wish to remain anonymous.

*Access to articles from The Chronicle of Higher Education require a subscription.

Diversity in the Discipline

A new study by the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology shows that among the social sciences, sociology is the most diverse, with underrepresented minorities (African American, Hispanic, or American Indian/Alaska Native) accounting for more than a quarter of the nearly 30,000 sociology bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2007.  Download Sociology Attracts High Percentages of URMs in Some States [PDF Format] to view further findings.

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