Actionline NEA

Most Profs Like the Work

Recent NEA Higher Ed Survey Finds High Rates of Job Satisfaction—Even Among Part-time Faculty.

Eighty-five percent of faculty—full-time and part-time—report they are satisfied with their jobs, according to the most recent NEA Higher Education Reasearch Center Update "Faculty Satisfaction."

Union members, the Update reports, are more likely to be very satisfied with their jobs overall than those who are not in unions, and more likely to be very satisifed with their salaries and benefits.

Overall, however, faculty are less satisfied with salary and benefits than with other aspects of their jobs.

Aspects of the job faculty are most satisfied with include their autonomy and the ability to make decisions about their work. Ninety-five percent of faculty members are satisfied with their authority to decide course content, 85 percent with their ability to decide which courses they teach.

Download NEA Higher Education Research Updates at www.nea.org/he or order a copy by sending an e-mail to HigherEd@nea.org.

The 30-member NEAFT Partnership Joint Council has made developing strategies to contain member health care costs one of its top priorities.

Other priorities include helping affiliates deal with the implementation of the recent re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, aiding low-performing schools, and assisting affiliates with jurisdictional agreements.

There have also been a series of joint NEA-AFT higher ed activities, in Washington state in connection with the new collective bargaining law.

The Joint Council's latest report is available at www.nea.org/aboutnea/neaft/020130neaft.html.

Representatives from 37 unions in 26 countries, including a delegation from NEA, explored issues raised by transnational education at the Education International World Higher Education Conference, which was held this spring in Montreal.

Speakers from the World Bank, the ILO, and UNESCO discussed international economic trends and responded to assertions of delegates that higher education is severely underfunded, especially in developing countries.

Barry Stearns of Lansing Community College in Michigan and Stanley Jackson of Westfield State College in Massachusetts represented NEA, assisted by NEA staffers Joanne Eide from International Relations and Rachel Hendrickson from the higher education program. Hendrickson presented a paper on non-standard work in higher education.