Unpleasant Surprises

Survey Results: What Surprised People When They First Started Working in Higher Ed 

This headline from Inside Higher Ed caught my attention, and of course, I had to know more. The survey of 459 people does not paint a pretty picture. The top five "surprises" were:

intense politics
slow pace
lack of collaboration/uncollegial actions/infighting
students (unpleasantly surprised)
bureaucracy

Wow. Talk about a downer. Forgive me for my apparent prejudices, but I immediately thought, these must be faculty that they've surveyed. But no, a little digging revealed tenure track faculty only accounted for 17% of respondents, while sadly, administrators accounted for 36%. So...we don't like our jobs? Our coworkers? Our students? Huh.

This got me thinking about another online article which created a tempest in a teapot recently. CareerCast ranked college professor as the least stressful job for 2013. Okay, even I had to snort in derision over this one. But if you want to witness some outrage over mischaracterization of a profession, read the comments the article garnered and search it on the internet to see how much controversy and blowback it created.

All of this to say...what? We, collectively, are not happy with our higher ed jobs? Change needs to come? Some of us are burnt out and perhaps need to move on to other careers, or retire? We are super sensitive about our jobs? We need to do some soul-searching about the value of what it is we do?

Maybe all of the above.


Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/stratedgy/survey-results-what-surprised-people-when-they-first-started-working-higher-ed#ixzz2HxeQXtY3
Inside Higher Ed

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/stratedgy/survey-says-results-newbieveteran-surveys

http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/10-least-stressful-jobs-2013