Rethinking Post-Tenure Malaise: An Interactional, Pathways Approach to Understanding the Post-Tenure Period

ABSTRACT

The decades between tenure and retirement constitute the longest yet least understood period of a faculty member’s career. Previous research depicts the midcareer as fraught with reduced job and career satisfaction, lowered productivity, and even stagnation. However, we suggest a reframing of this period. Drawing on data from surveys and interviews of post-tenure faculty at three liberal arts institutions, we reconceptualize the post-tenure as a period of dynamic interplay between an individual’s agency and choices and an institution’s opportunities and practices of recognition and rewards. We present a post-tenure model of four “pathways” to reflect how faculty vitality is constituted through institutional connection (belonging and fit) and career satisfaction (growth and recognition).

KEYWORDS:

• Career satisfaction
• faculty development
• post-tenure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by research grants from Kenyon College, Grinnell College, and DePauw Universities between 2015 and 2017.