The New and Relocating Recreation and Parks Faculty Market: The Factors Affecting Job Decisions

Abstract

Statistical profiles of faculty in higher education have examined personnel issues such as financial resources, doctoral education, and changes in doctoral programs. However, there are few resources that examine these issues within the context of recreation, parks, and tourism (RPT) educators. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how RPT academicians felt about their work environment through the use of an Importance Performance (I-P) analysis. Largely, RPT departments/programs appear to be providing the job attributes that “new hires' and “relocating faculty” indicate were most important in their decision to join their current departments/programs. Faculty who had relocated identified several job attributes that were important in influencing their decision to join the faculty at their current university/college and which they were somewhat dissatisfied with at their previous university/college. The results of this study suggest there are two primary areas that need particular attention when hiring faculty: job process and organizational climate.

Keywords:

• faculty
• recruitment
• retention
• job attributes
• job search