Voluntary faculty and higher education staff turnover, excluding retirements, declined in 2023-24 after two years of rapid increases, according to the latest survey data from the Association of College and University Human Resources Professionals (CUPA-HR).
“Turnover rates have not completely declined to pre-pandemic levels, but are trending in that direction,” the association wrote on its website this week. This “may indicate that retention efforts, such as pay increases, have helped alleviate the high turnover rates many institutions have experienced over the past few years,” he said.
A separate survey by the American Association of University Professors on faculty salaries found that in the fall of 2023, average salaries for full-time faculty increased after adjusting for inflation for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began. However, the increase rate was only 0.5%. Likewise, CUPA-HR reported in March that this year marked the first time since the pandemic began that average wage increases for employees, including faculty and staff, outpaced inflation.
Over the past seven years, faculty turnover has been much lower than staff turnover, according to a new report from CUPA-HR. Part-time, non-exempt employees have consistently had the highest percentage of all employee categories used by CUPA-HR.
From 2017-18 to 2020-21, the median voluntary turnover rate for part-time non-exempt employees among the institutions surveyed was approximately 15% (range 323 to 712, depending on data point). This proportion then exceeded 20% in 2022-23, but fell again to 15% in 2023-24. By comparison, the voluntary turnover rate among tenured faculty remained below 5% for all seven years, even during the peak period in 2022-23.
CUPA-HR said voluntary turnover rates did not vary significantly from year to year before the pandemic. Then, in 2020-21, “voluntary turnover rates for each category of staff and faculty declined slightly, most likely due to the economic uncertainty that characterized those years.” Voluntary turnover increased over the next two years before declining in 2023-24.
Regarding retirements not included in CUPA-HR's voluntary turnover rate, the association wrote, “Tenure-track faculty have had the highest rate of retirement of any other employee type each year since CUPA-HR began collecting such data in 2017.” –18.”