HD18 - Report on Strategic Plan Efforts Related to Faculty Recruitment and Retention, in Response to HJR 642


Executive Summary:
House Joint Resolution No. 642 of the 2007 Virginia Acts of Assembly requests the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) “to include in its current strategic planning initiative consideration of Virginia’s competitiveness in attracting and retaining faculty for public institutions of higher education,” and to report on its progress in meeting the request by the beginning of the 2008 General Assembly.

This document intends to fulfill the reporting requirement of HJR 642. It describes statewide efforts with regard to faculty compensation, and notes specific initiatives associated with SCHEV’s 2007-13 Strategic Plan: Advancing Virginia: Access, Alignment, Investment.

Contained here are:

• Acknowledgement of faculty recruitment and retention as complex issues affected by institutional mission, location, and programmatic mix.
• An overview of public university faculty salary averages at Virginia institutions.
• An overview of the Strategic Plan and related efforts with an impact on faculty recruitment/retention.
• Summary. Salary data indicate that Virginia has recently regained some of the ground lost to other states earlier in the decade. However, short term revenue shortfalls threaten those gains, at least in part, as the Commonwealth seeks to balance limited available resources against higher education needs in the 2008-10 biennium. Of particular concern is the absence of an across the board salary increase for faculty in the first year of the biennium and reduced funds available for base adequacy increases to institutional budgets. Although faculty recruitment and retention is a complex issue having to do with more than compensation, the most sensible course is to support the maximum affordable progress toward base adequacy funding and meeting the Commonwealth’s goal of funding faculty salaries at 60% of institutions’ peer group salary averages. Once these goals have been more nearly achieved, institutions may be surveyed to determine whether remaining recruitment challenges would be amenable to a statewide approach.