According to a well-worn witticism, faculty morale is always at its lowest. This quip, although at odds with my experience, suggests a question: Even if many professors are content, why are some not? I would suggest at least the following generic factors.
- Apart from a small number of highly regarded scholars, most faculty would be unable to find a position other than the one they currently hold. In short, they lack mobility.
- Because appointments are so difficult to obtain, most faculty are not living in the location of their choice. They reside near the school that invited them to join a department.
- No professors participate in choosing any colleague who was tenured when they arrived. The resulting situation may be reminiscent of Sartre’s Huis Clos (No Exit), in which “L’enfer, c’est les autres.” (“Hell is other people.”)
- Over time, teaching can become exhausting. Presenting the same material year after year, grading bushels of papers, and dealing with seemingly endless student concerns can undermine enthusiasm.
- Research can be frustrating, progress slow, and publication chancy. Even then, the work may soon be forgotten.
- While faculty control their own classrooms and contribute to departmental curricula, administrators hold sway over the life of the institution. Faculty have little or no impact on the distribution of money and lines, areas to be developed, or external relationships to be cultivated.
- Salaries are relatively low compared to those of physicians in sought-after specialties, partners in prestigious law practices, or managers in successful investment firms. Even the most illustrious professor can only dream of the level of compensation received by those who succeed in these other pursuits.
Yet in the face of such vexations, tenured professors enjoy unparalleled job security as well as the freedom to cultivate their own interests. No one tells them how or when to proceed with their projects; the choices are theirs. Each professor may also enjoy the opportunity to work with responsive students and to benefit from supportive colleagues.
Indeed, each year thousands of doctoral students strive to obtain academic positions. Presumably, those applicants believe that whatever the drawbacks of professorial life may be, they are outweighed by its advantages. Keeping these in mind should help sustain faculty morale.
Steven M. Cahn
Steven M. Cahn is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among the books he has authored are Professors as Teachers (2022), Exploring Academic Ethics (2024), From Student to Scholar: A Candid Guide to Becoming a Professor, Second Edition (2024), Religion Within Reason, Second Edition (2025), and the recently published Pathways Through Academia (2025).
Let’s not forget that many schools place a lot of weight on student evaluations, which can be very biased. The evaluations may not count so much for tenured faculty, they do count a lot for teaching faculty. A lot of schools rely on teaching faculty now instead of tenure track faculty. They are cheaper and you can get rid of them more easily. I get really great evaluations, but the few unhappy campers are the ones they seem to harp on. Adjunct faculty have it even worse. Still, I myself, still love teaching. Even the material I have taught many times before, the students bring their own perspectives and history and keep me on my toes! And at the STEM school I teach at, though we don’t get a lot of majors, the students are pretty bright.