Multivariate Modeling of Time in Associate Professor Rank

To examine what institutional and individual characteristics influence the number of months full professors in our sample spent as associate professors before being promoted, we examined data on 265 respondents. It was necessary to limit the sample to those full professors who had remained at the same institu­tion since they were hired as assistant professors in order to obtain relevant data on institutional characteristics and policies. The sample does not include 20 cases who reported first being promoted to associate professor without tenure and then to associate professor with tenure. The attrition in the analysis sample due to data constraints limits the generalizability of the results to faculty who progressed from assistant professor to associate professor with tenure and then to full professor at the same institution.

Time in rank as associate—computed as the difference in months between first promotion to associate with tenure and promotion to full professor—was modeled as a function of individual characteristics (including gender, discipline, and academic age) and institutional characteristics (including public/private uni­versity, prestige, tenure clock policy, and percent of female faculty in the depart­ment). All two-way interactions with gender were also estimated. We again used a Cox proportional hazards regression model to explore the association between time in rank as associate and institutional and individual attributes.

Overall, there was no significant difference between male and female faculty in the time spent as an associate professor. Faculty (both male and female) at the higher prestige institutions spent longest in rank as associate professors, while males at the lowest-prestige institutions received promotion earliest. For example, in biology, the probability of promotion after about 8.5 years in rank as associate professor was approximately 80 percent at institutions of highest prestige for both men and women. At institutions of lower prestige, about 80 percent of the men were promoted after 5 years in rank as associate, while 6.8 years elapsed before 80 percent of the women at the lowest prestige institutions received promotion to full professor. Women in universities ranked in the bottom two tertiles spent about the same amount of time in the associate rank. There were no statistically significant differences across disciplines or between public and private institu­tions. Academic age was positively associated with time in rank.

Figure 5-4 shows the (conditional) probability of promotion to full profes­sor at month t + 1 given that no promotion had occurred until month t. The six curves correspond to prestige of the institution (highest = light gray, middle = dark gray, lowest = black) and to gender (solid = male, dotted = female). Figure 5-4a was drawn for biology at a private institution with 17 percent female faculty, and Figure 5-4b was drawn for electrical engineering.

Figures 5-4 (a-b) show the (conditional) probability of promotion to full professor at month t + 1 given that no promotion had occurred until month t. The six curves correspond to prestige of the institution (highest = light gray, middle = dark gray, lowest = black) and to gender (solid = male, dotted = female). Figure

Time (month)

5-4a was drawn for biology at a private institution with 17 percent female faculty, and Figure 5-4b was drawn for electrical engineering.