Attrition of full-time faculty from schools of nursing with baccalaureate and graduate programs, 2010 to 2011

The shortage of qualified faculty has been consistently reported as a major barrier impeding acceptance of all qualified applicants into nursing programs. In addition to faculty recruitment, the attrition of faculty is also a concern for schools of nursing. In this study, we found that nationally 11.8% of full-time faculty who worked in 2010 left their full-time jobs by 2011. Nearly half of total attrition, or 5.7% of full-time faculty members, were related to leaving for nonacademic nursing positions, whereas another 20% of attrition, or 2.4% of full-time faculty, resulted from retirement. Nearly 20% of faculty egressions, or 2.2% of full-time faculty, was due to leaving for nursing administrative positions or full-time faculty positions in an academic setting. Leaving for part-time faculty positions made up slightly more than 10% of faculty attrition or 1.3% of full-time faculty. Our bivariate analysis identifies distinctive academic and demographic profiles of faculty who left full-time positions for different reasons, and our multivariate analysis further shows that different individual and institutional attributes are significantly associated with different types of attrition.