Clear as Mud: Promotion Clarity by Gender and BIPOC Status Across the Associate Professor Lifespan

Mid-career faculty members often seek to advance to the highest faculty rank of full professor, but research suggests women and Black, Indigenous and Other People of Color (BIPOC) faculty face inequitable patterns in advancement to the full professor rank. This study focuses on associate professors' perceptions of promotion clarity, or the degree to which they are clear about the processes and criteria for advancing to the full professor rank. Using a national sample of associate professors at four-year colleges and universities (n = 4,871), we sought to understand how the relationships between satisfaction and promotion clarity vary across stages in the associate professor career, and how women and BIPOC faculty experienced promotion clarity differently. By conceptualizing time spent in the associate rank using a lifespan approach, we found that women had less promotion clarity than men throughout each stage of the associate career, and the intersection between being a woman and a BIPOC faculty member is linked with having less promotion clarity at the middle stages of the associate career in particular.

Automated summary

This study found that women had less promotion clarity than men at each stage of the associate professor career, and the intersection between being a woman and a BIPOC faculty member is linked with having less promotion clarity at the middle stages of the associate career in particular.