AN EMPERICAL INVESTIGATION ABOUT ROOTS OF ATTRITION: FACTORS INFLUENCING FACULTY ATTRITION- A STUDY OF MOVERS IN PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

When a faculty leaves an institute in the middle of the academic session, he or she puts the entire institute to loss. The students suffer because their course is not completed on time, the administration suffers because they receive complaints from the parents of the wards that syllabus is not being completed properly; other teachers suffer because the pressure on them increases. Due to all these reasons, the attrition of faculty from an institute needs to be taken care of.

Attrition, if not checked, brings down the productivity level of the remaining employees. Today for many academic institutions, teacher attrition has become an important issue because the institution’s ability to hold on to highly talented core faculty members can be crucial to attract students and the institution’s future survival.

Teaching profession is different from other professions. It is more sensitive because it deals with students. Thus, faculty behaviour in terms to switching institutes must be regulated in far more disciplined manner than in case of other professions. The focus must be to control the attrition or deter the young teachers from switching over institutes too frequently.

Faculty attrition is a very important phenomenon for education sector especially for professional institutions. It is the faculty that sets the tone of an educational institution to move forward, a much bigger challenge is that of a high turnover, since a number of faculty members switch organizations every year. The sudden loss of these knowledge pool impacts on existing academic plans of organization in a negative manner. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that institutions should design and pursue policies/mechanisms so as to compete well in market place to attract and retain for them the best faculty talent over a long period of time.