Hiring Technical Education Faculty: Vacancies, Criteria, and Attitudes toward Online Doctoral Degrees

Overview & Synopsis

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 1.6 million post-secondary teaching jobs in 2004 and predicted this number to increase 27% or more by 2014. Hiring higher education faculty in technical education has been more problematic than in many other fields. The fields of technology education and vocational education were cited by researchers as having a lower than average number of applicants per position, with vocational education also showing a much higher than average failure rate for searches. This report uses findings from a survey of higher education department chairs and program coordinators to characterize faculty vacancies at the bachelor's and master's program levels in post-secondary technical education institutions, the criteria used to hire faculty, and the attitudes toward filling those vacancies with an individual who has earned a doctoral degree through an online method of delivery. The survey sample included department chairs or program coordinators of bachelor's and master's programs in technical education in the United States. An anonymous, online survey was used to collect data due to its ease for respondents, its low cost, the anonymity it guaranteed to respondents, and its avoidance of data entry errors. (Contains 2 tables.)