274 ■ III: ROLE FUNCTIONS OF DOCTORAL ADVANCED NURSING PRACTICE
the number of doctoral faculty who reported they were not tenured and not on the
tenure track doubled since 2012, with 249 (33%) reporting this. This trend has been also
noted in the literature as Kezar and Maxey (2013) report that between 1969 and 2009,
the number of NTT positions has grown from 22% to 67% while the tenured positions
have dropped from 78% to 33%. This trend has raised concerns in the academy. Cross
and Goldenberg (2009) predicted that the “growth of non- tenure- track faculty numbers
constitutes an erosion of the tenure system,” warning that the lack of attention to this
trend may lead to “erosion in academic freedom” (p. 11). Certainly, as mentioned earlier
in this chapter, if DNP faculty members are going to be excluded from the tenure ranks
and the current trend toward a predominantly NTT university faculty, we conclude
there is going to be another disruptive trajectory in the history of the nursing discipline,
where an important segment of the workforce is marginalized, well documented by
Melosh in her 1982 The Physician’s Hand: Work Culture and Conflict in American Nursing.
As for an overall forecast of the future of tenure, much has been written about this
recently in the general literature (Dobbie & Robinson, 2008; Ehrenberg & Zhang, 2004; Ott
& Cisneros, 2015), and we can attest that our own institutions’ hiring for recent years has
focused more heavily on NTT hires, and furthermore, doctoral faculty teaching appoint-
ments with DNP preparation have increasingly been among NTT faculty. At our respective
graduate nursing programs, the philosophy surrounding the teaching of an individual
doctoral course has been more “Who is the best expert and who is best qualified to teach
this specific course?” rather than the particular tenure status of the individual.
Data from this study indicate that continuing concerns about salaries among doc-
toral nursing faculty are well grounded, especially because the nursing faculty short-
age has not abated and significant and rising percentages of senior nursing faculty are
exiting the profession due to retirements. While the total percent of faculty making
between $85,000 and $105,000 has grown from 46% in 2012 to 55% in 2016, the percent
making less than $85,000 a year has only decreased from 45% to 40% and the mode sal-
ary for doctoral faculty, non- administrators in 2016 is less than $75,000 a year (21.8%).
Administrative salaries among non- DNP or PhD chairs has risen where the majority
(62%) make more than $105,000 a year, but disparities at that same salary range exist
between PhD (53%) versus DNP department/ program chairs (37%). Whether this dis-
parity is more due to seniority and/ or rank needs additional analyses. We contend that
the salary concerns are real barriers to recruiting a younger generation of nursing fac-
ulty. The role of gender in nursing faculty salaries as compared to male- dominated pro-
fessions such as business, law, pharmacy, and engineering faculty salaries also needs to
be seriously examined. The rising percentage of respondents who indicated that there
was no visible or an absence of succession planning in their organization doubled from
9% in 2012 to 18% in 2016. What are the origins of this increase? Is it because academic
nursing departments are struggling with this issue or is it being ignored?
In 2012, the data indicated that some 26% of doctoral faculty planned to retire within
the next 5 years and 53% within the next 10 years. In 2016, doctoral faculty plan retire
within the next 5 years has risen to 32% heightening the need for succession planning.
A notable shift from the previous survey is the increased number of respondents who
report having aspirations to become a director/ chair of a doctoral nursing program, ris-
ing from 9% in 2012 to close to half of the respondents ( N = 330, 43%). However, another
way to look at these data is to note that also in 2012, 49% of the respondents had no wish to
go into academic nursing administration and that has only marginally improved in 2016
at 44%. Our concern remains that there are limited leadership development programs for
the doctoral faculty who could be recruited and prepared to assume these roles. In addi-
tion, there must be real tangible benefits to being an academic nursing administrator,
and we are very aware of many schools of nursing that give these individuals only very