Editor’s Note: This is the last installment of a three-part series examining the way university faculties view their jobs. Today’s story is about job satisfaction.

by Amy Julian

Most of NIU’s teachers would still want to be college professors if given the option to start over.

Seventy-five percent of NIU’s teachers said they would definitely or probably become teachers if they were to do it over in a 1989 survey conducted by UCLA’s Higher Education Research institute.

The institute surveyed full-time faculty who taught at least one undergraduate course or spent at least nine hours per week in scheduled teaching.

About 30 percent of NIU faculty said they were satisfied with their salary or fringe benefits.

Nationally, however, 42 percent of faculty members are happy with their pay, said NIU Provost Kendall Baker. NIU is trying to improve salaries through its salaray adjustment program, he added.

But Baker noted the faculty is satisfied overall with the job environment at NIU.

Baker serves as vice president to President John La Tourette and has been analyzing the results of the study.

As a profession, 63.2 percent of college professors said they had overall job satisfaction.

One factor that 80.4 percent of NIU’s teachers find satisfying is their job autonomy and independence.

Most people go into the profession of higher education because it gives them the chance to do things they want to do, said Francis Miller, chemistry teacher and director of NIU’s University Honors Program. They trade higher salaries for independence, he said.

University teachers work 55 hours per week, Baker said. But part of doing research is the fact that they can choose the work hours during which they are most creative, he said.

Of the teachers, 67 percent of the women said they had overall job satisfaction and about 62 percent of the men felt satisfied.

This difference could exist because women are socialized to deal with lower salaries and to like the nuturing aspects of teaching, said Lois Self, director of Women’s Studies at NIU.

Women are not necessarily happier, they just express dissatisfaction less, Self said.