Faculty shortage felt at Notre Dame

SOUTH BEND -- The effects of a faculty shortage at business colleges around the country are certainly felt locally, according to officials at the University of Notre Dame and Bethel College.

Long story short: Getting new faculty members is no picnic, and the problem nothing new.

"There's a war going on," said Bill Nichols, associate dean of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. "There's not a huge pipeline of Ph.D. students in graduate schools, and all the best schools in the country are fighting for the same group."

The shortage is especially apparent in finance and accounting, while marketing and management seem to be have more interested candidates.

"We're actively recruiting and we're checking the mail every day to see who's coming," Nichols said.That means people like Roger Huang have to start earlier in their search to attract the brightest and best.

Invitations to interview for jobs used to go out by the end of January, said Huang, chair of the Finance Department at Mendoza. Now, interviews are completed two weeks into the new year.

It's taking more money to draw them in, too. Business faculty salaries have always been into six-figures, but they've "skyrocketed" in recent years, Huang said.

He declined to give a number, since the hiring season isn't over yet, and Notre Dame is still competing with other business schools for talent.

Smaller schools such as Bethel College in Mishawaka, can't offer the six-figure salaries provided by large universities, which increases the challenge in finding new faculty members, said Bradley Smith, chairman of the Business Division at Bethel.The college has six full-time faculty members for business.

Bethel, which didn't hit the market for new business faculty members this year, has had a lot of luck in finding professors, partly because of its status as a Christian college, Smith said.

"We find Ph.D.-qualified faculty members in a variety of fields that want to integrate the Christian faith into their teaching," he said.

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