Author: NCFDD
Mentoring is widely recognized as essential to faculty success, but not all faculty experience it as effective or equitable. In our recent collaboration with the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), we took a closer look at national faculty survey data to better understand who’s being supported by current mentoring models—and who’s being left behind.
The findings reveal that certain faculty populations—particularly pre-tenure faculty, women, and associate professors—often encounter significant gaps in mentoring support. These disparities not only affect individual career trajectories but also have broader implications for institutional retention and success.
Who’s Most Affected?
Let’s take a closer look at the data from over 166,000 faculty members across 300+ institutions:
Pre-Tenure Faculty
92.3% say mentoring is important—the highest of any group. But they’re also the most likely to find both departmental and institutional mentoring ineffective. At the exact moment when clear guidance is most critical, many early-career faculty are left navigating the tenure track without the support they expected.
Women Faculty
91% say mentoring is important, but only 71% find it effective—a 20-point gap. This disconnect points to deeper structural issues in how institutions are supporting faculty across lines of gender, identity, and role expectations.
Associate Professors
Among those who find departmental mentoring ineffective, 92% say it’s not just a personal issue—it’s failing their peers, too. Often caught in a “mid-career limbo,” associate professors can find themselves without structured mentoring, especially after promotion, just when leadership development and long-term career planning become more important.
What Happens When Mentoring Falls Short?
When mentoring is ineffective, the consequences extend far beyond missed meetings or generic advice.
What happens?
- Satisfaction drops: Only 44.2% of faculty with ineffective mentoring are satisfied with their institution (vs. 73.4% with effective mentoring).
- Career clarity suffers: Just 44% of those with ineffective departmental mentoring say they understand how to achieve tenure.
- Workload balance becomes harder: Only 37% say they can manage teaching, research, and service effectively.
These patterns aren’t just reflections of personal frustration. They highlight structural problems in the way mentoring is organized and delivered across institutions. When faculty aren’t supported with clear, consistent guidance, it becomes harder for them to stay engaged, move forward in their careers, or remain connected to the broader academic community.
Mentoring needs to be reimagined as an active, intentional system—one that evolves alongside faculty roles and meets the needs of a diverse and dynamic academic workforce.
So What Can Institutions Do?
The first step is identifying who’s being left out of existing models—and why. The second is designing solutions that actually meet those needs.
That means moving away from one-size-fits-all approaches and toward mentoring systems that are network-based and needs-based, intentional, and built to withstand the complexities of the academic journey.
Read the full white paper to explore the data, the gaps, and the strategies institutions are using to close them.