A study on the magnitude and causes of turnover among academic staffs of Ethiopian Higher Institutions: evidence from Ambo University

Abstract

Considering high turnover as a sign of failure in an educational organization, the study was conducted to assess the causes of turnover among the academic staffs of Ambo University. The study focused on six plausible factors: economic, managerial, environmental, social and technological, teaching related factors and student characters. To achieve this end, the data were collected from 295 (113 former and 182 current) staff members through attitudinal survey questionnaire, semi-structured interview, focused group discussions and document analysis. The former staff members were selected on the bases of available and snowball sampling techniques, whereas, multistage stratified sampling techniques were employed to select  the   current   staffs.  The   analysis employed   both   quantitative   and  qualitative approaches. Considering data were ordinal, percentage, median, weighted mean, standard deviation, ranking methods and Mann Whitney U Test were used analyze the data. The results determined that economic, social service and technological, managerial, student characters, teaching related and environmental factors in descending order are identified as the reasons for the teacher turnover in the university. In relation to the groups, male, experienced, elder instructors were dissatisfied and tend to leave the university at higher rate than their counterparts. Therefore, in bringing about improvement in these factors, the government should revise the compensations, fringe benefit, promotion, loans and performance appraisal policies to enhance opportunities for the academic staffs particularly for experienced Maters and PhD holder instructors, and the universities should also create further opportunities and implement the policies in fair and transparent manner. Moreover, both federal and the regional government should give due attention to improve the supply of pure water, electric power, network and internet service for Ambo town in general and for AU in particular.

Keywords: Causes, Pull-Push factors, Determinant Factors, Academic staff Turnover