The Distribution of Family-Friendly Benefits Policies across Higher Education Institutions: A Cluster Analysis

Although the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering tenure-track faculty positions is often linked to the conflict between childcare responsibilities and the normative academic tenure-track pathway, previous studies have tended to focus on individual life choices, rather than the effects of institutional-level policies and structure. More recent research on work/life policies in higher education have pushed our understanding of how organizational structure and political climates at the department and institution levels influence the ability of faculty members to integrate career and life responsibilities. Many postsecondary institutions offer more generous work/life benefits than required by the 1993 Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which provides employees with 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for family and medical reasons per year if the employee has worked for the employer at least 12 months. The types of family-related benefits offered, however, vary greatly across postsecondary institutions in the United States. Taking a systems view of higher education institutions, this study uses kmeans cluster analysis to identify how institutions cluster and the availability of parental leave and childcare benefits at clusters of similar institutions. By so doing, the paper highlights the rates at which different types of institutions adopted family-friendly policies since the FMLA. Results indicate that the adoption of family-related benefits (paid maternity leave, paid paternity leave, and subsidized childcare) increased during the time period following the enactment of FMLA, suggesting FMLA had some impact on the system. The increase in family-related benefits is associated with an academic institution’s expenditures. Research institutions are more likely than master’s, bachelors and associates institutions to offer a greater number of benefits. This study provides a historical national perspective of academic institutions’ efforts to facilitate work-life integration among faculty with implications for helping administrators, policy makers, and other stakeholders shape educational policy. Introduction Family friendly legislation, such as paid maternal, paternal leave and subsidized childcare, exist as national policies in many European and other countries around the world. Institutions in these countries, from businesses to universities, are required to implement at minimum the baseline requirements for these national policies. In contrast to many nations around the world the United States stands as an outlier in that it lacks national paid or subsidized family friendly policies. The United States instituted the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993, which grants employees of companies with 50 or more employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave for the birth or adoption of a child. Many institutions, however, offer family friendly benefits in excess of the FMLA. The breadth of these benefits varies across institutions at the discretion of the employer. Previous research shows that family friendly policies are unevenly distributed across American universities. The level of family friendly benefits provided to academic faculty has important implications for work-life balance. Family friendly policies have the potential to ease tensions associated with trying to start a family and having an academic career—tensions that are particularly acute for women. These policies are particularly important in Science, P ge 24200.2 Technology, Engineering and Mathematics fields, where women remain underrepresented as faculty members. While offering these types of policy may not be the only step in addressing barriers to entry and retention in STEM fields, providing inadequate or no policy limits these universities’ ability to increase access and success for all faculty. Past research into how policies are distributed across American universities provides an overview of the types of benefits policies offered across institutions stratified by Carnegie Classification. The Carnegie Classification groups institutions into categories, such as Master’s, Baccalaureate, Associate, etc. Yet, institutions within a Carnegie Classification type can be quite heterogeneous across factors, including, importantly, policy offerings. In this study we propose to use a complex systems framework to examine how the system of higher education institutions changed in response to the introduction of FMLA. In order to do so we draw on the technique of cluster analysis, specifically k-means cluster analysis to sort institutions into internally similar but externally dissimilar clusters. Analyzing how the system of higher education institutions cluster before and after the introduction of FMLA can lead to many important insights. Our analysis is guided by the following questions: How many clusters do higher education institutions fall into and how many family-friendly policies are available at them? How do the clusters differ from studies that rely on the Carnegie Classification as groupings? What do the profiles of these clusters look like and how do the profiles change after the passage of FMLA? Answers to these questions provide critical details on how the system of higher education institutions have developed over time and may offer insights into their future trajectory. STEM students and faculty thinking about their career trajectories (e.g. whether to pursue a job in a research university vs. bachelor’s only institution in light of balancing with family responsibilities) may also benefit from the findings of this study. Our data come from the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF). NSOPF includes faculty member and institutional data. Our dataset for this study contains data from 1993 and 2004, which is the last year the NSOPF was administered. These two years were selected because FMLA was passed in 1993. NSOPF 1993's data collection started in 1992 and can therefore serve as a baseline of the patterns of policy distribution before FMLA’s implementation. Data from 2004 will show changes, if any, in the patterns of family-friendly benefits distribution thereafter. Given that FMLA is a widespread national policy, we hypothesize that there will be positive change between these periods. Literature Review Challenges in work-life integration Parents in the U.S. workforce have been shown to experience conflict associated with the ideal worker norm, which places an expectation on workers that they must prioritize their job over other commitments including family. While men have taken relatively more responsibility for household and childcare compared to men from previous generations, there is still an existing norm for women to carry much of this responsibility. This places a unique burden on women in the workforce. Indeed, researchers have found that women in academic STEM experience more work-family conflict. Although expectations for childcare are lower for men than women, some men experience considerable pressure to maintain their work schedule after the birth of a child or are stigmatized for taking paternity leave. P ge 24200.3 Women continue to be underrepresented in STEM faculty positions in the United States. Norms related to the ideal worker and familial responsibilities make it challenging for faculty women, as well as men, to integrate family with academic work . For example, Drago et al. report that women engage in a number of bias avoidance behaviors to avoid defying the ideal worker norm, such as remaining single, delaying childbirth or not attending their children's events. Other researchers have reported similar bias avoidance activities, such as distancing oneself from others viewed as too 'feminine' . Although these norms develop and fluctuate over time and vary across landscapes, they are, in many respects, deeply entrenched and require policy and other interventions to generate systemic changes and improvements. In response to these conditions and calls for increasing the accessibility and equality in workplace institutions, numerous family friendly policies have been proposed. Paid maternal and paternal leave grant mothers and fathers time with their newborn or newly adopted children. Childcare policies, particularly subsidized childcare, allow parents to have professionals care for and educate their children during business hours. As comparative researchers have noted, however, the family friendly policy environment in the United States is very different than the family friendly policy environment in Europe and many other parts of the world. U.S. family-related policies in context The vast majority of countries, excluding the United States, have some form of paid maternal leave. Indeed, as of 2007, there were only 3 countries in the world that did not offer some form of paid maternity leave. Although not as widespread as paid maternity leave, many countries also offer paid paternity leave or leave for fathers to spend time with their children after birth. However, the lengths of paternity leave are typically shorter, some as short as two weeks. In contrast, some European countries like France and Sweden have a year or more of maternity leave. It is important to note, however, that not all countries fully subsidize parental leave; in some, it is only partially subsidized. Furthermore, many countries have some form of childcare policy. For instance, France and Nordic countries have subsidized and high quality, regulated childcare. Childcare can include both care-taking and educational components and French society typically views exposure to and experience in subsidized childcare as a means for developing well-adjusted children. In contrast, the United States has no national policy for paid paternal or maternal leave and its childcare policies primarily comprise providing childcare to families with lower incomes (e.g. Headstart) or providing tax breaks for commercial childcare. The one national family friendly