What Happens after Tenure? Exploring Stimuli of Promotion to Full Professor in Top-Ranking Criminology and Criminal Justice Programs in the United States

Abstract

This research addressed how research productivity and scholarly influence may contribute to associate professors’ promotion to the full professor rank. In 2017, we collected vitae of tenure-track faculty employed at top Ph.D.-granting criminology and criminal justice programs in the U.S.A. In this paper, we used the data for 213 associate and full professors and employed survival analysis to examine their time to promotion and factors that stimulated the process. Results showed that the number of sole-authored articles and citation counts positively predicted faculty’s likelihood of being promoted to full professors. We also found faculty members who graduated after 1996 were promoted approximately twice as fast as those who graduated before the year; however, neither race nor gender influenced faculty promotion trajectories. Finally, limitations and implications were discussed.