Job satisfaction among non-PhD academic staff in Tanzania’s private and public universities

Abstract

This study was conducted to apprehend the overall job satisfaction of non-PhD academic staff in universities in Tanzania. The study was based on Herzberg’s Two-Factor (motivators and hygiene) theory. As organizations undertake measures to ensure employee retention, employee job satisfaction to the organization has now become more critical than ever due to the fact it is an essential determinant of employee job performance which ultimately translated into realization of organizational core functions. The study is motivated by the situation of Tanzanian universities, whereby universities as critical institutions which were tasked to prepare corps of educated elite to serve the community and entire nation. Over the last three decades, for instance, public universities have been facing numerous challenges which have affected their ability to motivate and retain their academic staff. This has been as a result of the economic crisis the country has been experiencing since late 1970’s. Consequently, physical facilities are run down, student riots are on increase while academic staff are dissatisfied due to variety of factors including inadequate and non-competitive salaries and non-monetary factors led into high turnover of academic staff in many universities to other seemingly promising economic sectors while those who remained are actively seeking alternative activities to supplement their income. Crumbling situations in public universities is further characterized by limited capacity to absorb all the qualifying applicants, and has necessitated the increase number of private universities. Although rapid increase of private universities within a short period of time, stiff competition among major religious denominations to establish private universities amid acute shortage of highly qualified, international-acclaimed and well-experienced academic staff, hence, old and new universities resort to recruit junior academic staff, the majority with Master or Bachelor degrees, some are fresh graduates. The study employed cross-sectional survey design in collecting data from non-PhD academic staff in both public and private universities in Tanzania. The data for this study was collected using questionnaire which were distributed to 150 non-PhD academic staff from two universities (one private and one public university). In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted to Deputy Vice Chancellors with the aim of validating the data collected from the questionnaires.