COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Yuebing Liu

TITLE: WHY THEY STAY: CAREER DEVELOPMENT, PERSONAL GROWTH, AND THE RETENTION OF HIGHER EDUCATION GENERAL STAFF

ABSTRACT: Higher education general staff (HEGS) are critical to the operational continuity and institutional success of U.S. colleges and universities, yet their retention remains a persistent challenge. While faculty development has received sustained attention, HEGS have historically lacked equivalent access to career advancement and personal growth opportunities. This study examined how perceived access to career development and personal growth opportunities were associated with job satisfaction and turnover intention among HEGS and tested whether job satisfaction mediated these relationships. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory and Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, this study hypothesized that career development and personal growth would predict turnover intention both directly and indirectly through job satisfaction. Data were collected from 198 non-faculty higher education staff across U.S. institutions using an online survey administered through Qualtrics and distributed via CloudResearch Connect. Career Development was operationalized as a composite of career path clarity, training, and mentoring; Personal Growth was operationalized as meaningful work/sense of purpose. Job satisfaction was measured using a short-form adaptation of the Brayfield-Rothe (1951) scale, and turnover intention was measured using the Turnover Intention Scale (TIS-6; Bothma & Roodt, 2013). Data were analyzed using Stata, including reliability analysis, correlation, and bootstrapped mediation regression. All four hypotheses were supported. Career Development and Personal Growth each significantly predicted turnover intention, and both effects were fully mediated by job satisfaction, a pattern that held even when the two predictors were tested simultaneously in a combined model. Notably, no statistically significant difference emerged between the strength of the two mediated pathways, indicating that career development and personal growth contributed comparably to job satisfaction and, through it, to turnover intention. These findings suggest that institutional investment in career development and personal growth opportunities is associated with HEGS retention primarily through its relationship with job satisfaction, rather than through any direct pathway independent of it. The results offer HR leaders and institutional planners an evidence-based rationale for pursuing balanced, rather than singular, investment in structured career development and meaning-oriented job design as retention strategies for this historically underexamined workforce.

 Keywords: Higher education general staff; career development; job satisfaction; turnover intention; staff retention

Location Online:

Zoom Link:

https://pvpanther.zoom.us/j/9803176607?pwd=SXhuZ2lPbktMZUF6N2pydHg1UXNudz09

Meeting ID: 980 317 6607

Passcode: 123456