Keywords

1 Introduction

This paper continues our extensive research (Dumitrescu et al. 2017a, b), aiming to determine an index to assess the quality of life at the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest campus. The aim here is to evaluate the perceived quality of life of professors, as it has an important influence on their performance, which is strongly related to the prestige of the university and to the professional training of students.

We assess professors’ opinion using questions based on a Likert type scale. While creating the questionnaire, typical questions for professors were considered, but we also included factors that usually determine job burnout for any kind of employee. Burnout is associated with exhaustion, different physical illnesses, depression and poor performance (Bakker and Costa 2014; Patlán Pérez 2013); professors suffering from it can become sick, depressed which leads to less performant activity in their academic work; consequently it is followed by poor quality of research and teaching. All these issues are translated into less educated students, less competitive results in competition on the labor force market, and lower prestige of the university.

Fortunately, our research shows that professors’ level of satisfaction regarding life in campus is above medium. They are very satisfied by the safety and respect to people offered in campus; on the other hand, professors consider that communication at university and faculty level, as well as some practical aspects regarding life in campus need improvement.

The second section of the paper presents the questionnaire used in order to assess professors’ perception and the main reasons behind these questions. The third section shows the methods used to analyze data we collected. In the fourth part of the paper the main results obtained are presented, as well as conclusions with the overall evaluation of results and with further directions for this research.

2 Quality of Life for Professors: The Questionnaire

In this section, the questionnaire that was filled in by the professors working in the POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest is presented, also mentioning the main reasons for each question. Several factors mentioned in studies focusing on job happiness and job burnout were included in this assessment, especially for teachers, but also questions arising from our personal experience of authors as university employees were presented. Burnout assessment is very important in this particular case, as professors are among professionals who do “people work”, so studies show they are more liable to suffer from this emotional exhaustion and cynicism (Maslach and Jackson 1981). Job burnout can determine negative attitude towards students, chronic fatigue, and can make teachers distance themselves emotionally and cognitively from their work activities (Maslach and Jackson 1981; Bakker and Costa 2014). All these can lead to poor performance regarding the teaching activity, which has a serious impact on the professional training of students: when suffering from these problems professors can be detached and not care if students understand courses or not, or, even worse, they can have a negative, violent attitude towards students, affecting their interest for the subject and even their well-being. This opinion is supported by studies that show that the quality of services burnt-out people offer is negatively affected by their suffering (Patlán Pérez 2013; Collie and Martin 2017).

The complete questionnaire is attached in the Appendix of this paper. It this section it is mentioned only the main reasons behind each set of questions, focusing on some particular items, aiming at a better understanding of this research.

The first section of the questionnaire assesses the general opinion of professors have about their workplace, the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest; for example, we ask them if they are happy with the prestige of the university, with its development, if they are satisfied with their workplace and if their needs are satisfied here, all these because it was shown that dissatisfaction with the workplace is one of the main reasons behind suffering from job burnout, which consequently lowers the quality of life (Bakker and Costa 2014; Patlán Pérez 2013).

The second and third sections of the questionnaire contain questions regarding the faculty and department that professors are working for. Besides individual factors and working with people (students), studies mention stressful events, lack of worker’s autonomy, lack of feedback from higher hierarchy, rewards missing, lack of among burnout causes (Patlán Pérez 2013; Lie et al. 2014). Also, it was shown that an important risk factor for university professors is the quality of the leadership (García et al. 2016). As a consequence, questions assessing the leadership of the faculties and departments were included, professors’ relationships with their higher hierarchy (e.g. deans and heads of departments), quality of communication with these superiors, and about the way they provide opportunities for promotion. Also, the level of satisfaction at working place is strongly linked with the working environment; this is why questions regarding relationships with peers, and within teams were included.

The following section is common with the questionnaire addressed to students, as safety and human dignity are important aspects in any person’s life, no matter their age. As it has been shown in the paper studying students’ perception on the quality of life in campus, humiliation and living in an unsafe environment affect the mental health, and thus, the well-being of any person (Dumitrescu et al. 2017b). Insecurity, physical and psychological abuse can cause depression, which can also lead sleep disorders (Wallace et al. 2017) and, as a consequence, it leads to poor intellectual performance, which is unacceptable for employees whose jobs require high levels of intellectual performance, both for teaching, and for scientific research.

Studies also mention wages and opportunities for career development among factors that influence the psychological well-being of employees (Lie et al. 2014; García et al. 2016), this is why the following section of our questionnaire contains questions about professors’ perception on opportunities for professional development, on support they receive from the university, on research opportunities and activities, and also, on their wages and other non-monetary benefits provided by the university. An important aspect when referring to the quality of life is the satisfaction felt while exercising one’s job, so questions to assess professors’ contentment regarding their professional activities and the final results of their work were included. Most of the studies on burnout mention workload as a key factor determining this syndrome (Bakker and Costa 2014) so the authors were also interested to see how professors assess the work-leisure balance in their lives. Job burnout do not have only psychological symptoms, in most of the cases it also leads to physical suffering, from head/stomachaches and neck pains, to more severe sufferings (Bakker and Costa 2014). As a consequence, in the questionnaire colleagues were asked to assess the influence their work has on health condition.

The second to last section of this questionnaire includes questions from different areas of practical interest, some of them common to those asked to students, for example questions regarding the medical services offered in campus, or the type and quality of food they offered in campus. We considered that eating habits are important issues for teachers as well, because obesity and other food related disorders can also diminish the quality of their lives. Moreover, similar with students, professors have little time between classes, they do not eat on regular basis; as a consequence, their meals are limited to what is offered to canteens and shops from the campus. This section also includes questions about the material endowment of the campus, green spaces, as it was shown that these aspects can also influence people’s well-being. As an example, medical research proved that hoarseness, a very common illness for professors, is strongly correlated with the levels of noise, air contamination, stress, and anxiety suffered by them (Polacow-Korn et al. 2015).

When creating the questionnaire for students, the last section of the questionnaire has two aims: the first one, to see the overall opinion of professors about aspects most influential in their lives; this will also help to weight each category of questions when constructing the index; the second one, to find out if respondents consider that there are other factors that influence their quality of life and were not included in our research.

3 Methodology

The study is based on a self-administered questionnaire, where most of the questions are based on a Likert type scale. For the first part of the analysis, we have determined the structure of the responses for each question.

As the focus of the research was to construct an index of the quality of life in campus for professors we started doing this by determining the average score for each question. An equal weight for each question in the category was used in order to calculate the average score for each section of the questionnaire. The importance of each category in the questionnaire was ranked by respondents and that ranking was used to generate and assign different weights to each section. Using those weights the formula we used is showed below in order to calculate the index of quality of life in campus for professors.

$$ {\mathrm{I}}_{\mathrm{QoL}}={\upalpha}_1\times {\mathrm{C}}_1+{\upalpha}_2\times {\mathrm{C}}_2+{\upalpha}_3\times {\mathrm{C}}_3+{\upalpha}_4\times {\mathrm{C}}_4+{\upalpha}_5\times {\mathrm{C}}_5+{\upalpha}_6\times {\mathrm{C}}_6 $$
(1)

where α1; α2; α3; α4; α5; α6 are the weights assigned to each category.

4 Empirical Findings

4.1 Results of the Questionnaire

This section is dedicated to the analysis of answers given by professors of the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest to the almost 100 questions asked in the questionnaire. As there are so many questions, with almost 200 answers each, the database is available on request.

Regarding the first set of questions, the answers show a medium-high level of satisfaction: professors are happy with the prestige and development of the university, and are also satisfied with the fact that they work here. This is a very important aspect, taking into account that not being satisfied with one’s workplace is a determining factor for burnout and low quality of life. What is worth mentioning here is that a vast majority of professors are not involved in the decision-making process in the university. In our opinion, this is an aspect that can be improved, as involving employees in the process of decision makes them feel appreciated and strengthens their connection with the organization.

The level of satisfaction towards the faculty they belong to is also medium-high for most of the professors. Even if they are not involved in decisions taken by the university, most of them feel they are encouraged to express their opinions and suggestions, and, moreover, they feel the management is open to listen to them. Overall, the communication at faculty level is considered to be good, regarding timing and relevance. What is a little disturbing and surely needs a deeper assessment at each faculty’s level is that more than 10% of the professors feel that there are no equal chances to promotion. This is a serious problem, because, as we were mentioning before, the lack of opportunities to develop the career can lead to burnout, depression, lack of interest and poor quality of work.

When assessing the same factors as before, this time at department level, it has been noticed that the situation is even better. There is good communication, the management is open to discussions new ideas, and the working environment across teams is satisfactory. Moreover, at this level, there are significantly less people who fell there are no equal chances for promotion for everybody.

As it was the case for students, the section regarding safety and human dignity offers some disturbing feedback. On one hand professors feel quite safe in the university campus and consider the training of the security guards satisfactory. On the other hand, many professors (16.6% of the respondents) have witnessed cases of discrimination, and an alarming number were victims of it (12%). Also, even more, (28% of them), have witnessed psychological violence, and 18.1% were victims of it. These alarming figures shows that the situation needs a deeper analysis, in order to be improved, because discrimination and violence leads to depression, and low quality of life, not to mention low performance in professional activities, which reflects on the results and prestige of the university. Teachers, as well as the students, consider that another aspect that needs to be improved is the access for persons with disabilities.

The section about work satisfaction and professional development offers both good and bad news. On one hand, most professors are satisfied with opportunities offered to develop their careers and the status offered by being an employee of the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest; they are also content with the results of their work, with respect, appreciation and feedback received from students, and with the work-leisure balance. This is good news, as all these aspects lead to high quality of life, self-esteem, and stimulate people to continue working in order to improve their performance. On the other hand, many professors do not feel the university provides them enough support to improve their professional activities, by granting financial support to take part in training sessions, conferences, and technical endowments for experiments. A medium level of satisfaction is observed regarding the financial and nonfinancial benefits offered by the university to its employees. Also, a great number of them (more than 16%) believe that there are no equal opportunities to obtain additional gains. This aspect needs to be improved, as people who feel discriminated do not feel stimulated to continue performing. Another aspect that needs improvement is that professors feel that research activities are over weighted in the criteria for professional promotion; this aspect needs to be commonly addressed by the University POLITEHNICA, the other Romanian universities and the Ministry of Education. Lastly, but not less important, almost half of the professors (42.5%) would leave the university, half of them for other types of activities, half, in order to work in other universities; besides these 42.5%, another 10% would leave the university because of other reasons. This is another alarming aspect that requires a deeper analysis. Human capital is the essential asset of an educational institution, and the fact that so many employees would leave is a signal that there are essential changes that need to be done, in order to improve work satisfaction and quality of life.

Regarding different practical aspects, there are things that professors are very satisfied with, and other that need improvement, in order to increase their quality of life. For example, professors appreciate the quality of the access roads and alleys, and the green spaces in the campus, but they would like to have more opportunities to practice sports. They also think that urban furniture is not enough, and would like to improve the possibilities for spending leisure time in campus. Also, they consider that a pharmacy and special medical services should be available in campus. As this was a concern also expressed by students, it is clear that offering this type of services in campus will determine higher levels of satisfaction to all the stakeholders. Regarding food products, professors are more careful with their meals, that is why they are not pleased with food variety offered in the shops in campus, but they do appreciate food at the canteen, and also the prices there; the only thing that would improve their satisfaction is to improve the queuing time. Another important aspect is that professors are happy with the quality of the teaching aids and materials, and also with the spaces they work in (lecture halls, classrooms, laboratories). They also appreciate scientific databases and libraries they have access to. Both these facts are gratifying, because being happy with the material endowment to perform one’s job tasks reduces the reasons to suffer from burnout and increases the general quality of life.

The last section shows that the general level of satisfaction and the way their work is rewarded is the most influencing aspect for the lives of the majority of professors. As questions on this topic showed the need for some changes, it is clear that in order to improve the quality of life in the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest the management needs to increase the support for professional improvement, the benefits professors receive, and also the way to access additional benefits.

Also, most of the professors consider that the questionnaire they filled in assesses all the important aspects that influence their professional lives. The comments they made in the last section usually express opinions about aspects that need improvement, like cleanliness, especially of the bathrooms, or criteria for promotion. All these will be presented, with some proposed solutions, in a different paper, which concludes our research on the perceived quality of life in the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest.

4.2 The Index

When constructing the quality of life index it is aimed at obtaining a unique number that would capture the level of satisfaction perceived by professors working in the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest. The index has values between 1 and 5 where 1 equals total dissatisfaction and 5 total satisfaction.

In order to obtain the required result, the first step was to calculate an average score for each section of the questionnaire. Each question in the section has the same weight as we cannot assign different level of importance for individual questions. The results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Scores for each category of factors influencing the quality of life of professors
Full size table

It is easy to see that all categories scored well above 3, with the highest score close to 4, which indicates a high level of satisfaction among professors. The best scoring category was that of safety and human rights with a score of 3.83 while the lowest score was obtained by the practical aspects of life in campus category.

The second step taken was to calculate weights for each category by using the rankings of the categories and the grades that respondents were asked to assign to each section at the end of the questionnaire. The weights for each section are shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Weights for each category of factors influencing the quality of life of professors
Full size table

After that, it has been used the formula presented in the methodology section to calculate the final value of the index.

$$ {\mathrm{I}}_{\mathrm{QoLP}}=0.1587\times 3.159+0.1626\times 3.254+0.1723\times 3.731+0.1672\times 3.831+0.1762\times 3.278+0.1630\times 3.093=3.395 $$
(2)

The final value of 3.395 represents the overall satisfaction as it is perceived by professors regarding the quality of life in campus. When compared with the maximum possible value of 5 we can say that the level of satisfaction among professors in fairly high. As it is the first time this index is calculated, other comparisons are not possible. We consider that it would be useful, after a certain period of time, to apply again the questionnaire, and see if there are any changes.

5 Conclusions

Studies show that professional performance of professors is influenced by the general climate in the university campus, prestige of the university, physical conditions for research and teaching, professional opportunities they have, and wages and other financial benefits they receive. Taking all these into consideration, we have asked professors from the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest to fill in a self-administered questionnaire, in order to assess their perceived quality of life in campus, and to determine a Quality of Life in Campus Index for the teachers of this university.

Overall, professors are quite satisfied with their work conditions and environment, but there definitely serious problems that need to be addressed, like decision making process, violence and discrimination, criteria for promotion, and benefits offered to staff. The calculated index for professors shows a fairly high level of satisfaction (3.395), which means that the perceived quality of life is good, but there are certain aspects which can be improved.

The last step of our study will be to determine the general index of quality of life in the university campus and to rank the aspects that need improvement; also, we will offer some suggestions of measures to increase the quality of life in campus.