Comparing Administrative Satisfaction in Public and Private Universities

Do administrators in public higher education experience different levels of job satisfaction than their counterparts in the private sector? Drawing upon the management, higher education, and public administration literature, this study examines a comprehensive array of national data on university characteristics, state characteristics, and administrative satisfaction. Previous analyses have explored the relationship of state regulation to administrative satisfaction in public higher education. However, there are few studies in higher education or public administration that have explored the differences in job satisfaction between the public and private sectors. We find that the hypothesized public/private differences are limited only to satisfaction with extrinsic rewards, and even these differences disappear when all relevant variables are controlled for in a regression analysis. In both sectors, job satisfaction is most consistently linked to work environments characterized by teamwork and low levels of interpersonal conflict.