The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the effects of career related stress on higher education faculty members’ achievement of a healthy balance between their personal lives and professional lives. Data from the 2013-2014 HERI Faculty Survey were analyzed to determine if any of the eight independent variables—lack of personal time, self-imposed high expectations, teaching load, committee work, research or publishing demands, institutional procedures/red tape, colleagues, and students—significantly predicted work-life balance, the dependent variable. Seven control variables—gender, race, marital status, children, tenure status, institutional class, and institutional status—were also factored into the analysis. This study ultimately sought to determine if high levels of career related stress affected faculty members’ work-life balance.

The sample consisted of 10,019 full-time faculty members from universities and four-year colleges across the United States. The analysis employed Ordinary Least Squares multiple regression as the statistical test to explore the relationship between faculty members’ career related stress and achievement of a healthy balance between one’s personal life and professional life. The results of the analysis indicated that six of the eight independent variables—lack of personal time, self-imposed high expectations, committee work, research or publishing demands, institutional procedures/red tape, and colleagues—were found to significantly predict achievement of a healthy balance between faculty members’ personal lives and professional lives. Based on the results of the analysis, teaching load and students were found to not significantly predict the dependent variable. Additionally, five of the seven control variables—gender, marital status, children, tenure status, and institutional class—were found to significantly affect faculty member’s achievement of a healthy balance between their personal lives and professional lives, while race and institutional status did not.