Cost Simulator
How Much Do Family Friendly Policies Cost and What Are the Economic Losses to a University and the Federal Government When Highly Skilled Women Dropout of the STEM Pipeline?
Analyze the Economic Impact of Family Friendly Policies Quickly Online
The good news is that family friendly policies are being introduced in all colleges and universities across the nation in varying degrees. It is no longer a “nice” benefit to offer but an important competitive offering in hiring and retaining the best possible faculty, both men and women. The resistance to offering these progressive policies is usually money. Often, this concern is not well considered. This simulator can provide you an analysis of the cost and benefits of now common offerings such as parental leave, relief from teaching after childbirth and stopping the tenure clock for childbirth specifically for your department.
- The Simulator give you clear numbers based on your data
- You can upload your university’s data by department for targeted analysis
- Download and share a PDF of your results with colleagues and use it to promote better hiring and retention practices
Many of these family friendly policies must ultimately be university-wide, but having the precise departmental data can provide a compelling argument for change.
Here’s what the Simulator can do for you!
- It may help to convince your department, and ultimately, the university that family friendly policies are not just a nice benefit, they are essential to attracting and retaining the best faculty.
- The faculty who you have attracted and retained who have children will not just stay, they will feel that your university supports a family friendly culture of which they are active members. The culture will sustain itself and promote and protect further change.
- The higher administration–Deans, Provosts, etc. will understand that changing the culture to become family friendly is an important economic investment.
Please note that the Simulator is intended to assist in discussions about family-friendly policies at colleges and universities. It should not be construed as advice – legal or otherwise – about instituting family-friendly policies at your particular college or university.
Frequently Asked Question
What data will I need to use the Simulator?
The Simulator works by processing a CSV file of your university’s data. You can upload your university’s data by department for targeted analysis. Your CSV file must have a header row and include the following fields. You can download a sample data file here as a starting point for preparing your data file.
- Age (must be a positive number)
- Female (0: FALSE; 1: TRUE)
- Tenured (0: FALSE; 1: TRUE)
- UnderRepresentedMinority (0: FALSE; 1: TRUE; Defined to conform to the definition used by one of the data sets we use, is a person of any race other than White non-Hispanic or Asian non-Hispanic)
- MarriedOrPartnered (0: FALSE; 1: TRUE)
- Department. Numeric codes
- 1: Math/CS/Physical Sciences
- 2: Life Sciences
- 3: Engineering
- 4: Social Sciences
- HiringCosts
- CosttoHireReplacementLecturerforOneSemesterofASMDUsage
- CostofStoppingtheTenureClock
- AdministrativeCosts
Once you have prepared your CSV file with your university’s data and are ready to upload into the simulator, go to (http://simulator.toolsforchangeinstem.org) and use the data file upload feature on the right side of the screen to upload your data into the simulator. Your results will promptly be displayed.
Yes. The Simulator does not store, transmit or collect any data. When the tool is loaded, the functions that process the data are loaded with the webpage. When you upload your data you are only uploading the data to your instance of the tool. All of the calculations happen locally on your web browser. The results are presented in graphical format and you have the option to download a PDF of the results at that point. If you do not choose to download the results, they are not saved and when the webpage is closed, everything is cleared.
View a sample of the results the tool can produce.
How does the Simulator work?
Building on a study of two Family Responsive policies (FRP), Prof. Clair Brown and Dr. Eric Freeman created a statistical simulation, based upon regression analysis, of the estimated benefits and costs at universities and colleges. The Simulator provides a user friendly online tool that Department Chairs or Deans can use to estimate the costs and benefits of these Family Responsive policies at their institutions.
View a sample of the results the tool can produce.
For a complete description of the the analysis that produced the functionality behind this tool, please download the complete report here.