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 up on the management, higher education, and public administration literature, this study examines a comprehensive array of national data on university ch aracteristics, state characteristics,;and administrative satisfaction, Prev ious analyses have explored the relationship of state regulation to adminis trative satisfaction in public higher education. However, there are few stu dies in higher education or public administration that have explored the di fferences in job satisfaction between the public and private sectors. We fi nd that the hypothesized public/private differences are limited only to sat isfaction with extrinsic rewards, and even these differences disappear when all relevant variables are controlled for in a regression analysis. In bot h sectors, job satisfaction is most consistently linked to work environment s characterized by teamwork and low levels of interpersonal conflict.