Abstract
In U.S. higher education institutions, academic advisors are experiencing exceedingly high rates of burnout during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Employees who experience high burnout levels are more likely to leave their positions, so those trends are concerning—especially because advisors already had some of the highest early attrition rates among higher education employees before the pandemic. In this study, we examined whether there are significant relationships between U.S. academic advisors’ demographic characteristics, institutional variables, advising- and work-related variables, burnout, and advisors’ intentions to leave their positions, the advising profession, or their current institutions. We analyzed survey data from 826 academic advisors who worked at 711 different 2- and 4-year U.S. colleges and universities from February to March 2023. We discovered that approximately 25%–30% of academic advisors plan to leave their jobs, the advising occupation, or their institutions as soon as possible. The results primarily suggest that academic advisors’ caseload, salary satisfaction, work-related variables (i.e., workload, control, reward, community, and values), and burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment) were significantly ( p < .05) associated with academic advisors’ turnover intentions. Higher education leaders can use these results to support academic advisors’ retention and advocate for greater changes in the field to prevent the loss of these critical professionals.