tenure....or not

I think “Dean Dad” is right—and I speak as a 62-year-old long-tenured (25 years) full professor—and son of a professor (different field) at that! Tenure dos not seem sustainable in the long term for the reasons he suggests as well as others. One he does not note is that in many fields we are at the front edge of a bubble of retirements as folks of my generation near the end of their careers. There will be a substantial turn-over during the coming decade, with some lack of continuity being but one result. Surely a system of 3-5 year contracts might have spread out this age-driven turnover? There is little question that too many of our tenured colleagues never produce a thing of substance after achieving tenure, and many do, indeed, rely on notes dating back to the bicentennial. And a lot of younger folks thus never get a chance to breathe fresh air into cobwebbed corners of academe.

Far too many schools lack any kind of post-tenure review (we have annual reports, but that’s about making lists and getting a pay increase, not fundamental change—or rarely so). Perhaps that is the first step in slowly changing a system that does seem out of step with the times. Some level of job protection is necessary—for just the reasons cited in the original essay—but why should professors be treated like federal judges and have a job for life?

The only time most professors really get evaluated is at tenure time—-I know as I went through the process twice, a decade apart (my present institution didn’t grant tenure for any hires, even full professors as I then was—they have changed since). It forces one to go through a careful assessment and definition of one’s own work—and then evaluation by outsiders as well as one’s colleagues. And then. . . never again. Sadly, too many take advantage of the resulting insulation, and contribute little to their fields and thus to their students.

Instituting such a process needs to be done carefully, to protect those now in academe as well as those seeking admission to the professoriate. But colleges and universities should be planning for the change now.

Chris Sterling, George Washington University, at 7:35 am EST on February 21, 2006

The Myth of Tenure

This author is correct with the following two caveats...

First, with the current breed of most College administrations, the business of the Institution: Providing a system of higher education that allows the graduates and their country to compete in a global world, will continue to miserably fail. Most of the current managers of higher education are former educators bred by the tenure system. The business world found out long ago that one doesn’t take the best salesman and make him the boss of all of the salesmen. We must create a cadre of top executives in educational insititutions that can lead the faculty in a global network. Until that time you’ve got the current “good ol’ boy/girl system” that doesn’t work.

Second, With the change in management above, the concept of 3-5 year renewable contracts can work and faculty will then begin to perform to the strategic objectives of the institution that hires them rather than sitting back on tenure hard-won laurels and vegetating until retirement.

Edward Winslow, A “retired” Business Professor, at 8:10 am EST on February 21, 2006

While I understand the desire of IHE to whip up a good controversy, oh, every day or so, this sort of nonsense is getting tiresome. So, we’re now to take our lead from a “community college dean” on “one-year renewable contracts, with annual performance reviews, and without tenure.” I’ll pass.

I’ve got a hot idea for your next “Views” piece. Enlist the services of the newly-minted MBA class at Saba University School of Business to “re-engineer” the curriculum of the top 20 physics programs. Just imagine how the sparks would fly! I bet you’d get at least 20 posts and twice as many bloglinks!

I had high hopes for IHE. We do need an alternative to that other higher ed. tabloid. Of late, I can’t tell you apart. Sad.

jkre, at 8:25 am EST on February 21, 2006

Students love tenure

My only comment is the teachers with tenure are more exciting because they aren’t afraid to teach. BC

Bif Condor, student at Big Ten, at 8:25 am EST on February 21, 2006

A Good Reason for Tenure

This commentary provides a lot of good reasons for tenure—otherwise, you’ll get arrogant deans firing faculty who turn 70 (in violation of age discrimination laws), faculty who don’t shave and wear suits, and faculty who challenge the administration.

The tenure process is a brilliant system of faculty evaluating each other. If you remove the carrot of tenure, you’ll also remove the incentive to do well. Why try to do academic work when all you need to do is have cocktails with administrators?

This will not only destroy tenure, but shared governance, since faculty will all fear doing anything contrary to their bosses.

The idea that all faculty become deadwood the moment they achieve tenure simply hasn’t been proven.

John K. Wilson, at 8:25 am EST on February 21, 2006

Several years ago, I was hired from the outside to turn a department around so I have my own direct experience with the rigidity of tenure. Even given that experience, I wholeheartedly support tenure largely because of my experience. My experience taught me that the problem isn’t tenure but lack of leadership and absence of basic management skills in academe.

Ph.D.s and others who take administrative appointments are generally neither trained nor skilled at such unsavory tasks as disciplining or correcting a colleague, particularly an older one who is one’s equal in terms of rank and who’s been around for a long while. Most certainly aren’t interested in this kind of challenge. The problem is no different in the word-a-day world “out there,” but the lack of skill in changing behavior and the displeasure with using all legal means necessary and when necessary to get another individual (i.e., a colleague) to change his/her ways is what distinguishes administrators in the academic setting, i.e., as a group, we simply are not as skilled as our “real world” cousins who are also managing a group of individuals to achieve an organizatinal goal.

Why does everyone always point to tenure and bemoan its (alleged) inflexibility and the way it (allegedly) produces a cadre of uncooperative and intransigent faculty members? Why doesn’t anyone ever point to the real problem — the almost universal and abject lack of managerial skill among most of those who rise to the ranks of department chair, dean, provost, and even president?

For myself, having served two consecutive terms as department chair and having turned the department around with a total of 10 tenure-track hires (i.e., over 3/4 of the entire department), I’m now back in a faculty role enjoying my new colleagues. During those two terms, many tenured faculty either retired (some early) or decided that opportunities awaited them at other institutions where they could get a fresh start. In my particular case, I had the support of a determined and skilled dean, provost, and president, a combination so rare in academe that many think such an alignment impossible. That was the key — this alignment of skilled and determined managers (notably all scholars in their respective fields) determined to make the place better and to change patterns of behavior that had become entrenched not because of tenure but because of weak leadership.

We need tenure to protect academic freedom, and part of that freedom is the right and responsibility to speak out against those in academe who abuse their power (including administrators). We need skilled leaders in academe to protect the academy itself. Absent these leaders, the academy itself is at risk.

Tenured Former Administrator, at 8:50 am EST on February 21, 2006

Bye Bye Tenure

As long as we “old guys” are weighing in – I am 68, have been teaching in higher education for 45 years, took a 12 year hiatus to work in industry, and would like to teach and write for another ten years – I’ll make my contribution ... or not.

This topic is so complex and has consequences that are so important and so far reaching for higher education (not to mention for almost every dimension of American life), I have decided, quite literally, to spend the next two years writing a book about it. I’ll have a first-smooth-draft outline by the end of next week.

There was a time, not too very long ago, when professors tended to be scholars who assumed responsibility for all important decision-making in the academy. But, along with the incredible expansion of higher education after World War II – talk about a “growth industry” – came the gradual replacement of scholars by researchers (they like to call themselves research scholars, but that’s an obvious oxymoron).

It is an age-old question to wonder why presidents of the United States only rarely come from the class of our brightest, most talented individuals (see ...

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/vid...3415&vidId=3415&title=Rooney$@$On$@$Presidents’$@$Day&hitboxMLC=60minutes)

and the same is true of university presidents and their myriad bureaucracies of vice presidents, deans, directors, etc.

Except for a very few exceptions at a handful of elite schools, scholars have given way to researchers ... who have ceded decision-making responsibilities to, at best, marginally competent quasi-business managers ... who have done such a bad job that the academy is on the verge of having important policy dictated by legislators ... who, themselves, are guided by the likes of David Horowitz.

It is interesting – pathetic is a better descriptor – to see today’s faculty pointing an accusatory finger right past their inept managers directly at “meddling” legislators. It is a national epidemic – much worse than the threat of a bird flu pandemic — that our problems always seem to have been caused by someone else ... not ourselves. Frankly no faculty member in this country should ever point a finger at anything or anyone unless s/he is standing in front of a mirror.

You can bet tenure is on it’s way out. You can bet that twenty-first century college and university decision-making will be conducted by a combination of legislators and the managers they take an ever more active role in selecting. In our society it is business success that is revered, not academic success. More and more, academic decision-making will be top-down ... and completely inconsistent with the old bottom-up model that made higher education in the United States the envy of the world.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that, in the new decision-making model, the well-being of students will be little more than an annoying afterthought. The tendency of these legislators and managers to be doctrinaire power brokers — rather than quality maximizers – is unmistakable.

Did I say I want to do this for ten more years?

RWH, at 10:15 am EST on February 21, 2006

Academia would work fine with long-term renewable contracts. Salaries would probably go up, the first 7 years of a faculty member’s career would no longer be hellish, and folks would be incented to work at a steady rate through out their careers. Faculty members would also become far more “portable” — they could move from institution to instituion without losing tenure. That could make careers much more interesting.

Remember, most librarians are on a similar system and they have significant academic freedom pressures around collections and selections ("you purchased THAT with state funds?!")

Everyone must have a midcareer peer who does not contribute to the department in any way. Wouldn’t it be better to get a contributor?

BTW, the scorn towards a “community college dean” reflects very poorly on the commenters.

DG, at 10:30 am EST on February 21, 2006

Academic Freedom and Adjuncts

It looks like we’re moving past the denial stage, to the anger stage. That’s progress, I guess.

One of the more eye-opening experiences I’ve had as a manager was participating in our county Leadership program, run by the Chamber of Commerce. It’s an annual program that recruits up-and-coming managers from various local business and not-for-profits. When I talked there with managers from local businesses about my job, they uniformly reacted with horror. How on earth can you possibly manage, if you don’t have the tools? By tools, they meant the carrots and sticks of merit raises and terminations for performance. To them, it’s simply a given that performance and reward need to be correlated, and not simply in the first phase of a career.

I’m concerned that the academic world has yet to learn this lesson.

Yes, academic freedom is a major and legitimate concern. Adjuncts have no academic freedom, and they teach half of the classes. Any serious advocate of academic freedom needs to address the surplus of adjuncts. That’s what I’m trying to do. There are probably other ways to do that, too, and I welcome that conversation. But to pretend that academic freedom is protected now is truly to live in la-la land.

To defend a two-tier system by only pointing to the benefits that accrue to the upper tier strikes me as fundamentally dishonest. As the upper tier retires and the ranks of the adjuncts swell to take their classes, the dishonesty only compounds.

I previously worked at a college that had full-time faculty with academic rank, but without a tenure system. Based on that, I can confidently say that Mr. Wilson’s prediction that without tenure “faculty will all fear doing anything contrary to their bosses” is false. Faculty there were contrary, almost as a matter of sport. Performance excuses all manner of sins. Again, look at Duke. Has academic freedom been sacrificed there? Let’s not let fear of the partially known cloud our judgment.

And thanks, DG, for the support. Academic snobbery is no substitute for an argument.

Dean Dad, at 11:00 am EST on February 21, 2006

two tiers

dean dad writes “To defend a two-tier system by only pointing to the benefits that accrue to the upper tier strikes me as fundamentally dishonest. As the upper tier retires and the ranks of the adjuncts swell to take their classes, the dishonesty only compounds.”

okay, fair, but won’t changing the tenure system create ANOTHER long-term two-tiered system? a “divided shop,” if you will, wherein tenured faculty are working alongside contract-based full-time folks—for at least a couple decades?

and i think it’s salient to bring up the question of unionization. could folks on a contract basis unionize to take advantage of collective bargaining agreements in negotiations? based on the situation at NYU, i suspect the academy would be intolerant of such at best.

simone eastman, at 11:15 am EST on February 21, 2006

Yet another failed anti-tenure argument...

What the author fails to realize is that tenure is indespensable for (at least) the following three reasons:

1. Academic Freedom. This reason has been done-to-death in the comments already, so I’ll be brief about it. If you take away tenure, then faculty will be less willing to challenge their students, and less willing to work on research projects that may or may not pan out in a short amount of time.

2. Finances. If you take away tenure, then faculty (or at least faculty in mathematics, the sciences, and engineering) will demand pay that is approximately equal to industry pay—and rightly so. If tenure is abolished overnight, expect faculty salaries to *at least* double. That would probably result in a tuition increase of around 50% (if not more) in most universities. Riots would quite possibly ensue.

3. Local administrative structure. So, suppose you get your wish, Dean Dad, and have tenure abolished overnight. Who would continue to chair departments? No one in their right mind, that’s who. It is nothing short of political suicide to chair any department without tenure. So, Dean Dad’s “renewable contract” system would either force a complete revamp of the university administrative structure, or ensure that only the most foolish and/or incompetent become department chairs.

Upper-Midwest Asst. Prof., at 11:50 am EST on February 21, 2006

Post-Tenure Review

Under the current system, there is one meaningful opportunity for post-tenure review: when the faculty member applies for promotion to full professor. In contrast to other post-tenure reviews, the results here really matter, since promotion to full professor generally means a substantial bump in salary and prestige.

Of course, one meaningful review over a 20-30 year career does not exactly allow for fine grained management. Rather than granting a single promotion (with one large pay increase), promotion could be broken down into smaller increments. If the average professor were promoted every 4-5 years, it would provide some incentive for a tenured professor not to just completely drop out after getting tenure. The title of full professor could be granted after the second or third such promotion.

But if you are going to go with long term contracts, CJ writes that:"A 5-year contract will buffer against all but the most durable political pressures.”

This is probably true towards the beginning of a contract, as most faculty members could assume that any storm would blow over by the time renewal came around. Towards the end of the five years, however, professors might be forced to become increasingly circumspect for fear of not being renewed. If you’re going to switch from tenure to a long term contract, a better solution might be to go with three year contracts, but routinely renew them every year. A professor could feel relatively secure, knowing that he had three years for any controversy to blow over (or have three years to find another job).

Chris, at 12:10 pm EST on February 21, 2006

Ah ... Dean Dad’s True Colors

Omigod, that guy – Dean Dad – doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. The worst fears that I described in my earlier post have already come to fruition. He and his management pals – “county Leadership program, run by the Chamber of Commerce ... up-and-coming managers from various local business and not-for-profits” – have convened and have decided you can’t successfully manage those professors unless you have the “tools.” And the tools? ... why the time-honored carrot and stick. And, of course, the barrier to the stick is tenure. What a genious ... and more than a little scarey.

And then he concludes with “Based on that [having taught at a college with academic rank but not tenure], I can confidently say that Mr. Wilson’s prediction that without tenure ‘faculty will all fear doing anything contrary to their bosses’ is false.” Where did you get this guy?

The comments by John K. Wilson and MCS had more than a little meaning for me. You’ll just have to take my word for the fact that I’m an outstanding teacher and scholar. Not that it proves much, but I’ve got very high student and colleague evaluations while teaching mathematics, statistics, and social methodology to students in the social sciences and business.

For four years I taught at a private university that had faculty rank but no system of tenure (“full-time” faculty were all on three-year rolling contracts). It turns out that I became somewhat outspoken regarding various educational policies that I could see were very detramental to student success. As a matter of principle and personal style, I was very careful to keep everything in-house ... well almost. To make a long story longer, I was fired, and the process for firing a full-time faculty member entailed having the case heard by two review committees should you choose to do more than say “I’m sorry” and move on. I went the review committee route, and both committees ruled against my appeal. Oh, did I tell you that (1) both committees were composed of 100% administrators, (2) at no time was my case heard by a committee of my peers, and (3) I was not afforded a statement of the charges against me prior to the hearings ... and despite numerous requests. Take my word for it, the charges were demonstrably false. When it was all over, fourteen of the eighteen faculty members in my department approached me to (1) express their regret that I had been fired, (2) express their outrage that I had been treated so unfairly, and (3) explain why they were completely unable to (crawl out from under their respective rocks) to provide support.

Here’s a humorous – if scarey – incident. The school in which I taught – not the university itself – was named after a a former U.S. senator who is also the owner of the local newspaper. The university president apparently had an annual “theme” that he chose and emphasized each year. One year it was civility (“... the college campus is also a place where disagreements are not always respectful. Students transitioning from childhood to adulthood may assert themselves too forcefully and stubbornly ... As such, [I] am planning this year to emphasize the return of decent behavior to everyday interactions.”)

I wrote a satirical statement of support for the president’s crusade for civility and sent it to the newspaper editor. The letter was not published, but the university vice president for academic affairs read it aloud when she presented the case in favor of my firing. How it made the trip from my pen to the newspaper to a file about me kept in the VPAA’s office ... well you can see why I’m not inclined to be sympathetic to Dean Dad’s understanding of how things work in academe.

Maybe tenure’s not so bad after all.

RWH, at 12:45 pm EST on February 21, 2006

My $0.02 worth

I’m a community college teacher in California, and I’ve been either the president of our local union or the grievance chair for more than 15 years. I’m familiar with the California Education Code and with many locally-negotiated community college collective bargaining agreements that provide due-process rights for teachers.

I’m absolutely convinced that the only reason why bad teachers keep their jobs is that administrators are too lazy or too incompetent to do theirs. Getting rid of a tenured teacher who is abusive to students or who misses every Monday and Friday class requires careful documentation and attention to detail; it’s time-consuming and sometimes expensive, but what’s the alternative?

Union Guy, at 1:30 pm EST on February 21, 2006

What is the real problem?

There is much evidence that higher education has been suffering a long term decline in overall quality while maintaining quality at a shrinking top percentage. Some of this is no doubt a result of pressure to serve a higher percentage of the population as the need for higher ed has increased. Do we know the balance on this?

The increasing pressures for highly specialized training within the disciplines as reduced the sophistication of broad academic dialogue within the context of shared governance and peer review. Do we understand the impact of this on faculty burnout and their reduced participation in the business of their institutions?

Faculty positions in lower division teaching oriented disciplines are predominantly being farmed out to professionals unprotected by tenure and generally excluded from shared governance dialogues even though they have the most needed experience and training for such institutional problem solving. Do we really know the impacts of removed tenure protections where already lost?

While these and many other issues impact higher education throughout the world, in the US, the highest tier institutions have retained the highest level of tenured faculty employment, and have set the highest bar for institutional quality. US higher ed also still remains the envy of the world and the destination of choice for motivated students around the world (though we are losing ground as the mid and low tier institutions suffer from reduced budgets, increasing use of contingent professionals, weaker faculty governance and poorer administrative leadership who bemoan the difficulty they face from the few remaining tenured faculty in their institutions. Is tenure really the problem? Or is it more likely that what is left of tenure after 50 years of a reducing presence is fighting a last gasp effort to save higher education from the superficial dialogue, based on narrow and short term vision, now guiding higher education policy decisions?Chris

Chris Storer, Contingent Faculty Activist, at 2:15 pm EST on February 21, 2006

Why I hate Tenure

...because the fear of giving a permanent position to someone who will slack off creates immense pressure to succeed immediately on people in early stages of their career, when they should be experimenting, learning from their mistakes, and pushing the limits.

...because the cultural and economic divide between tenured and adjunct faculty is a blight on the university.

...because the burden of teaching and service falls disproportionately on untenured (and non-tenure-track) faculty.

...because it makes even talking about change in academic culture and practice nearly impossible without whining about “academic freedom.” Don’t get me wrong: academic freedom is important, but too many pedagogical atrocities are covered.

...because it makes administrators — who hold their positions for a few years at most, in most cases — tentative about dealing with misbehaving faculty.

...because there are no postdocs in the humanities and social sciences

...because nobody has seriously reevaluated the standards for tenure in the current publishing environment.

...because it creates the sense that faculty have a “calling” instead of a career, and that pay doesn’t matter as long as you have security.

Jonathan Dresner, Assistant Professor at University of Hawai’i at Hilo, at 2:40 pm EST on February 21, 2006

Implications in the Sciences

My first reaction to the proposal of moving from tenure to long-term contracts was horror at the thought of going through 17 years total of grad school, a postdoc, and the tenure-track grind without any reward at the end. On the other hand, the thought of more freedom to try out institutions, move between positions, and strike more family/work balance is attractive. Sometimes I dread the thought of tenure where I currently am employed, because it means that I am stuck here at my small college. I love my job, but given the limitations on how much I can publish and the low probability that I’ll ever become a superstar, I can’t imagine ever being hired away with tenure. So I have to decide in the next few years if I really want to stay here forever (whether or not they want me to stay). It would be nice to know that I could always pick up and start over somewhere else — that it isn’t tenue versus being kicked out of academia.

In addition to threatening faculty members’ willingness to pursue long-term projects that might or might not pay out, and if so not for a long time, I wonder what the abolition of tenure would do for start-up packages. In the sciences it is not uncommon to get many 10s of thousands of dollars (or even more) for equipment in order to begin your research. This is particularly important at small places where grant money is harder to get. What incentive does a college have to invest in its new faculty when the contract is so short, and there is less incentive to invest in a particular institution for your lifetime? I suppose you could move to a model where equipment is part of the infrastructure, and what you offer new faculty is a share in the use of it, but given the rapid change of technology and the quite specific needs of people in different disciplines (or different sub-areas within a single discipline) this would be difficult. It might limit institutions to only supporting certain kinds of research. Of course, there are already limitations on the kinds of research different institutions can afford to sponsor or host, but I could see this causing significant trouble in particular for search committees trying to find new, dynamic colleagues.

JEH, at 7:40 pm EST on February 21, 2006

More on tenure

From a small church-supported “university": we tenured faculty are already on year-to-year contracts, have yearly reviews and are evaluated on teaching (by student evaluations), research and service. Carrot and stick are already in place, unions not permitted. But each year the administration wants to bring in the latest “hot” subject— now Arabic instead of Chinese— at the expense of lesser-subscribed programs (like Chinese). They would leave students already embarked on a program (Chinese in this case) in the lurch. The instructors of these “hot” programs, though PhDs, are adjuncts, and can easily be fired. That is why (for the students’ good) we need tenure, to keep programs running. The tenured faculty defend these students but having a tenured faculty member in the field would be even better— that person wouldn’t have to be running between three schools locally and would have more time to dedicate to building up local student numbers in class.

For the faculty point of view- you may be able to pick up and leave at will but many of us have family who support us financially and emotionally. Without a real salary-earner in the family, this job would not be sufficient. They cannot necessarily pick up and leave.

I have a different proposal: retirement age. Bring it back. Have it be at the level Social Security sets for each cohort. Thus, new blood, new jobs and more sane people. It might improve salaries too.Tenured and thinking of the future...

Les, at 8:15 am EST on February 22, 2006

Consequence

There was a comment suggesting that short term contracts would still provide the same protection for academic freedom as tenure. Not at all. The law is such that, in any real sense, an employment contract cannot be enforced by the employee who is the victim of a political witchhunt, nepotism or any other kind of constructive discharge.

Sure, they can win a suit—after several years, and they will have to pay their own attorney fees (1/3 of their recovery, typically). Meanwhile, their damages will be calculated on the value of the contract, which is the number of years remaining times the guaranteed salary amount.

Thus, if you are two years into a five-year contract and someone decides that your classes would be better taught by the sweet young thing who is someone’s “close personal friend,” the result is that you’re out of there that day, and your suit and the appeal will just about be decided by the time the original contract expires.

And, again, even if you win you will still be out your attorney fees. Moreover, it’s no longer a given that you’ll win, because once it’s a contractual matter rather than a matter of tenure, all sorts of other defenses become available to let the administration avoid the contract. Thus, if enrollment declines, the administration would no longer have to support the program and recruit more students; rather, they could simply shut down the department entirely and claim that a condition of the the employment contracts was the existence of the program and thus, the contracts were now nullities.

And a professor with bad reviews on ratemyprofessors.com could be canned at no risk to the university; at the very most, the university would have to pay off the balance of the contract term, while getting to use the student evaluations as evidence that the instructor was not fulfilling the contract.

I’ve run into several of the “local leadership programs” offered by Chambers of Commerce in a number of communities. What’s most interesting about them is that they are usually populated by people whose concept of leadership closely resembles the methods by which we perform operant conditioning of rats: carrots (cheese) and sticks (electric shocks).

Meanwhile, many companies and organizations have thrived by following the precepts offered by Dr. W.E. Deming—the most important to the successful organization is “Drive Out Fear.” Tenure does that.

Not to say that there aren’t jerks with tenure—but rather to say that, for an institution of higher learning, it’s a matter of pick your poison.

With tenure, administrators feel powerless to do anything about the jerks on the faculty. But without tenure, the jerks in administration can demolish a faculty quickly even as they provide themselves with abundant and well-paid busywork that contributes little to instruction or research (constantly evaluating faculty and making contract renewal decisions, defending lawsuits).

For profit-seeking companies, the bottom line is, as they say, the bottom line. American managers, led by people who believe you must have the “tools” — the carrots and the sticks — to be a leader, are the same people who have taken American industry from its preeminent position in 1945 to the position of a second-rate country that is working on being a third-rate one.

While I have a huge number of bones to pick with institutions of higher education, the last place I would look for models for improvement is the Chamber of Commerce in any American city. The leading institutions in American higher education today compare quite favorably with their counterparts in 1945; if only the same could be said about the leading American businesses.

JMG, at 11:15 am EST on February 22, 2006

How, pray tell,

did our universities become the envy of the world despite the tenure system that was, until quite recently, completely unquestioned? Is it possible that tenure is more associated with the success of our universities than their failures?

JMG, at 4:20 pm EST on February 22, 2006

I concur with the concern re. the sciences. The experiment has already been done in otherwise academically oriented research institutes that do not “tenure” till late (12yrs +), and for whom “tenure” is really just a rolling contract with no long term commitment beyond 5yrs.

1) Lack of real tenure silences younger faculty and makes them “toe the line". They can’t dare to disagree with their seniors. Acadmic freedom is not just about your research. It’s also about your voice within the institution.

2) it is scientifically damaging: you have to make sure you time the project right, with the right amount of luck to have the big paper published at review time. This stifles daring new work for that which is safe. Ditto with grants.

3) The “marketplace” ends up promoting the careers of the few at the expense of the throw-away faculty who do the work and are then let go. Salaries will be increasingly inequitable as the stars leverage themselves from position to position, and negotiate a break from teaching. Adjuncts aren’t going away any time soon: someone has to teach for the bigshot.

4) Institutions will be unwilling to put the $$$ into hiring expensive young scientists (at big R1s, this is in the 100s of thousands, with $1million + not unknown).

5) PhD students, for whom dissertation work in the lab may take 5-7 years, will be disinclined to join the lab if the prof is up for renewal in the next 2 years. It happens a lot now with tenure; talented students aren’t willing to take the risk of someone leaving. Science students can’t readily change labs unless they want to throw years of work away.

6) I’ve worked at tenure + and tenure — places. There is just as much deadwood at the tenure -; they figure out how to stick around somehow. And funny, the granting of my tenure hasn’t slowed down my work; if anything, I’m working even harder than before. The difference is, I’m doing more for the universeity than my own research. At my institution, we only have merit-based salary raises, not automatic, with yearly reviews. So you can keep tenure, and your 9month salary as long as you teach, but you can’t count on a cost of living increase unless you do something.

Careful what you wish for. There are other ways for smart people to make a lot more money. If administrations want to go to the business model and make students customers, most of us can find another way to make a living and will do so, happily.

Science Professor, at 9:40 pm EST on February 22, 2006

Tenure NOT needed for talent in demand

” .. I concur with the concern re. the sciences. ..”

It has been empirically proven that those in high-demand areas (e.g., sciences, engineering) will get long-term positions.

Those in low demand areas (e.g., English, humanitities, social sciences) will get shorter-term positions.

That is the way it is all over the world. Denying it will only make your life worse.

B.J., at 8:35 am EST on February 23, 2006

Science projects are also long term. I endured a late tenure system where the stress was making sure that some “deliverable” (paper, grant) was there just in time for the periodic reviews. Not the best way to run a project, since the timing was imposed and not logical.

The same can be true of the rolling 5. Some bad luck, or as currently, a serious crunch in research funding, and it’s all over. You can’t easily rebuild a lab program when you have lost it, or when you move.

And another thing. Frankly, for the amount of work that I do and the amount of money that I bring in to my institution, I would expect a lot more salary if I didn’t have the perk of tenure.

I guess it depends on what they are willing to do to keep their hands on my overhead dollars.

Science Professor, at 11:25 am EST on February 24, 2006

IBM Research and “tenure”

Having worked as a Research Scientist at IBM, I know from personal experience that there are layoffs that cancel long-term projects without obvious commercial potential, with a disastrous effect on basic research and “blue sky” projects. This hurts IBM’s leadership position and forces it to buy technological advances by acquiring the companies that make them. IBM’s yearly evaluation process is structured to punish those who take research-related risks by proposing and pursuing adventurous projects. There is nothing special about productivity at places such as IBM Research. People who are tops in a field move freely back and forth between academia and IBM in response to business cycles that periodically tighten funding for the kinds of projects that can be freely pursued in academia. If academia did not nourish such projects and permit faculty to choose their own topics of study, places like IBM would be much worse off (and I believe they know this). I gave up six-figure salaries for the luxury to follow my research interests without having to endlessly justify the market potential of outcomes, discouragement of pursuit of topics not favored by managers, and pressure to meet “personal business objectives” each year, worse than any tenure review process.

Anon, at 6:45 am EST on February 25, 2006

Get rid of tenure by all means — just be prepared to pay market wages!! Maybe I will be able to afford to send my kids to college then!

University administrators who argue against tenure like the idea of flexibility in hiring and firing — getting rid of deadbeats. But what fraction of tenured professors are actually deadbeats? No one seems to know — all we hear is that tenure takes away the incentive to be creative. Tenure’s role in creating deadbeats seems more like an urban legend — like crocodiles in New York sewers.

At my institution I do not see many tenured professors who are not actively teaching and researching nor do I see this at other peer or better institutions. The problem at institutions with professors who do not perform may well be an issue of bad management. Maybe one should also look at the market for self satisfied underperforming college administrators who think they are Gordon Gekko!!

Atin Basu, Associate Professor at VMI, at 11:50 am EST on March 1, 2006