The Need for Academic Tenure Reform

As recently as last January, when Gov. Pete Wilson submitted his original budget for the 1992-93 fiscal year, California State University was expecting a cut of no more than 2%. Now, the Democrats in the Legislature back an 8% cut and Wilson wants 10%. Whatever the figure turns out to be, Chancellor Barry Munitz predicts that at least 340 tenured or tenure-track faculty members will lose their jobs.

This week the faculty senate at San Diego State University voted “no confidence” in the leadership of President Thomas Day, whose response to the news from Sacramento has been a plan to eliminate nine academic departments and dismiss 145 tenured and tenure-track professors. A no-confidence vote may have little practical effect, the Cal State campuses not being governed on the parliamentary system; however, the effect on morale and on the general good health of the huge campus (1,400 faculty, 30,000 students) is not to be taken lightly.

The crisis at San Diego State is the harbinger of a general crisis in a higher education Establishment forced to think the unthinkable about tenure. Even if San Diego State faced no budget crisis, it would stand at a personnel crossroads. After Dec. 31, 1993, according to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, no professor need face mandatory retirement at age 70. All terminations must be for just cause; and many universities are beginning now to determine what just cause will consist of.

Though the letter of the tenure law has always permitted dismissal for any combination of failures that might amount to simply not doing the professorial job, in practice only “moral turpitude” has constituted adequate cause. Some aged professors who should retire will not do so voluntarily: Will they be dismissed for “moral turpitude”? Certainly not. Just cause, where they are concerned, is about to be extended to include incompetence.

But if cause is redefined for septuagenarians, why may it not be redefined for all? Were that to happen, then a university administrator required to dismiss a given number of faculty could start at the bottom and get rid of the worst faculty instead of following the “narrow but deep” philosophy in effect at San Diego State--namely, eliminating entire departments, destroying the fine professors along with the mediocre and the worse than mediocre. To anyone on the inside, it is sickening to see the best thrown to the wolves this way while the worst, protected by an antiquated and ill-considered work rule, snooze on at state expense.

Faculties know how to evaluate themselves. They do it when granting tenure and when approving promotions and merit raises. They should do it also when dismissals are necessary. Such dismissals won’t be fun, but with good legal advice administrators can respect due process. And, as no one at San Diego State needs to be reminded, the status quo is no fun either.