Questioning Academic Tenure
As author Terri Lonier says, “There is no such thing as job security anymore. There is only skill security.” Lonier is recognizing that most workers with marketable skills found new jobs after being downsized in the early ‘90s, but also noting the hard truth that American workers can no longer count on lifetime employment with a single firm.
Most American workers, that is. There are exceptions. Take the half million or so American professors who remain protected by tenure, a contract that essentially guarantees them a lifetime of employment. And now even they face uncertainty. In the past year, tenure reforms have been introduced in a number of colleges and state legislatures, driven by administrators faced with underperforming professors and by federal funding cutbacks.
All Americans have something to gain from tenure reform, for we have increasingly come to rely on universities to teach us the advanced skills demanded by the new global economy. By guaranteeing lifetime employment, the current system insulates professors from the pressure to update their skills.
The quickest way to hold professors accountable would be to abolish tenure altogether, something suggested last month by C. Peter Magrath, president of the National Assn. of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. But quick isn’t always best. For instance, tenure may no longer be necessary to shield professors against gender and racial discrimination. State and federal laws passed since tenure was first championed in 1915 confer that protection. But only traditional tenure guarantees academic freedom, the right to challenge accepted views--including those of the of the university regents who pay the salaries--without fear ofretribution.
So those who wish to abolish tenure must first find other ways of protecting academic freedom. State laws, for instance, could prohibit discrimination on the basis of intellectual views. Or academic freedom could simply be made enforceable under a professor’s contract, as Hampshire College has done Massachusetts.
Once such protections are offered, then tenure will be left providing only one unique guarantee: lifetime job security. And as politicians are beginning to discover, American workers no longer have much sympathy for those afforded job protection in a competitive world.
Given these changing times, the challenge is to reward outstanding professors while disciplining or dismissing those gliding through their careers on autopilot.
The best way to ensure accountability is the “post-tenure review.” The process, wherein a professor’s performance is assessed at regular intervals, is being tested in many universities, including the UC and Cal State systems.
Devising a powerful but fair tenure review process is difficult. If the reviews are keyed to a professor’s impact outside academia, for instance, then science professors would benefit while humanities professors, whose contribution to the bottom line is less direct, would be hurt. If the reviews are keyed more to student evaluations, on the other hand, then hard-driving professors could be victimized.
Reform will be difficult but there is little choice, given cost-cutting pressures in colleges and the public’s lack of sympathy for protections they themselves do not enjoy. To not reform tenure may sound its death-knell.
