Changes are coming soon in academic-tenure system

In the near future, faculty employment will no longer be strictly tenure-based, experts say.

By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff

Academic tenure is in no danger of extinction, but over the next two decades, universities will likely award it less often. And they'll increasingly try alternative work arrangements, education experts predict.

At a meeting on tenure's future, held at Harvard University in October, journalists, lawmakers and academicians debated whether tenure is a valuable protection for academic freedom or, as some lawmakers and university trustees charge, an indulgent guarantee of job security. Responding to the criticism, some universities have moved to reform tenure-instituting post-tenure reviews, for example-while others are trying alternatives, such as renewable contracts for part-timers or full-time, nontenured employment.

At the October meeting, arranged by the Project on Faculty Appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, attendees examined such alternatives, but reached no consensus on what works best.

The meeting's purpose was to discuss academic employment options, such as tenure, contracts and part-time arrangements, not to recommend any specific employment type, says Richard Chait, PhD, the project's director. Likewise, the project's goal is to research different forms of academic employment, record them in an electronic database, and spread the word about them through meetings. A grant of $1.9 million from the Pew Charitable Trusts will help with the task.

'As tenure heads in a dozen different directions at once, much to the delight of some and the chagrin of others, the idea of a single national practice of tenure requires re-examination,' says Chait. 'We need to explore all the modifications and alternatives to tenure, as well as the tradition and convention of tenure itself, so that institutions and their faculties can decide what [employment arrangement] is most beneficial and sensible for them.'

Pros and cons

Tenure's protection of academic freedom-the right of faculty to push the bounds of conventional thinking without having their jobs threatened by government and business-is at the core of the tenure debate.

'As higher education becomes more technologically and fiscally reined in, we need to ask ourselves how our employment can best fit those changes, while still preserving that very precious protection of intellectual freedom,' says Jill Reich, PhD, APA's executive director for education. 'The worst thing we could do is put up barriers to creating new knowledge at a time when society demands that we generate knowledge faster than ever. Tenure protects the freedom necessary to consistently push the boundaries of existing technologies that likely would not have been developed if their early research were able to be stopped.'

At the October meeting, however, Ken Arnold, a Colorado state senator, and Lamson Rheinfrank, Jr., a businessman and former trustee at Williams College, questioned whether tenure is really needed to protect academic freedom.

Defending tenure was Irwin Polishook, PhD, president of the Professional Staff Congress, the faculty union of the City University of New York. 'Tenure is needed to protect the vitality of democracy and to allow us to be engines of economic and social growth,' he says. 'Contrast [the U.S.] with places where totalitarianism rules.'

In comments at the meeting, Polishook also noted that the nation's most prestigious institutions use tenure to attract and retain outstanding faculty. John Duff, president of Columbia College Chicago, was similarly minded. He said his college recently adopted a tenure system to stay competitive with other institutions, but he noted that the policy allows for relatively easy dismissal of underperforming faculty.

Changes

The flexibility of Columbia College's policy reflects a move to reform tenure at many universities across the country. Many have built post-tenure reviews-regular evaluations of faculty performance after tenure is secured-into their policies. Others, such as the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), are coaxing faculty away from tenure. UCA will soon offer three-year rolling contracts that pay higher salaries than tenure-track positions.

Some universities don't award tenure at all. For example, at the professionally oriented University of Phoenix, which offers online courses, no faculty are guaranteed continual employment.

'It's premature to say that tenure's on its way out because it's so embedded in the fabric of academe,' says Laura Palmer Noone, the university's vice president for academic affairs. 'In research institutions there's probably a place for tenure, but you'll probably see more professional institutions like ours moving away from it.'Y

To receive a CD-ROM compilation of faculty employment policies at 216 universities, e-mail the Project on Faculty Appointments at trowerca@gse.harvard.edu.



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