Thomas, Kendall. (2009). Tenure

One of the major problems in higher education is the tenure system. The idea of tenure started in the late 19th century as a way of protecting teachers from having their lesson plans dictated by parents and administrators. However, there are many problems with the way the tenure system works for professors today. Intended at first to give teachers the academic freedom to teach as they see fit, it has evolved into simply becoming a means to job security for some professors. Although not all faculty take advantage of the tenure system, some professors take it to mean that they no longer have to continue the scholarly activities that earned them tenure in the first place. Thus, they fail to grow to their full potential. According to an article by Steven D. Levitt entitled “Let’s Just Get Rid of Tenure (including mine)”, all tenure does for professors is to “distort people’s efforts so that they face strong incentives early in their career and very weak incentives for the rest of their career.” In addition, the tenured professors on tenure-decision committees hold inordinate power over the professors who are on the tenure-track and not get tenured themselves. The tenured professors can vote against making someone a tenured professor if they have a grudge, or even if they happen to be in a bad mood that day. Often, this can cost professors their chance for tenure because, as shown in “Time’s Up For Tenure”, a blog posted on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s website says, the next levels of people in the system who get to make the ultimate decisions might decide against granting tenure because it might cause a riff in the department because the vote wasn’t unanimous.

Tenure makes firing professors a long and drawn out process, and it is very costly. In many places, tenured professors cannot be fired until months of evaluations, hearings and appeals have been conducted. This long process was intended to dissuade administrations or parents from trying to fire tenured teachers, but the system has seemed to backfire for many universities who cannot easily fire the inept professors who abuse the system. For example, M.J. Stephey describes in his article “A Brief History of Tenure,” a case of how a Connecticut professor helped her students cheat on a standardized test, but only received a 30-day suspension as a result. Thus, many colleges find it is just easier to wait for tenured but irresponsible professors to retire so as to save money and time, both of which could be used more to the student’s benefit.

The tenure system also creates additional and unexpected problems. Some colleges deliberately hire more tenure-track professors than they need, causing them to be in competition with one another. Another problem is that college graduates who dream of becoming professors are falsely led into believing that they will be able to accomplish the unattainable goal of becoming a full-time professor; the large numbers of tenured professors stand in their way. A third problem that the tenure system creates is that tenure is not a possibility for some college instructors, because universities need some expendable workers to lay off when enrollment drops.

One of the alternate ways that could be created to entice professors to continue to grow and develop professionally, completely doing away with tenure while still offering academic freedom and security, is stated by Mark C. Taylor in an article for the New York Times. It is titled “End of the University as We Know it”, where he describes replacing tenure with seven-year contracts, that can either be terminated or renewed. This method would allow colleges and universities to reward researchers, scholars and teachers who continue to remain productive, while also making room for young people with new ideas and skills. Other ways that have been used to lessen the amount of people with tenure have been bribing them with larger salaries if they give up tenure.

Although tenure was meant to benefit the teachers and ultimately to benefit their students, it has evolved to the point that it offers more disadvantages than benefits for students and graduates alike. Maybe it’s time for a change.