Does Tenure Safeguard Academic Freedom or Encourage Mediocrity?

Why Tenure is Not Serving the Public Good

The Debate Over Tenure

Many states are considering legislation to end tenure, and Texas is taking the lead on the issue with Senate Bill 18. The bill has quickly become politicized, with both liberal and conservative faculty claiming that tenure is needed for protection from political agendas. Academic freedom is at stake, and the debate over tenure is heating up.

Is Tenure Synonymous with Academic Freedom?

To be sure, academic freedom is crucial to the professorial responsibility to advance and disseminate knowledge. But tenure is not synonymous with academic freedom, as many in academia claim. The First Amendment by law protects academic freedom at public universities regardless of tenured status. And I have proven it.

What’s Wrong with Tenure?

If you want insight into the problem with tenure, simply ask college students if they have experienced professors who were unsatisfactory teachers. I regularly ask students in my classes that question — the response is sadly almost always unanimous: yes. No wonder a study done at Northwestern University found that non-tenured, adjunct faculty get higher teacher evaluations than much higher-paid tenured faculty.

Even these productive faculty, behind closed doors, usually admit that tenure is not as much about academic freedom as it is about job-for-life security; it’s a nice perk, why give it up if I don’t have to? And the ones who stop working hard after netting the big plum of tenure are making the entire profession look bad.

What are the Costs of Tenure to Higher Education?

The rising cost of higher education is problematic, increasing at a rate that far exceeds inflation. Tenure contributes significantly to this problem. A University of Texas study in 2011 revealed that UT Austin alone could potentially save $266 million annually if half of its professors were as productive in teaching as the top 20 percent, if they terminate the least productive faculty, and if they shifted their small workload to other professors.

Tenure also locks in big costs and makes it difficult to redeploy resources to areas of higher demand. Tenure makes it hard to be nimble.

What Does Tenure Abuse Look Like?

This is the most troubling aspect of tenure. Here are a couple of examples:

• A former dean of Texas Tech University Rawls College of Business was removed for grade tampering and for Title IX misconduct. Though removed as dean, he was allowed to remain as a tenured faculty member.
• An associate dean was terminated from her administrative position due to financial misconduct for using over $225,000 in research funds to pay her wife (misrepresented as an independent vendor company) in a manner deemed deceptive and in violation of university policy. She was also allowed to remain as a tenured professor.

Can Tenure Adversely Impact Academic Freedom?

To achieve tenure, a tenure-track assistant professor goes through probation that results either in being tenured or terminated. The senior tenured faculty must recommend promotion. Do you think during promotion un-tenured faculty feel like they have academic freedom to challenge the senior faculty?

What is an Alternative to a Tenure Contract?

There is a straightforward solution that’s also a good deal for quality faculty — multi-year rolling contracts. This is different from a terminating contract, which expires and must be renewed. With a rolling contract, the recipient has a multi-year time horizon before termination is possible.

An untenured professor would initially receive a fixed contract during probation. That could be renewed if performance meets expectations. After that, they could be promoted to associate professor and granted a three-year rolling contract. Annually, the school can reset the three-year clock if the professor is doing a good job, or tell an underperforming professor they have three years to find another job, or negotiate a lump sum to get them to leave right away.

This is excellent job security and is much safer for the taxpayer than committing to a guaranteed job for life. Also, rather than a tenured faculty member being forced out through dysfunctional retaliatory acts, they can simply be bought out for less expense and hassle.

Conclusion

Today academic freedom has become a red herring to argue for the need for tenure, which is simply a contract — not federal law, as is the First Amendment. The main reason academics are fighting for tenure is because it guarantees their jobs for life — a perk understandably hard to give up.

Jim Wetherbe is the first recipient of the MIS Quarterly Distinguished Scholar Award, has written 40 books, and has been published in leading journals. During the past 50 years, he has brought in more than $20 million in funded research to the University of Minnesota, the University of Memphis, and Texas Tech.

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