North Dakota seeks to tighten rules on professor tenure following legislative setback

The North Dakota Board of Higher Education is looking to rein in professor tenure, particularly at its community colleges, according to a draft report.

The board’s Tenure/Post-Tenure Ad Hoc Committee has a draft report that could bring a massive decrease in tenured and tenure-track faculty at the state’s five community colleges, as well as pared-back awards of tenure at all 11 universities in the North Dakota University System.

The move, which has not been finalized, comes after a bill last year to limit tenure protections failed, while a growing movement of conservative lawmakers across the country is trying to find ways to cut into tenure protections for professors, who they see as left-wing activists muddying true academic inquiry. The law would have given the presidents of Dickinson State University and Bismarck State College the power to fire tenured faculty.

“Community college faculty members, by and large, do not contribute new knowledge. The contributions of community college faculty members are closely tied to educating for the job market,” Adam Kissel, Heritage Foundation visiting fellow at the Center for Education Policy, told the Washington Examiner. “Tenure is flatly inconsistent with the innovation and nimbleness that community colleges need to stay relevant in their communities.”

“North Dakota should follow the pattern of Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin in having little to no tenure for community college faculty members. Indeed, it should go farther and reduce tenure across all public institutions,” Kissel continued. “The tenure process is particularly bad for the academic freedom of tenure track, ‘probationary’ faculty, who often walk on eggshells for several years and hide their true views as they seek tenure.”

Currently, faculty contracts are divided into probationary tenure track, tenure, and special appointment. But if the board changes the policy, all faculty would have a special appointment contract, which essentially makes their employment at will and subject to renewal by their university’s president.

According to the American Association of University Professors, there has been a trend of colleges not awarding tenure. By fall of 2021, 68% of faculty in the country had what they call “contingent appointments,” or nontenured, whereas that number was 47% in 1987.

“Presidents should do much more than rubber-stamp faculty recommendations. Involving presidents earlier can limit surprises when a president disagrees with a faculty recommendation,” Kissel said. “In academia broadly, faculty members have squandered much of their authority, and the deference they used to deserve, by reproducing ideologues in many departments.”

The draft report noted that, across the board, “there are issues with individual low-productivity faculty that current post-tenure review processes do not adequately address” and noted that “campus presidents need greater latitude in addressing low-performing tenured faculty members.”

Tenure for two-year faculty members is “less rigorous compared to the four-year regional and research institutions. Post-tenure review processes were the least developed, if they existed at all, among two year colleges. Both the tenure and post-tenure processes must be meaningful and rigorous.”

The committee is expected to meet again in June to deliberate on the tenure recommendations.

The report comes after the failed legislation, but state university system Chancellor Mark Hagerott, who told state senators that tenure should remain the “constitutional authority” of the board, pledged to work with legislators to review the tenure process.

Hagerott anticipated a reduction in tenured professors at community colleges, telling a legislative committee in May, “We are going to be, unless the board surprises me, reducing the number of tenured professors at the community colleges.”

The draft report suggested a “goal of no more than approximately 50 percent of the faculty holding tenure positions by 2030” for community colleges, noting that little or no tenure was given to faculty at two-year colleges in Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. North Dakota State College of Science has a tenured rate of 96%, but other two-year colleges in the state have much lower rates.

However, in April, a 5-3 vote of the board allowed the inclusion of two-year tenure candidates and ultimately voted 6-2 to grant tenure for all candidates from two- and four-year universities who were being considered.

Kevin Black, a board member and oil and gas executive, questioned the reason a community college faculty member would need tenure, asking, “How does tenure provide academic freedom in a technical education role?”

“This board needs to really think hard about the application and the validity of tenure in a purely instructional setting,” Black added.

But with the debate over tenure at community colleges still hanging in the balance, a joint statement from four of five community colleges in the state was submitted in defense of tenure, saying, “Academic freedom is the fundamental reason for tenure.”

“Without tenure, the administration could sanitize the academic curriculum (by hiring and non-renewing faculty) to meet the administration’s perspective or beliefs on inherently debatable/contentious subjects such as religion environmental sciences (think climate change/global warming), history, human development, sociology, or social justice issues, to name only a few,” the statement said. “This lack of job security or even assurance of a continuation of employment, reduces the appeal of college faculty positions. Moreover, such contracts do not promote a higher level of academic endeavors, which is detrimental to the quality of education that learners, communities, and employers in North Dakota rely on to continue developing an effective workforce and society.”

Tenure protections, however, are seen by conservatives as a way to protect left-wing professors while boxing out conservative ones, Kissel said.

“Even under the tenure system, ideological and activist faculty members have made most departments into oppressive monocultures. Just look at the current political makeup and donation history of most departments,” Kissel explained. “What keeps a conservative scholar in the field is excellence. Without tenure, conservative junior faculty will not have to hide their views as much.”

“Too many academics in too many places are hopelessly oppressive and politically intolerant. This is a sorry situation, and activist faculty are reaping the sad rewards of their intolerance now that legislators, governors, and regulators are stepping in to preserve the core mission of universities,” he added.

One of the issues noted by Black is that the board tends to “rubber stamp” awards of tenure without much deliberation, and the draft report said that accountability measures are needed to make sure continued tenure is deserved.

Kissel noted that many of the concerns with tenure can be answered with the First Amendment, and that tenure can be tied to more concrete criteria such as enrollment.

“The First Amendment already protects community college faculty members, and indeed all public university faculty. Academic freedom policies can fill any gaps sufficiently. Tenure is unnecessary,” Kissel said. “For the teaching faculty, it makes sense to tie contracts to student enrollment, and including enrollment criteria within post-tenure review serves that purpose well. Such criteria would be inapt for research faculty, for whom research output should be a core criterion for a successful post-tenure review.”

Some states, such as Indiana, have taken steps to tie tenure to “intellectual diversity,” setting up a tenure review system that ensures faculty members are upholding academic responsibilities to expose students to alternative viewpoints sufficiently. That review process could include sanctions on professors who are not doing so but also protects faculty members’ abilities to criticize university leadership, for example.

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A Nebraska proposal would end tenure for all faculty at public universities.

States such as Georgia, Texas, and Florida have instituted post-tenure review and similar policies. Last year, North Carolina failed to pass a wide-ranging ban on tenure.