The Board of Regents of the Kentucky Community and Technical College system will vote in March on a proposal to eliminate tenure for all new faculty hires beginning in 2009.

The board, which met today to discuss the proposal, is also considering a plan to wipe out health-care benefits in retirement for people hired after June 30, 2009.

The regents spent about 45 minutes at today’s meeting discussing details of the two proposals, after receiving a report from staff members of the system about how such a plan might be carried out.

The board has considered eliminating tenure before, in part because the cost of non-tenure-track instructors is lower than that of tenure-track ones. The system’s budget has been cut by $31.5-million since 2001, and it is facing a possible $8.8-million cut in its $764-million budget next year.

Terri Giltner, a spokeswoman for the system, said the main reason the board was interested in eliminating tenure now, however, is flexibility. “We have a state that is very dependent on the auto industry, and we do most of the training for that,” she told The Chronicle. “Given all that is happening with that industry, we may have to change really, really quickly and offer different kinds of programs that require different faculty. With tenure you get locked into faculty.”

Of the 14 regents, eight are appointed by the governor and six are elected by faculty and staff members and students. Ms. Giltner said faculty members who serve on the board spoke in favor of maintaining tenure at today’s meeting. Several professors have told The Courier-Journal, in Louisville, that they oppose the plan to eliminate tenure because it would make it harder for the system to hire top-notch professors and because it would jeopardize academic freedom.

Under the tenure proposal, professors hired after next June 30 would receive multiyear contracts instead of tenure-track job offers. Like many community-college systems, Kentucky’s already employs a large number of full- and part-time professors who work off the tenure track. Only 25 percent of its 4,226 faculty members have tenured or tenure-track positions.

The plan to eliminate health-care benefits in retirement to those hired after June 30 would save the system $57.2-million over 10 years, according to the system’s analysis of the proposal. —Robin Wilson