Why Academe Needs More Employment Options

By Richard Chait

Tenure has become the academy's version of the abortion issue -- a controversy marked by passion, polemics, and hardened convictions. The often shrill debate situates tenure as either indispensable or indefensible, as either the bulwark of academic freedom and economic security or the bane of institutional flexibility and accountability. On one side the Patrick Henrys proclaim,"Give me tenure or give me death"; on the other, the champions of reform, primarily legislators and trustees, stalk