What the AAUP is REALLY seeking to stabilize is the dues they collect from an expanded membership.

Faculy do not have academic freedom anyway. If one faculty doesn't have academic freedom, then really none have it. Wouldn't you agree?

davi265---what do you teach? You sound like my freshmen.

Tenure is important to academic integrity for those of us involved in research on sensitive matter. Your assinine comment belittles this serious topic.

"assinine" -- Wow, impressive.

OK -- "Uncle!"

Clearly I must simply defer to the insights and preferences of academics who are so far superior to the rest of us.

gilxx - why have tenure when all faculty do not have academic freedom?

It is my belief that multiple year appointments, as opposed to tenure, provide both security to the faculty and flexibility to institutions.

AAUP has a better chance in demanding world peace. Universities are being corporatized. Administrators are now executives. Faculty are Wal Mart associates. With a glut of PhDs in so many disciplines, tenure track positions can be phased-out.

The spirit of tenure and the reasoning for it is great if it were utilized appropriately and not abused by many faculty members. There are many issues on campuses and those include engaging students in the learning process. Unfortunately, the tenure process does not provide an avenue where faculty members must challenge themselves in the teaching arena. They become complacent and stick to the same methods of teaching instead of being innovative, cutting edge, and engaging to the students. How can students truly focus gaining a mastery of the knowledge they seek, when the people who are charged with sharing it are not well equipped to deliver that knowledge in a meaningful way. When I begin to see faculty members move beyond slides, boring lectures, and hiding behind the veil of a research agenda, I will be able to support the wholesale idea of "stabilization." However, I don't see the AAUP or other associations challenging their own in that way.

jruiz - Having been both an actual Wal-Mart employee and now a tenure track professor, I can assure you the professor, tenure or now is a much better deal!
I agree with rlmprez - most of the rest of the world has little in the way of job security (I have also been an employee-at-will in the biotech industry) - so why should profs? And please, do not give the "academic freedom" line.....wouldn't it be wonderful if faculty were that invested in their profession. I have attended multiple undergrad and graduate institutions, and now teach at one. I have not seen and do not see, generally speaking, energized faculty in need of protection.

I meant "tenure or not".....my students would love this! I constantly harp on rough drafts and reviewing your writing....

gillx- get over yourself and your sense of self importance. Tenure is an outdated institution that allows professors to become complacent and non-productive once they attain it. In my long history in academia, I have rarely seen any "sensitive research" that requires the purported protection you imply that tenure provides. "Academic" integrity is similar to integrity in any other field, including at will employment in the business or biotech fields. If you have it, you will stand firmly for what is ethical and the right thing to do. You don't need to hide behind an artificial protection. It is time for each employee in universities, including the professors, to be held accountable for their productivity and their contributions. This is otherwise referred to as "pay for performance." As a chair and dean, I have dealt endlessly with the tenured deadwood and those retired in situ, long enough to realize what a counterproductive institution tenure has become. And, by the way, I have refused tenure for myself, even when it was offered. The only really assinine element is the continued insistence that tenure (excuse me, "stabilization") is somehow a noble cornerstone of "academic integrity" and "academic freedom."

What kind of institution and in what field have you been a "chair" and are you a dean of, davi2665 (No.1 & 11)?

The point of tenure isn't just to protect academic freedom, and abolishing it would be a disaster for higher education. Most academic subjects have little or no application in the business world, but teaching them at a college level requires decades of study and specialization. If people who did this couldn't count on job security, or at least aspire to it, who would be crazy enough to do it? We'd have plenty of faculty in applied fields, like law and business and engineering. But who'd teach Chaucer, or American history, or deviant sociology, if you knew that you could find yourself suddenly out of work at age 50 with no experience that could translate into a good job? I know I wouldn't. I probably wouldn't have taken a PhD in the first place. Once I had it, I wouldn't have thrown myself into the study of my relatively esoteric subject the way I have -- I'd have made sure that all of my research was something I could get good mileage out of on a resume. If we get rid of tenure, we'll get rid of the vast majority of research that goes on in American universities. I think that we'll also get rid of most of the best people who conduct it.

" Having been both an actual Wal-Mart employee and now a tenure track professor, I can assure you the professor, tenure or now is a much better deal!"

From the perspective of remuneration, I have no doubt. My point is that, as others have mentioned here and countless other threads, at many institutions faculty do not participate in any decision-making process of any consequence; i.e., faculty governance is dead.

I served on the Finance and Budget Committee, made up predominantly of faculty. At the first meeting the president and his minions walked in, said they had worked all summer on the budget, and we would now vote on it. (No one had even seen a copy of it). At a Faculty Senate meeting, this same president declared that there would be no vote on a given topic, HE would decide.

Perhaps this is limited to my institution, but I somehow doubt it.

Were it not for the prospect of tenure, I would never have accepted a teaching position at $8000 a year after busting my chops in grad school for years. Instead I would have taken a position offered to me by one of several oil companies and at a salary many times that of a State University. Of course a few yers back things did get a little tough in the petroleum business - but as we have all noticed, has recovered nicely.

Some of my former geology students are and have earned sacks of money from Exxon, Shell, et al. and without a Ph.D. I am pleased to have had a hand in their success by my efforts in the classroom.
I love teaching and due to tenure and salary increases over several decades, my retirement after 35 years, is comfortable but not great. I owe it to my Union, Tenure, decent administrators (and not as many with odd titles), a State legislature which had some brains way back then and fortuitous timing on my part.
I never shop at Wal Mart and certainly would be flipping burgers rather than work for that outfit,
Yes, I am well aware of how tenure can be abused and I follow what is happening with the Adjunct system and even did a bit while in grad school. It helped in constructing my CV.

On the other hand, living in Houston or Tulsa would not have appealed.

I love the references to the business world. Faculty should be retained and provided lavish bonuses, so they can help figure out "what went wrong"....just like in business!!

The comments of #13 (boiler), histrionics about the end of research and academia notwithstanding, are most illuminating. The gist of the "entitlement" position expoused is that due to the hard work in an area that has little application elsewhere, the professor therefore is entitled to a position at the university for life, with full salary included, of course. And here I thought that only supreme court justices had guaranteed employment with salary for life! The fact that this erudite academic is pursuing the study of an esoteric topic further supports the need for him/her to have a guaranteed job for life. If a professor cannot find support for his/her research from a government agency or contractor, a commercial source, a NGO (foundation), or philanthropy (patron), then perhaps the discipline should not be a priority for investigation, either for the professor, or for the university that is paying the bills. Why should the university pay for esoteric pursuits with taxpayers' money or tuition dollars when they face financial challenges for instruction, infrastructure, salaries, and other cost directly related to their teaching responsibilities. It is interesting to note the disciplinary differences in most universities; those in physical sciences, biological/molecular sciences, engineering and nanotechnology, and medicine are expected to raise a sizable portion of their salaries and all of the support for their laboratories, while those in other disciplines get a free ride from the university to pursue their esoteric studies. What nonsense.

In addition, #13 expresses his concern that without this guaranteed job for life, he might find himself on the job market without a marketable skill at the age of 50. Welcome to the real world- this is what just about every other employed individual in the US now faces. So why is the academician so special- is pursuing something intellectual so elite that it positions one above all others? An electrician and many technicians have to learn incredibly complicated skills and achieve intellectual accomplishments as well. Should they all have guaranteed positions for life? A number of responders note that if they had not had the security of tenure ahead of them, they would never have pursued their Ph.D. discipline. News flash- economic conditions and job opportunities change, and the individual trained in one arena needs to be flexible enough to find alternatives, not just expect society to provide them with a job for life. Responder #13 opines that without tenure, most of the research in academia in the US would come to a halt. There is not a shred of evidence to support this. Actually, it might not be such a tragedy if a lot of the meaningless, non-applicable, esoteric research did come to a halt. And second, if the research is so valuable or important, go out and find a source of support for it and convince others that it is worth doing. If you explore the data for research support and peer-reviewed publications, a vast majority are in science, engineering, medicine, and disciplines that require extramural funding. This is how the top 20 get to be the top 20- not through encouraging esoteric research.

The comments about business by #15 focus on the segment currently in the news, related to big business, that is out of control- with huge bonuses, financial misrepresentations, federal bailouts from their bought-and-paid-for cronies on both sides of the aisle, and their own sense of entitlement because they are too large to fail. They need to encounter a very important component of a free market society- bankruptcy. The VAST majority of businesses in the US are small businesses, run by entrepreneurs who work 80 or more hours a week, often take only small salaries to enable them to support their business, and are 100% "at will" employees. This is the real business world- not the excesses you try to pass off as representative of business in general. These excesses are not just big business out of control- they are big government out of control.

Obviously, I think tenure is a counterproductive, highly destructive institution in higher education, and would prefer to see it abolished and replaced with fixed-term contracts, the way the rest of the world operates. Note that this option is no at will employment. However, if tenure does continue, due to the lack of courage of the university boards to get rid of it, it should be applied strictly to the position, not the salary. The model used by many medical schools is appropriate. The professor's position is a tenured position. But the professor is given an "authorized salary"- the total they are allowed to receive, and a "guaranteed salary"- the amount that the university pays on a "pay for performance" or "pay for play" basis. This would include teaching and administrative duties, and its stability from year to year would depend on the professor meeting specific milestones and metrics. This may range from 20% to 60% of the authorized salary. A lousy instructor would not be retained with a guaranteed portion of salary forever, tenured or not. The remaining portion of the "authorized salary" needs to be raised from extramural support- period. This is otherwise known figuratively as "eat what you kill." This serves as a good reality check on who the productive researchers are and who they aren't.

And in response to the snotty inquiry of jffoster (#12), my positions as professor, chair, dean, etc., have been in the "hard" sciences and in medicine, if that was not already obvious. Perhaps it is difficult for the entitled professoriate to realize that there are individuals with the same degrees they have, with robust publication and funding records, and with a sheath of teaching awards, who do not buy into the AAUP entitlement drivel. It's called "diversity of opinion." I have had to shift gears several times in my career when my chosen pursuits and technology have fallen out of vogue- it's called adaptability, at least if you wish to support yourself and feed your family. I did not whine about wanting a position for life- I gladly accept a fixed contract, and make sure that I do the job well to allow renewal of that contract. Try starting and running a business, as well. It is most instructive, and gives a new perspective to academic pursuits. It also has served as an impetus for me to exit a majority of professional connections with the academic sandbox.

Tenure is not this bizarre institution unique to academia. See John Silber's discussion of the function of tenure in his book Straight Shooting. And he's no pushover when it comes to faculty. Most professional settings have partnerships--law, medicine, architecture, accounting, engineering, banking, consulting, and so on. The partners don't get fired frivolously, they have a stake in profits and governance, they're not on multi-year contracts. They can be let go for malfeasance and financial exigency, as in academia, but only through established procedures. With only a couple of exceptions, I've never seen these supposed deadwood that davi has found so conspicuous, but where they exist I'd look closely at the character of the overall organization before committing the fundamental attribution error. Overwhelminingly in my experience, the faculty, tenured and tenure-track, work hard, are productive, and are dedicated. If we want a business model, the partnership model is tried and true, and in academia that's the tenure model.

Davi2665 is missing the point. I don't feel "entitled" to tenure, and I realize perfectly well that most people don't have it. That's part of what made the job attractive to me when I started out in this profession. If tenure weren't available, there's no way on earth I would have gone into academia; I would have gone into a profession where I could have made more money and developed more marketable skills. That's probably true for most talented people in academia. If we want people to research and teach on subjects that don't translate into commercial returns, then we need to provide them with job security. Otherwise, they won't do it.

And let's be clear - most research in the liberal arts and social sciences doesn't have commercial applications. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing, just that there's no market for it. That's also true of a lot of work in the sciences. Biologists who study gorillas or platypuses, or epidemiologists who study rare diseases, can't look in the papers and find companies bidding for their services. The existence of this kind of research is dependent on the support of universities. And if people can't do it without sacrificing their long term financial future, they won't do it at all.

The post seems to argue that research that can't fund itself doesn't need to be done. If that's the case, the problem that Davi2665 has is not with tenure, but with the entire university system. That's another argument. But if we're going to have non-commercial research going on, then universities do need to offer tenure.