Slowing Down the Tenure Clock

Thanks for being with us today, Ms. Weiss.

Janet A. Weiss:
    I don't know whether the University will adopt our recommendations. If the University does adopt our recommendations, then I expect that the great majority of junior faculty will be reviewed for tenure at exactly the same point in their careers as they are right now. We do NOT recommend that the tenure clock be extended across the board. And our proposed policies would not give young scholars more time across the board.

At the present time, different schools and colleges at the University of Michigan review junior faculty for tenure at different times. The Law School does tenure reviews in the fifth year; most of our schools and colleges do tenure reviews in the sixth year; several do tenure reviews in the seventh year of the tenure probationary period. If our recommendations are adopted, I expect that most faculties in the University will keep the timing of their tenure review process just the same.

If our recommendations are adopted, then it will become possible for the faculty of one or more schools (most likely the Medical School) to vote to change the timing of the normal tenure review at their school only.

Our committee recommends what you might think of as "enabling legislation" that would allow the faculty of a school or college to have more flexibility to improve their own internal tenure policies without running into the rigidity of a University-wide rule. Based on the feedback from every corner of the campus, we do not expect that faculty in most of our schools and colleges need or want to extend the normal probationary period in their schools or colleges. But faculty in a few schools and colleges believe passionately that this is very important to their academic success.

I hope this clarifies the flexibility that we think is important. First we recommend that the faculty of a school or college have more flexibility to set the timing of tenure review to meet their own intellectual agendas, recognizing that different schools and colleges have differing expectations of their faculty and differing expectations for a tenurable record.

Second we recommend that the schools and colleges articulate policies that would permit either earlier or later tenure decisions than the normal time for that school, depending on the individual circumstances of the faculty member.

Janet A. Weiss:
    Our committee discussions focused on several important changes in the professoriate since the tenure rules were adopted in the 1940's. You have identified one of them -- that faculty members move in and out of academic life, and between academic life and positions in government, industry, and nonprofit organizations. Our policies about faculty members should be flexible enough to accommodate people who have made a variety of life choices, that don't look like the 1940's era model.

Janet A. Weiss:
    We don't recommend, and don't anticipate, that our junior faculty will experience a ten year tenure process. Instead, we expect that most junior faculty will continue to be reviewed in their 6th or 7th year of the probationary period, as is the current practice at the University of Michigan.

In the cases where faculty members might end up with either a longer or shorter probationary period than the normal one, our committee recommendation is clear -- the standards for a tenurable record should remain constant, whether the faculty member achieves that record in four years or eight years.

I personally don't think it is inevitable that the standards will rise by 50%. If that started to happen, other universities might offer tenured positions to our high-achieving junior faculty and our tenured faculty would have to recognize through that outside offer that the junior faculty member had achieved a tenurable record. But even more important, Michigan is a place that has always prided itself on being willing to offer tenure to talented junior scholars and teachers. I expect that we will continue to do so, whatever policies we adopt going forward.

Janet A. Weiss:
    I need to clarify that the Committee at Michigan did NOT recommend extending the tenure probationary period for junior faculty at Michigan to ten years, although the Chronicle article might have left that impression. Instead we recommended that our University create a fair and transparent way to build more flexibility into the tenure probationary period. If the University decides to adopt our recommendations, we expect that there will be no change in the average number of years before being reviewed for tenure.

Instead we expect that some people will come up for tenure earlier than the "normal" time, and others will come up for tenure later than the "normal" time. We strongly recommend that these variations should be determined by explicit policies that clarify when and why variations are permissible, and not be left to the discretion of the dean, provost, or president. One reason for variation might be family demands (such as the birth of a child or the illness of a spouse or partner), which may lead faculty members to take time away from work. Another reason for variation might be that a faculty member had compiled a tenurable record in a short time, and shouldn't have to wait to come up for tenure.

We think these flexible policies would make Michigan especially attractive to high achieving young faculty; our proposed policies would make it easier for them to get tenure on a schedule that recognizes their accomplishments.

Our Committee, like the rest of the University of Michigan faculty, is strongly committed to high standards of academic excellence, and the tenure review as a way to ensure the excellence of our faculty. We don't see a conflict between providing more flexibility and having high standards -- just the opposite!

Janet A. Weiss:
    The Committee does recommend that the Regental bylaw be changed so that the maximum probationary period may be as long as 10 years. However I expect that most schools and colleges will conduct their tenure reviews at exactly the same time that they do now. Why do I think so? Because the timing of tenure reviews is a faculty decision at the level of schools and colleges, within constraints set by Regental Bylaw.

Right now the Regental Bylaw sets a maximum of 8 years. However, most of our schools and colleges do not now make use of the entire 8 years; most of our junior faculty are reviewed for tenure in their sixth year. By the logic of this questioner, every school should now be using the maximum amount of time. But they are not.

If the Bylaw was changed, I expect that a small number of schools may wish to make a change to a later time of tenure review, which would fit the special circumstances of their faculty and their disciplines. However, for many good reasons, the majority would be likely to stay where they are.

Janet A. Weiss:
    My fellow committee members and I would strongly oppose doing away with tenure. Tenure is the foundation of our academic freedom and our relationships with our colleagues. It is also essential to recruiting and retaining the best faculty.

Janet A. Weiss:
    There are several scenarios in which seven years may be too short to make a clear judgment about whether someone has a record that merits tenure at the University of Michigan.

One is in the Medical School, where faculty members are responsible for managing large clinical enterprises and delivering patient care, as well as conducting research, getting grants, and teaching students. While the tenure decision rests principally on research, the University needs and wants the faculty member to be performing well on these other dimensions as well. It may simply take more time for the research record to emerge.

A second is when a faculty member encounters a series of difficulties in his or her life, that may interfere with his or her ability to carry out research or teaching. This may happen when someone encounters at least two of the following: a personal health problem, illness in the family, the arrival of new children in the family, a disastrous situation related to research which was not under the faculty member's control, a facilities-related disruption that makes research impossible, the closing of a program where the faculty member was teaching, etc. One problem can be accommodated within the current tenure clock. But when multiple problems arise, it is humane to give someone more time to adjust.

Janet A. Weiss:
    As I have said in answers to some previous questions, we are not proposing a uniform long clock for our campus. We do not recommend moving in that direction, given the needs and interests of our faculty.

I'm wondering if you think the enourmous student loan debt young faculty often graduate with contributes to the need to extend tenure. As a part of Generation Debt many might leave academia to earn more money and then return. Finally, I think extended time for tenure would help more women earn tenure given the enourmous burden many women have between family, life balance issues andn the tenure race.

Thanks

Janet A. Weiss:
    Thanks for your congratulations!

I think the student loan debt is an interesting point, and not one that we discussed in our work. There may be many reasons -- and debt may be one of them -- for very accomplished PhD recipients to work for part of their career outisde of academia. In many fields, the opportunities outside of academia are very exciting intellectually, as well as financially rewarding.

I think it is a challenge for university administrators to do what we can to keep universities attractive places to work for prospective faculty.

The ACE organized a group of college presidents that made this point in a report published last February, called An Agenda for Excellence: Creating Flexibility in Tenure Track Faculty Careers. Good luck in your personal decisions.

Janet A. Weiss:
    At the University of Michigan, evidence of successful teaching is a *very* important factor in tenure decisions in all of our schools and colleges. The reason it doesn't show up as a major element in our proposal is that teaching hasn't changed as much over the years as research has changed. So we do not mean to short-change this important dimension of a tenurable record.

Instead we want to ensure that faculty members have the opportunities to demonstrate that they can make high quality research contributions. If their research requires complex collaborations with other researchers around the globe, or their research requires extensive external funding, then they are vulnerable to disruptions in their work for reasons outside of their control. We want to give the senior faculty in a particular school the flexibility to say that this research may make great contributions, but we choose to give the individual more time to see whether the contributions come to fruition.

Janet A. Weiss:
    The University of Michigan has several tracks of faculty members, in addition to tenure track faculty. You are exactly right that the reason for these tracks is that not every faculty member has the same contribution to make to the institution. And it is also true that the University doesn't make the same commitment of life-time tenure to faculty outside of the tenure track.

When the University does hire a faculty member on the tenure track, with the possibility of making the commitment of life-time tenure, our practice (like most other universities) is to invest in that person. We invest resources in start-up for a laboratory or other research resources, in providing on-going research support, in mentoring, etc. This investment pays off when the faculty member succeeds, and puts together a record that merits tenure. When the faculty member is denied tenure, or leaves our university before the tenure decision, that investment does not yield what we hoped for.

Our committee was focused on the tenure track faculty, but we are convinced that flexibility is important in other kinds of faculty careers. Again, the ACE report is a good resource for thinking about that kind of flexibility.

Janet A. Weiss:
    This is a very important question. Our committee paid a lot of attention to whether our current policies are helping or hurting women faculty, and how to design policies that would be fair across the board.

In our deliberations we concluded that the policies that would help women and men were policies that could accommodate the different experiences encountered by different people. Treating everyone identically is not necessarily fair, if people have different experiences and demands on them. Instead it may be more fair to treat people according to the demands of their situation. By creating more flexibility in the length of the probationary period, and making that flexibility clear to faculty members and to administrators, and having policies that allow faculty members to use that flexibility, then we can overcome the rigidity in the current tenure clock of treating everyone as though they were in the same boat.

At our university, and many others, we have for many years permitted faculty members to extend their clock for one year because of childbirth and dependent care. This is a perfect example of flexibility that allows the probationary period to be adapted to individual circumstances. Unfortunately at our university, we only permit extensions of one year, even when a faculty member may have more than one child. And we have not permitted similar flexibility for other reasons.

For example, we do not have clearly defined policies about when faculty members may come up for tenure earlier than the normal time. The result is that the most common way to come up for tenure early at the University of Michigan is to get an outside offer with tenure. Men may be more willing than women to solicit an outside offer. If the University adopted a clear policy about when and how to request early tenure decisions, perhaps our most outstanding faculty, men and women, could make these requests without going on the outside market, and would be more likely to stay at the University.

Janet A. Weiss:
    My hope is that every faculty member will have a full and fair chance to put together a record that would earn tenure. When someone is denied tenure, it is always a blow. My observation is that most faculty members denied tenure at Michigan have many good options for satisfying and successful careers. I'm sure that this will continue to be true, at whatever time the tenure decision occurs.

As a couple of other questioners noted, faculty careers have become more varied and interesting, and not everyone will move through the exact same sequence in the exact same way.

Our responsibility as senior faculty is to make good tenure decisions for the excellence of our institution, even when that means hard choices for particular individuals.