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[Colloquy Moderator]

For more than a decade, Duke University has employed full-time faculty members who are not on the tenure track. These "professors of the practice" focus mainly on teaching while "research professors" concentrate on research. Both types enjoy most of the same fringe benefits as regular tenured professors but work on renewable contracts that cover spans of 3 to 10 years. The program is popular with administrators and professors alike. As the idea catches on at other institutions, such as New York University, some people wonder whether it could solve the problem of colleges' overreliance on adjuncts. Others worry that it would erode the tenure system, by creating a group of second-class faculty members. Would such a system work at your institution? Would you give up a tenure-track job for such a position? Read more ...

[Dr. Arlene A. O'Leary,AVP, MU]

Higher Education is in the process of redefinition. One characteristic that is needed is  to take a serious look at  what we expect a faculty member to do to help students learn in the 21st century.
Until we are able to articulate what the role of higher education is in this new arena, we will continue to debate the mechanics. The role of a faculty member has changed yet all we do is rely on past practices. New forms are needed based on our definition of "faculty roles"
If Duke University and others have a new description for the role of  faculty, certainly it should follow that other ways to achieve the goal should be considered. The idea of a "differentiated" staff is not new. The "one size fits all" approach seems to be  on the decline.
The issues of academic freedom and or tenure, or part time faculty employment only muddy the discussion. The real questions are What do we expect students to learn? How can a University find the best way to support that learning? What is the new role of a faculty member in the new arena of higher education? How can we employ the best people to achieve the goals?  We need a variety of strategies and a process of continuous review. If we continue to tie our thinking to past, we will find the institutions who do not,will take the leadership role and those who are innovators will have the best faculty.

[Observer]

This is not a 'new breed'; such individuals have been around for at least forty years (the limit of my experience).  Often they existed in language departments, teaching a double load and sometimes taking responsibility for specific tasks (administering grad school language exams, coordinating intro language course sections, etc.).

Assuming a 40-40-20 percentage of effort at research universities, these individuals generally teach twice as many courses as tenure track faculty, but are not required to do research.  They do usually give certain types of service, particularly if there are only one or two in a department.  Some departments that have regular, heavy service obligations (English, e.g.) have institutionalized this practice over time and have, in effect, parallel departments with different expectations.  Are the long-term, full-time adjuncts second class citizens?  It depends on your perspective.  They seldom teach upper division courses and they seldom get big raises, since they lack the research profile which attracts outside offers.  They also lack tenure (a form of compensation).  On the other hand, they don't have to go to meetings (in some cases); they don't have to do research; they don't have to worry about grant funding.  Their allocation of effort is more like that of secondary school teachers.

There are potential problems of burnout.  There are also problems of academic 'posture' (and posturing).  For example, if we really believe that the best instruction is done by those deeply involved in research, why would we have so much of our teaching done by those who are not involved in it?  Is this just a matter of financial expediency for the dean and curricular expediency for the department?  Is this just a way of protecting tenure track professors and keeping them at arm's length from the department's more onerous duties?

The preferable system, in my judgment, is to have long-term adjuncts who teach a favorite course or two and who bring unique experience (sometimes from basic research) into the classroom.  These individuals are teaching for the joy of it and are not dependent on the position for core income.

One of the reasons why the full-time teachers w/o tenure model has been successful is that it affords administrators a great deal of flexibility.  These individuals can be hired and fired and they yield double the student credit hours (or more).  Herein lies the danger.  To the degree that this practice is institutionalized and grows, the message becomes clear that this is the way to get twice as much instruction for the dollar without having the inflexibility associated with tenure.  Is this best for our students?  Is this best for the advancement of knowledge?  (Imagine an increasingly-common scenario in which deans say to departments, "You have lost three positions to retirement; I'll restore one, but only if you take the other two as full-time adjuncts.")

It is now taken for granted that there will always be a few such people around--the institution's own Ph.D.'s still on the job market, some spousal accommodation people, etc.  To the degree that a separate career track becomes institutionalized this could become the regular career track at most of the institutions with financial challenges, i.e. 3500 or more of the 4000+ institutions in the U.S.

What institutionalizing the full-time, long-term adjunct system would do is bring the regional public university model and impoverished liberal arts college model into the research university--populating the classroom with individuals who disseminate knowledge rather than developing it.  Some do research, of course, but there are only 24 hours in the day, and they can't do as much as those with full systems of internal grant support, 2/2 or 1/1 teaching loads, and research infrastructure to support them.  Many, of course, do very little research at all.

I think it is presumptuous to tell people what to do with their lives.  In answer to the question, would I opt for such an appointment, the answer is no.  Securing a Ph.D. requires years of labor and sacrifice (years in which one is also deferring income).  In the humanities it can take 8-10 years beyond the baccalaureate, 12 in fields like History.  Why go through all of that preparation to do the work, basically, of a secondary school teacher?  You can do that anyway and probably make more money in the long run, by taking a master's degree as soon as possible after you graduate from college and land the secondary school job.  Alternatively, if you don't land a tenure track job--go out in the world.  The programs in the late 70's and beyond that were designed to 'transition' humanities Ph.D.'s into non-academic employment all reached the same two conclusions: a) academics had some trouble working with deadlines, i.e., doing the best job available within time and resource constraints, rather than working open-endedly; b) the former academics now in other forms of employment reported greater job satisfaction (in general) than individuals in tenure track jobs in universities.  There was money to travel, buy books, etc. etc.  Why condemn yourself to academic wage slavery?  Just my opinion; you do what you want to do.

(p.s. If the purpose of doing a Ph.D. is the sheer love of the pursuit of knowledge and not the desire to find a certain type of academic job, go for it.  However, our Ph.D. programs are generally not structured to achieve that purpose.  They are structured to acculturate students in a disciplinary guild, not structured to enable students to do the kind of research that they particularly seek to pursue.)

[A U of Vermont Professor]

I think Duke is most certainly on the right
track.  I would give up my tenure in a heart
beat if my university implemented renewable contracts.  Why?

1.  I could negotiate my own contract instead of relying on the pathetic, left-wing AAUP.  I could concentrate on salary and benefits rather than asinine concepts such as "shared governance".

2.  It would allow my university to purge itself of the deadwood faculty.

3.  It would allow the university to have better control over what gets taught.  They would no longer have to put up with tenured faculty who believe "gay & lesbian poetry" or "introduction to environmental protest methods" are worthwhile courses that should apply towards a degree.

Let's face it.  The whole purpose of tenure is to protect those who no longer are productive.  Renewable contracts would keep the effective, productive professors who publish and retire those who do nothing more than teach the same course they have for the last 10 years.

[Asst Prof, CBC]

This approach seems to solve a number of problems, but it also raises some new ones:
1.  The premise still favors research over teaching.
2.  Non-tenure track instructors seem to still have relatively little job security.
3.  It provides little or no incentive for tenured faculty to investigate the scholarship of teaching or for non-tenured faculty to develop an active research agenda.

[%sig%]

[Clare Tufts, Duke University]

I have just read the article in which I and colleagues at Duke are featured, and I am very disappointed to see myself both misrepresented and misquoted.  This is personally upsetting, but it also has the potential to be professionally harmful to all professors of the practice at Duke University.  First, the article neglected to mention that I have a Ph.D. -- a requirement for the job that is always the result of a national search in my department (Romance Studies).  It further states that I feel no pressure to publish.  In fact, I am the author of a textbook that is currently undergoing revisions for the 4th edition, and I have also published journal articles on theater and cultural studies.  In my department, it is understood that professors of the practice will be active locally, nationally, and internationally in their fields, and implicit in this understanding is the requirement to publish in one's area or areas of research.  Discussion of one's publishing profile is part of the letter received from the chair following review for renewal and promotion.  Finally, the article neglects to mention teaching load of professors of the practice at Duke, and from reading the contributions to the forum already it appears that readers are concluding that we teach more than our tenured colleagues.  The standard teaching load at Duke is 2/2; the professors of the practice in Romance Studies who direct language programs and train and supervise the graduate teaching assistants have an annual teaching load of 1/2.

[B.Johansen, U of MN]

The purpose of tenuer is not to protect the non-productive. Tenue is to allow us the freedom to teach just the type of classes the U of VT professor dislikes. It allows us to follow lines of scholarship that are NOT politically correct, not popular, and not subject to the approval of some higher authority.  Tenure fosters diversity of thought. Of course some don't value such diversity.

[Concerned]

If tenure only protected the lazy and inefficient, I would say that the Duke system is an improvement.  However, after two decades of teaching, mostly in regional institutions, I have observed many administrators who make hiring and promotion decisions not on the basis of proven performance, but politics.  Some of them have been downright mean-spirited.

I spent some years in the private sector, and never ran into the number of backbiting, downright dishonest people as I have met in academic administration.  As a result, although I was generally a "company man" in private business, I have become suspicious and joined a faculty union (which should be unnecessary).  

The question of recognizing teaching as equivalent to research is one we keep sidestepping.  Many institutions say they place it on a par, but the rewards go to those who publish, not teach well.  Most of us do not work at high-profile research institutions.  We work at places that expect us to to teach six or eight courses a year.  I have no beef with that, except some of these institutions aspire (vainly) to become research institutions, and therefore place research expectations on top of what is already  a fulltime job.

Tenure is often abused.  Just recently, I saw one person turned down who had the support of his department and a decent publication record.  Two others -- favorites of certain  administrators but with weak publication records and downright enmity of students -- were supported for tenure over the opposition of members of their departments.  The tenure system is hard to keep objective.

An awful lot of what passes for research (at least in the social sciences) is junk, anyway.  I say, let those who are doing important research do it, and reward the rest of us equally who do a good job of teaching the little rascals that make our universities possible.  Unfortunately, we too often need the protection of tenure, as bad as the system is, to let us do that job.

[Independent Scholar]

Many thanks to Dr. Tufts for clarifying the "new" situation at Duke U.
The current discussion has briefly mentioned an underlying problem: politics and the "mean-spiritedness" of folks in academe.
I'd like to throw into the pot a related issue concerning the ossification of administrative structures versus the innovative teaching and research and service that we try to pursue within those structures.  In
Hearing story after story of tenure denied because of politics and personal control-play makes me wretch.  It is all too common.  The other side of the coin is perhaps the "deadwood" faculty.
Idealist that I am, I can't help but think there are more effective ways to administer/manage higher education that those offered currently.  Does anyone out there know of schools with a different path for permanent job security, where the entire folio and person is considered in objective terms by multiple bodies of mixed admins and faculty and students?  Or am I simply sadly deluded by my wish for a better world of academe?

[me]

A U of Vermont Professor wrote:


> Let's face it.  The whole purpose of tenure is to protect
> those who no longer are productive.  Renewable contracts would
> keep the effective, productive professors who publish and
> retire those who do nothing more than teach the same course
> they have for the last 10 years.

This is untrue, and your own half-thought-out rant proves it :

> 3.  It would allow the university to have better control over
> what gets taught.  They would no longer have to put up with
> tenured faculty who believe "gay & lesbian poetry" or
> "introduction to environmental protest methods" are worthwhile
> courses that should apply towards a degree.


You want to eliminate tenure, not to eliminate "those who no longer are productive," but specifically those who are producing something that you disagree with and don't value.

"The whole purpose of tenure" is to protect academic freedom, the right of a teacher and scholar to develop and present material that (some of) their peers don't like.  The "pathetic left-wing AAUP" is very clear on this --- is that why you want to get rid of them, too?

Attitudes such as those you express are walking advertisements for tenure.  And for post-tenure review, to get rid of "deadwood faculty"  with nothing more pressing to do than to complain about other faculty being productive in fields the complainer doesn't understand.

[R.A. Baumgartner, Engl p-t]

   It seems to me that tenure protects students, faculty members, and the institution, and to devise appointments  that side-step tenure does a disservice to all three.
   
   The real problem for the last two or three decades is that academic decision-making has been more and more administration-driven as it becomes increasingly bottom-line-driven. This may be, in part, the fault of faculty members who view shared governance as "asinine." What the administration seeks is "flexibility" (one of my colleagues called this the Kleenex staffing policy, use it and throw it out) to respond to program fads and budget pinches, sound-byte institutional prestige ("all our faculty have the terminal degree," "all our faculty publish heavily"), and litigation-proof personnel decisions. What we have wound up with is a one-size-fits-all tenure standard, applied not only individual-to-individual and department-to-department but also institution-to-institution, as if faculty members, departmental programs, and institutions were identical and interchangeable.

   Yet surely many of us are ourselves the products of fine undergraduate programs with a mix of tenured faculty--MAs who published, PhDs who did not publish, PhDs who devoted a lot of attention to publication; strong teachers who also published, strong researchers who also loved teaching, teachers whose scholarship was shared more with their students in class than via publication, researchers whose hearts were clearly not in the classroom.... not to mention some faculty members who were deeply involved in advising, institutional service, and governance and some who were not so strongly engaged in those areas.

   Faculty members need the protection of tenure to be truly free to practice their professions, and I need not belabor that point here (_pace_ U Vm prof). Students need tenured faculty for the sake of their own freedom to learn and also for continued access to those faculty members over their school years and beyond (recommendations, advice, dialogue). And institutions reap the benefits of tenured faculty in the form of institutional and program stability (not the same thing as ossification unless ossification is what the institution rewards), ability to plan, and institutional identity.
   
   Clearly, then, count me as someone who does NOT hope this idea catches on. It is possible (in my mind, advisable) to have a faculty with diverse strengths and professional interests; more, it is preferable to have a faculty whose strengths are appropriate to their students' and programs' needs rather than to some generic model. But that goal can be achieved by a courageous and sensible department and institution through legitimate and equitable tenuring processes; one need not create a category of faculty who are "separate [job protections, title, status, work load, dignity, institutional membership] but equal [salary, at least at the low end]."

[%sig%]

[Patrick Jung, MSOE]

I teach full time at an institution that does not have tenure (Milwaukee School of Engineering).  Every five years, each faculty member undergoes a thorough review (although it is not as intense as a review for tenure).  After your packet is reviewed and given an acceptable recommendation by the university faculty committee, you are given another five-year contract.  I much prefer this system to tenure, as do most faculty at my institution.

I have heard the argument that the purpose of tenure is to protect academic freedom, but frankly I do not buy it and never have.  Indeed, the system offers NO guarantee of academic freedom to a tenure-track faculty member who is new and has not been granted tenure yet.  Such persons have to avoid controversy.  They can only become controversial AFTER they receive tenure.  I do not call that academic freedom.  Tenure is actually a dual system that guarantees academic freedom ONLY to those who do not fully exercise their academic freedom before they received tenure.

I think most people continue to believe that tenure's main purpose is to protect academic freedom, but the thing that protects academic freedom is not tenure but the institution's commitment to academic freedom.

I have job security under MSOE's system, and the institution guarantees academic freedom.  I also have to prove my worth every five years.  The system here is very fair, and as long as I do not turn into deadwood and become a drain on the university's resources and an obstacle to accomplishing its mission of providing top-notch teaching to the students, I will continue to have job security.

Who could ask for any more than this?  I have job security and academic freedom without tenure.  I know the AAUP does not want to hear that, but it is truth: both are possible to achieve without the hassels and troubles of a tenure system.

[Loren C. Wingblade, Ph.D.]

Sixteen years ago, at the Indiana University Psychology Department I proposed just such a  system.  In effect, a two track system to grant tenure.  The "regular" research position with it's minimum requirements of teaching and a second "track" in which the professor would be primarily a teacher with an occasional publication or two behind his/her name(to sort of keep his or hand in research).  I was told in no uncertain terms that this was "unthinkable" because (1) it had been tried before and presumably didn't work, and (2) it would create a two-tier system which would make "the teachers" second class citizens in the department.  Poppycock!!
Just before going downstairs to teach the large intro Psych classes, some of the distinguished research faculty would joke--"whose going down to teach the kiddies?"  Well there are Ph.D.'s who enjoy teaching and yes wouldn't mind doing a publication or two once in a while.  But teaching is our forte.  I taught a 225 seat classroom (and once a 345 seat classroom) and I would go down among the students--microphone in hand and answer questions from the floor of the auditorium.  My professor (he was my professor because I graduated from that institution) said, "How do you do that?  Do the students listen to you when you get off the podium?"  I said "of course they listen."  
Why or how I don't know, but some people are capable of holding the attention of a large audience of students and actually get some learning done.  When students called on the phone to the department secretaries and asked "is Loren teaching this semester" they would often say "no".  "Well why not" came back the response.
I am not bragging.  Some people would rather teach than do research.  Why is this wrong?  Such individuals placed in large Universities could only improve the level of teaching at these schools.  Why force reseachers whose mind is what is going on in the lab--why force them to put their work aside and go into the classroom to teach?  I realize I am making this into a dichotomy of researchers and teachers.  Admittedly many Ph.D.'s do both well.  But for those who like to teach why stigmatize them by making them feel like second class citizens of the academic world?
Why not use the best qualities of all Ph.D. graduates by taylor making tenure to fit their talents--rather than having faculty fit into a preformed mold.  "If you don't publish in distinguished journels, I'm afraid we will have to find someone else."  Archaic.  Loren C. Wingblade, Jackson Community College, Jackson, MI

[me]

Patrick Jung, MSOE wrote:


> I have heard the argument that the purpose of tenure is to
> protect academic freedom, but frankly I do not buy it and never
> have.  Indeed, the system offers NO guarantee of academic
> freedom to a tenure-track faculty member who is new and has not
> been granted tenure yet.

I don't think this is an argument that tenure doesn't protect academic freedom.  In fact, I think it's an argument that tenure DOES protect academic freedom, since it's exactly the people who don't have tenure who are unprotected.  ("Seatbelts don't save lives, because people who don't wear them would still die"?).  The current system is a compromise between academics who would like tenure protection from day one, and their colleagues and administrators who want to be able to dismiss faculty at will for indulging in disapproved-of acts.


> I think most people continue to believe that tenure's main
> purpose is to protect academic freedom, but the thing that
> protects academic freedom is not tenure but the institution's
> commitment to academic freedom.

Well, yes and no.  Certainly, an institution with no commitment to academic freedom doesn't have to offer tenure, or can write the terms of tenure in such a way that it offers little protection.  But tenure also has legal teeth.  Under the "standard" tenure contract (which of course doesn't really exist), the professor has an expectation of continued employment unless the college can establish a reason to fire them --- and there is an agreed-upon list of acceptable reasons.   These contract terms are the real
guarantor of academic freedom, but they are the ultimate expression of the protection implied in "tenure."

> I have job security under MSOE's system, and the institution
> guarantees academic freedom.  I also have to prove my worth
> every five years.

How does this differ, in practical terms, from a tenure system? What is involved in proving your worth?  "Incompetence" has long been a standard "acceptable reason" for revocation of tenure and dismissal.   If you can't demonstrate your competence to perform your job, then you should (and can) be dismissed, tenure or not.  If you're competent at your job, what further hurdle do you need to make?

[Patrick Jung]

I appreciate your criticisms of my post, and I anticipated several of them, and I would like to respond.  

You are right that the BEST way to insure academic freedom would be to grant tenure from day one, but it is not usually granted until year 4 or 5.  However, what criteria do colleges and universities USE to grant tenure?  If the purpose of tenure is to guarantee academic freedom, why do institutions use criteria like publications, teaching scores, collegiality, etc?  Why do they not base tenure decisions upon the NEED for tenure?  Indeed, those professors most in need of tenure (i.e., those who have the most controversial and provocative theories and opinions) should get it right away.  In other words, the CRITERIA for granting tenure are very different from the PURPOSE for giving it.   When you think about it, there is something of a paradox here.

You are correct in stating that tenure has legal teeth and that tenure contracts routinely list potential causes for dismissal.  However, how many tenured professors are fired for incompetence?  I am will to bet it is pretty darn few.  And, again, tenure contracts differ from place to place, but I would imagine that proving "incompetence" is no small task, and many institutions would just as soon wait till someone retires rather than try firing a tenured professor.

As far the system that I am under, I think the most significant difference is that I MUST undergo a review every five years.  A review for tenure, in virtually every case, is a one time event.   And, in practical terms, firing an incompetent professor is never an easy task, but not granting a new contract is much more simply achieved and involves many fewer legal obstacles and headaches.

Finally, I appreciate the professional tone of your post and of your criticisms.  I think we need more of that on this colloquy.