All Eyes on Tenure

Amid public scrutiny, the U. of Colorado reviews its process for awarding the coveted status

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By PIPER FOGG

The University of Colorado, in an attempt to counter public perception that it isn't paying attention to the quality of its faculty, has begun a review of tenure on all four of its campuses.

The university hopes to defuse a political uproar sparked early this year when a professor, Ward Churchill, compared the victims of the September 11 terrorists attacks to Nazis. Public outrage only mounted when it was revealed that the professor had not earned his tenure by the book. The controversy, in addition to a scandal over allegations of rape in the athletics program, led to the resignation of the university's president this summer.

The university has hired a consulting company, at a cost of about $330,000, and brought on a decorated retired U.S. Air Force general to oversee the tenure review.

Colleges periodically review their tenure policies, but often the reviews are internally driven. The Colorado effort appears to be the first one in recent years in which a state system has hired an outsider to take an in-depth look at its procedures. The University of Colorado's review was proposed by faculty members, but political pressure surely played a role. Academics who are concerned that public criticism of tenure is weakening it are watching to see how the Colorado process plays out.

There is some dissension in the ranks. Some professors point out that the general has no academic credentials. But that, say the officials who chose him, is a plus. To lead the review, the university sought someone respected by conservative state legislators, who have attacked tenure as a liberal entitlement of academe.

By involving them in the process — the general met with legislators to assure them of his objectivity — the university seems to have mollified state officials. "We can say to them, 'We're handling this,'" says Steven K. Bosley, a member of the university's Board of Regents. "We can make it right."

Some faculty members are criticizing the university for bowing to public pressure. Many others have heard little about the review and doubt that any significant changes will be made. Still others applaud an opportunity to show the public that winning tenure is, in fact, a rigorous process.

A report on the review is not expected until spring, but the university seems to be maintaining a careful balancing act. That it took the initiative in the review and hired an outside overseer has given hope to those who say Colorado is failing to maintain a high-quality faculty. But university officials have not made any specific promises. Many faculty members have the impression that the review is part of a plan to repair the university's damaged reputation by revealing just how well the tenure process is already working. It has also gotten legislators off the university's back for the time being.

But with an investigation of Mr. Churchill still under way, and divergent expectations about the future, any spark could reignite the political firestorm. Only with the outcome of the review will it become clear whether public officials, or perhaps faculty members, have been gamed.

A Bad Reputation

Tenure began taking public hits soon after Mr. Churchill's controversial comments about the September 11, 2001, attacks became widely known, in January. In an essay three years earlier, the ethnic-studies professor had called the white-collar employees who died in the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns." Upon learning of his comments, legislators called for his firing. Tenure usually protects professors' jobs, but as it turns out, Mr. Churchill did not get tenure in the normal way.

University documents show that he was hired in 1990 even though he lacked a doctorate, a surprise to some outside academe who expect tenure-track professors to have Ph.D.'s. And he earned tenure the following year, skipping the traditional tenure-review process and the customary six years leading up to it.

At the same time, the documents show that Colorado officials considered Mr. Churchill worthy of recruiting as an American Indian-studies scholar who could have been attractive to other institutions at a time when Colorado was trying to build up its expertise in that area. Indeed, the professor says he was in negotiations for a full professorship, with tenure, at another university.

One Colorado administrator wrote that Mr. Churchill's lack of a doctorate may have been "irrelevant." Sometimes universities make special hires or allow professors to bypass the normal tenure route, such as a working journalist or a business expert with years of professional experience. Mr. Churchill says he was more than qualified for tenure at the time, with a half-dozen books published, a book award, and about 20 peer-reviewed articles.

Colorado's governor, Bill Owens, a Republican, has publicly urged the university to tighten its tenure procedures. Otherwise, he has threatened, the state might pass a law centralizing the process.

In the spring, Mark Hillman, a Republican state senator, proposed a commission to examine tenure at Colorado's universities. The measure failed, but he told the Rocky Mountain News, in Denver, "We have a case today of inmates running the asylum."

The Churchill saga kept attention focused on the system's flagship campus for months, with national media pundits weighing in and politicians hammering away on the issue.

A group of faculty leaders decided to act. At a March meeting of the executive committee of the multicampus Faculty Council, the seven professors on the committee proposed a review of the tenure process. The regents immediately embraced the proposal, and a tenure-review committee was formed.

Administrators chose Mark A. Heckler, provost at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, to lead the committee. Its membership includes three regents, a dean, several professors, a student representative, and a Denver resident who directs the city's Office of Economic Development.

Rodney Muth, an education professor on the Denver campus and president of the Faculty Council, hoped that an in-house review would restore public confidence. Better that, he reasoned, than submit the university to a state-run review. "To turn a very conservative legislature loose on tenure was not in the faculty's best interest," he says.

The stated purpose of the review is to examine the processes of granting tenure and conducting post-tenure review — not to take a referendum on tenure itself. An internal committee of professors and graduate students — separate from the original tenure-review committee — will examine the procedures, while an external review will be completed by the consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The groups will look at both whether tenure policies are being followed at all levels and how rigorous the evaluations of tenure candidates are. The committee members will have access to past tenure files — with some sensitive information blacked out — to help them. They will try to determine whether the procedures are effective in recruiting and keeping qualified faculty members who will make significant and long-lasting contributions to the university.

The two committees also plan to examine whether annual evaluations after tenure is awarded are effective in pinpointing professors with lagging performance. Tenure procedures at other colleges, including peer institutions, will be examined as well, and compared with practices on the University of Colorado's campuses. With recommendations from both the internal and the external groups, Howell M. Estes III, the retired Air Force general chosen to head the process, will write the final report.

University officials are talking up the review, saying it could serve as a national model. Other colleges, they say, have inquired about conducting a similar process. Mr. Heckler, the provost, suggests that while other institutions have undergone tenure reviews and some have modified their processes, adding women-friendly policies such as stopping the tenure clock, this review is the most broad-based he has seen. "It has the potential to be highly influential," he says.

Roger W. Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, says that he is not concerned about General Estes' running the review. But he is troubled that a consulting firm was also hired, calling it an "odd" choice. A nonprofit organization could do it at a lower cost and the AAUP has more experience and knowledge in the field, he says. PricewaterhouseCoopers would be prudent to learn the history of tenure and consult with experts in the field, Mr. Bowen suggests.

Military Review

Some faculty members continue to question whether a military man is the right person for such a job. The general, 64, whose background includes combat missions as an F-4 pilot during the Vietnam War, service in the Persian Gulf war, and chief responsibility for aerospace and missile defense of the United States and Canada, has no academic experience. Since retiring from the military, in 1998, General Estes, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, has worked as a consultant. Colorado officials were familiar with him because of some work he had done with the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in creating a partnership with the local Air Force base, with the campus offering facilities for military training.

In choosing a leader, the tenure-review committee knew that it needed someone who would appeal to Colorado citizens, alumni, and legislators. "Someone with impeccable credentials," says Mr. Muth, the Faculty Council president, "who cannot be besmirched by anyone."

General Estes says an academic background is less important than experience doing large-scale studies of various enterprises, which he says he has. "You don't have to have great depth of knowledge" about a place, he says. "You can learn that." He adds that the review committees are interviewing faculty members and administrators with institutional knowledge.

State legislators, many of whom have strong ideas about tenure, have so far welcomed the general. When they sat down with him this year, they communicated those thoughts.

"We felt really good after that meeting," says David Schultheis, a Republican state representative. "He assured us he wasn't going to take any nonsense from anybody." The lawmaker was gratified to hear from General Estes that after hearing from the review committees, he would make the final conclusions on his own.

Representative Schultheis wants the university to hire only qualified faculty members — a criterion that, he acknowledges, is open to interpretation — and hold them accountable. One way to do that, he says, is to have faculty senates review candidates' teaching ability and ensure they presented material in an unbiased fashion before they are put in front of students. Once hired, if they fall short in any area, a quick termination would be possible. "With all the Ward Churchill situation, it got the public over all very exercised," Mr. Schultheis says. The university's inability to quickly dismiss him concerned many of his constituents, he says. "That got a number of us fired up."

He would like the committees to review whether tenure is even necessary in some disciplines, citing education and psychology, as well as ethnic studies — Mr. Churchill's department. (That doesn't seem to be up for discussion, though, since members of the tenure-review committee have emphasized that tenure itself is not on the chopping block.) Mr. Schultheis also doubts that post-tenure review, instituted at Colorado in the 1990s, is effective. "I definitely expect changes to be made and expect them to be significant," he says.

Kevin Lundberg, another Republican state representative who met with General Estes, is similarly nonplussed about the tenure system. He was once a trustee at Colorado Christian University, which does not grant tenure. He finds the concept "self-limiting." Tenure criteria are often narrow, he argues, and those who are tenured get to choose who else gets it. Mr. Lundberg calls for more contributions from administrators and outsiders during individual reviews to gain true diversity on the faculty.

If the university cannot exclude someone like Ward Churchill — whose extremism and lack of professional integrity, the legislator has argued, demonstrate that he didn't deserve his position — then, declares Mr. Lundberg, something must be wrong with post-tenure review. (Mr. Churchill is being investigated for research misconduct and may yet lose his job.)

Why not have a rolling tenure, Mr. Lundberg suggests, in which peers, administrators, and students take turns conducting reviews every few years?

If a professor received consecutive bad marks from all three groups, he says, then tenure should be revisited. Tenure, Mr. Lundberg says, shouldn't be "a free ticket for the rest of your career to do whatever you want."

Colorado officials argue that annual faculty reviews and post-tenure reviews already ensure quality is maintained. Every five years, tenured professors must undergo post-tenure reviews, with the process varying by department. But professors have regular annual reviews as well, and underperformers are required to develop remediation plans.

If those people do not improve, says Michel R. Dahlin, the university system's acting vice president for academic affairs, they can face sanctions, including reduced pay or dismissal.

University statistics show that during the 2003-4 academic year, only one of 177 tenured professors in the system who underwent post-tenure review received an unsatisfactory rating. Nineteen faculty members fell short of expectations in their annual reviews and submitted improvement plans. That, says Ms. Dahlin, "means that our system is working."

But Representative Schultheis says that if a faculty member is in charge of determining whether another faculty member is fit, there is not enough oversight from disinterested parties. Besides, he notes, statistics can be quoted to prove any point. Representative Lundberg says the almost perfect score that tenured faculty give to their tenured colleagues is one more piece of evidence that the system is "a self-perpetuating guild."

With a Grain of Salt

While state officials seem to have high hopes for the review of tenure policy, some of which may prove to be unrealistic, the reaction of professors is mixed. Some of them think the review is a fine idea, while others dismiss it as a blatantly political move. Many others were unaware the review was in progress.

Paul M. Levitt, an English professor at Boulder, was one of those professors in the dark. "My view of the whole thing is ho-hum," he says. "I take it with a grain of salt."

Martin Bickman, another English professor and a member of the Boulder Faculty Assembly, thinks the review is just for show. "It seems that when the legislature itches, we scratch," he says. "We should sometimes call their bluffs." He was also surprised that a military general was named to head the process. "I would think you'd want someone who internally knows academia," Mr. Bickman says. And while he thinks that a tenure review is a good thing in principle, he doubts that any real change will be made.

Margaret A. Eisenhart, a professor of education at Boulder, echoes those sentiments. "It's just another committee, which is what the university does when it's under fire," she says. "We've been through these kinds of things before."

She does acknowledge, though, the importance of the university's repairing its reputation. "I can understand why they want to make it sound like it's a big deal," Ms. Eisenhart says. If the review ferrets out departments or cases in which the proper procedures are not being followed, that would great, she says.

But that is not an issue for most faculty members, she says. Ratcheting up tenure standards or creating tougher procedures, she worries, would punish the good performers, too. She also hopes, for the sake of flexibility, that special hires will continue, including the discretion to give tenure to professors soon after they are hired.

Mr. Churchill calls the review illegitimate. "There is absolutely no need for a review of tenure," which represents a concession to people who don't value the principles of academic freedom, he says. He also questions the competence of the general to do the review. "He's devoted a career to a completely different purpose," Mr. Churchill points out. "This is not a military enterprise."

Hilda Borko, a professor of education who has been at Boulder for 15 years and helped create the current post-tenure review system, does not know of active solicitation of faculty views, at least her own, by the committees. "Should it have been better publicized? Yes," she says. "It wasn't framed in a way that made me say, Oh, I better go learn more about this."

General Estes defends the university's efforts to get the word out. It distributed letters in May informing faculty members of the review, and it made committee meetings public. After the final report is released, it will hold a public-comment period, and put it to debate in the Faculty Council, before Regents act on the recommendations.

If any major recommendations upset professors, however, the public-comment period could become contentious. After all, says General Estes, the public "is going to insist the university follow exactly what we come up with." Come springtime, that could mean fewer people on Colorado campuses saying ho-hum.