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Trading Tenure for More Money

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By Jennifer Jacobson

Unlike most tenure-track professors, Joseph Kline had a choice when he finished his sixth year at DeSales University last year: Go up for tenure or sign a five-year, renewable contract that would pay him an extra 15 percent in salary.

"It came down to, Would I like 15 percent more dough?" says Mr. Kline, chairman of the performing and fine arts department at DeSales. "The answer is, I would."

The university began offering faculty members the contract option in 2000, but this past academic year was the first time that any one had taken advantage of it. Four faculty members came up for tenure in 2001-2. Two chose a five-year contract and two applied for tenure.

Since its founding in 1965, the university has capped the proportion of tenured professors at 50 percent of the faculty, to ensure flexibility. But that policy created its own problems: "We realized we might lose extremely well-qualified faculty," says Karen Walton, vice president for academic affairs. If the university wanted to keep a particular professor, but no tenure slots were available, the faculty member would have to go, she says.

Under the new policy, at no time will tenured faculty members and those on five-year renewable contracts exceed 65 percent of the full-time faculty, Ms. Walton says.

Professors at the Roman Catholic institution earn a base salary, and a merit raise, which can range from 2 percent to 13 percent. Faculty members who opt for the contract system receive a 15 percent bonus each year that is calculated using their total salary (base pay plus the merit raise). Professors working on contracts can apply for tenure anytime a slot becomes available.

Relatively few institutions offer both tenure and an alternative to it. For nearly six years, Boston University's School of Management has offered professors 10-year contracts with a 10-percent pay premium if they forgo tenure. And since the early 1970s professors at Webster University have been able to choose between seeking tenure and working on a contract system that allows them to apply for more-frequent sabbaticals. Traditionally, professors at most universities are eligible for sabbaticals only once every seven years.

"It's not like we've seen an upsurge" in the number of universities offering such alternatives, says Cathy A. Trower, principal investigator for the Study of New Scholars, a three-year effort that grew out of the Project on Faculty Appointments at Harvard University. But these options have been very popular, she says, at the few colleges that offer them. "What we know about young scholars," she says, is that "they like having a choice."

Many institutions haven't embraced the idea because they're concerned about maintaining the quality of their faculties, she says. "Everyone says the tenure process is so rigorous, but these faculty contracts are evaluated, and should be evaluated, as rigorously as those on the tenure track," Ms. Trower says. "So there's really not even a quality argument against it."

The American Association of University Professors takes a different view. "In a nutshell, we think this is a terrible idea," says Jonathan Knight, an associate secretary of the group. "One is not only giving up security but ... endangering this thing which security protects: freedom."

He continues: "It may well be things look rosy today. Tomorrow they may not be. Personnel change, administrations change, priorities change. If one is vulnerable to having a contract not renewed, it stands to reason that you're less likely to be as vigorous in expressing your views because you depend upon the administration which has discretion" over your future at the institution.

At DeSales, the criteria for the contracts are the same as the criteria for tenure, Ms. Walton says. The professors who receive the contracts would have qualified for tenure, so they aren't made to feel as if they are second-tier faculty members.

Mr. Kline, the performing-arts chairman who opted for a contract, feels secure about his job. "Tenure, as I understand it, is a contract for life -- one that in good faith binds the teacher to the university and the university to the teacher," he says. "My feeling is that I have that commitment to the university. I'd like to stay here as long as they'll have me."

Mr. Kline, who is not married and has no children, says that if he did have a family, he might have considered going for tenure. That way, he says, "I would have a job, all things being equal, for the rest of my life." But on the five-year contract, "I kind of feel that way now," he says. And as far as the ability for tenure to give him academic freedom, "I don't feel I've sacrificed that at all, either."

For Susan Y. McGorry, however, tenure provides the best protection of academic freedom since she's not "encumbered by real scrutiny," says the associate professor of business, who came up for tenure last year. "With the five-year contract, I'm applying every five years for a position at the institution."

Tenure gives her family some stability, says Ms. McGorry, who is married and has a 2-year-old daughter. "I'm looking to make a long-term commitment to the institution," she says.

William F. Roth, a professor of business at DeSales, also was due to seek tenure last year. He didn't, he says, because he doesn't believe in it. "Tenure is very political, and it depends on who's on what committee and who their friends are," he says. "You lose a lot of good, young talent" that way. Besides, he adds: "People, once they get tenure, are locked in no matter how bad they get. It's very difficult to get rid of them. It's just not the best way for things to work."

Still, a lot of younger people find tenure more attractive because they're just building their lives, he says: "I'm in my 60's. I don't need it. I'm not beginning a family, and I'm not getting situated."

But Patrick Mulcahy is. An associate professor of theater, he has two children, ages 5 and 8, and he moved five times in the seven years before he came to DeSales six years ago. (His wife is an adjunct professor of dance at Muhlenberg College.) "We're just tired of moving," says Mr. Mulcahy, on why he chose tenure over the contract. "This is a career, especially for professors of theater, that if you change jobs you're probably changing states."

For now Mr. Mulcahy wants to change nothing. He and his family built a house in a neighborhood where he wants his children to attend school. And while he says the contract option would have been fine for him, tenure just offers more certainty. "Right now I feel that the administration knows me well, believes in my work, and trusts me," he says. "There's always the possibility they could all go run Yale and a whole new crop of people could come in. Who knows what priorities those people will have?"

Four more professors are due to seek tenure during the coming academic year. Ms. Walton expects three of them to opt for contracts. The fourth is undecided. "There's certainly no pressure for them to do one or the other," she says.