March 28, 2008
Tenure: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?
Tenured Radical’s recent post suggesting that tenure be abolished on the grounds that it’s hurtful has sparked an interesting debate in the blogosphere. She and Marc Bousquet, among others, would rather see unions take the place of kowtowing for tenure.
She writes:
The truth is that many of us don’t think tenure is a good system, and would prefer to be in a union. Tenure is, in fact, a more or less abusive system, and one that reproduces power hierarchies as they exist in society and in the university. Many of us who make it through the tenure process with the lifetime sinecure that is promised often do so because we are really good at repressing what actually happened. It is true that women, queers, and people of color are not always turned down anymore just because our presence makes others uncomfortable, or just because the kind of knowledge we produce is actually critical of what more senior people in the department do. But it is also true that the people who control tenure nearly always make us hurt for it, even when we get it. …
But each complicated tenure case … leaves endless circles of damage in its wake. The number of walking wounded out there is staggering. I traded some e-mail with someone this morning who told a familiar story: working in a department where so many people had been turned down for tenure, the senior people had forgotten how not to be abusive as a matter of daily practice. Not only does a tenure case gone bad hurt the person who has been denied, it creates havoc for supporters of that person. …
Who else is hurt by tenure? All the people who are friends, lovers, children, and companions of those who come up for tenure. People who get tenure are harmed by tenure, often because they have had to bow and scrape for so long before The Man and the women who are also The Man that they don’t know how to get back up again. Or they are so damaged by the process that they turn around and do the same thing to the next candidate coming up the pipeline.
LumpenProf, however, says tenure isn’t the problem. It may be one of academics’ last defenses against complete and utter exploitation, he argues:
I have been hurt by the lack of health care from my years as an adjunct. I have been hurt by the uncertainties of working as migrant, contingent labor in academia for more than a decade. I have been hurt by deans, provosts, and by some of my colleagues who put time and effort into delaying my start in a tenure-track line and in further delaying my final tenure decision for another decade. I have been hurt by decades of debts and low wages that I may never recover from. I have grudges, depression, anger, rage, and issues aplenty from my sojourn through the academic labor market. But the one thing that has NOT hurt me is tenure.
Tenure has put an end to these predations.
There are certainly problems with work in academia. But getting rid of tenure is not the solution. It’s like telling someone with a headache that decapitation will help. It may be brutally effective, but it’s not advice you want to take.
We have a very clear picture of what academic work without tenure looks like: contingent labor. …
On the other hand, Craig Smith over at FACE Talk suggests that academics have already hit bottom:
We have already arrived at the point where contingent faculty greatly outnumber full-time, tenure-eligible faculty and the fastest growing group of faculty are full-time faculty off the tenure track—all of whom have considerably less (typically no) job security or real academic-freedom protections. And, well, do I really need to rehash how horribly compensated most contingent faculty are?
Share your thoughts. Can tenure be saved or is it time to chuck the system? Before you weigh in, be sure to check out related posts by Oso Raro, Historiann, Citizen of Somewhere Else, and Professor Zero.
By Gabriela Montell | Posted on Friday March 28, 2008 | PermalinkComments
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i’ve had students yelling in class: u should be fired f*** u and daren’t complain about it. only a tenured prof could do that
— unknown Mar 27, 03:53 PM #
Thanks for the link and the Sparknotes version of the discussion! Here’s my response:
http://citizense.blogspot.com/2008/03/cease-fire-proposal-in-tenure-wars.html
— The Constructivist Mar 28, 04:02 AM #
All tenure does is protect the weakest candidates, who never have to do research or publish again. I would prefer a 5-year contract, with an automatic renewal following a satisfactory performance. Let’s get rid of the dead wood.
— Willard Bohn Mar 28, 04:27 AM #
I think something of a false dichotomy is being constructed here. Most Canadian universities (like the one where I work) have tenure AND a union. These are not mutually exclusive things. Perhaps these two things might even work better together?
— Spinky Mar 28, 08:33 AM #
Maybe there is a better solution than tenure, but it seems to promote the ability to speak one’s mind on natural science topics. This clearly serves society. Just look at the federal government scientists that don’t have a guaranteed freedom of expression, and who are often prevented from publicizing well-supported conclusions on politically controversial topics such as public health or environmental degradation. Imagine a world without tenure. Now imagine a North Carolina academic trying to publish something critical of tobacco use.
— J.D. Wells Mar 28, 08:48 AM #
I appreciate the link, but this summary doesn’t quite capture what I wrote, or meant.
The tenure system isn’t the gold standard of job security—police officers and kindergarden teachers often have better, fairer tenure, including workplace due process.
Unionized campuses do a lot to protect and reinforce the tenuring process. As someone else points out, it’s both/and, not either/or. In many circumstances, the best way to “save” the tenure system from managerial assault is to unionize.
For instance, it is unions that have begun to address the question of tenure and perma-temping: now that the overwhelming majority of faculty serve contingently, unions have begun to negotiate job security—a form of tenure—for their members serving contingently.
Nearly half of all tenure-track faculty are unionized. I think it’s fair to say that the unionism of the unionized half does a lot to protect the tenure rights of the non-unionized half.
— Marc Bousquet Mar 28, 10:53 AM #
Tenure can be a roadblock to bringing in more new talent. One has to wonder what purpose unions serve for the tenured. If unions protect academics’ rights, then there really might be no need for tenure. Considering that unlike corporations, public colleges & universities cannot go into debt and do not have huge cash reserves, I think, any budget shortfall would mean mass layoffs of non-tenured full-time faculty. Still, the non-tenured masses would be better served by a system that values continuous merit and a liberated hiring market. On the downside, this would mean that like corporate America, most academics over 50 would be downsized. On the upside, downsized academics with partial pensions or severance pay could find or create new jobs and contribute with their experience in the non-profit sector, government, or high school teaching.
— R Mar 28, 11:14 AM #
I’m an assistant professor in the humanities. I find it impossible to challenge deeply entrenched views in my discipline — about method, or about what’s important —- because when I do, I risk not getting published. Only after I get tenure I will be able to be freely critical and engaged without fear of being let go. This freedom seems to me crucial, and I’m not sure how a union would ensure it.
— M Mar 28, 01:11 PM #
In response to “M” (“I’m not sure how a union would ensure [the freedom to challenge deeply entrenched views in my discipline]”). I think you already know the answer: unions protect the rights of police officers and factory workers and janitors to be “freely critical” in their speech much more aggressively than the tenure system—which encourages humanities faculty to watch their mouths for ten years of graduate study and another seven as junior faculty.
At unionized campuses, the aggressive protections in grievance procedures provide ways for even junior faculty to speak their minds on institutional issues as well as on scholarly issues with reduced fear of retaliation.
It is actually some of the customary investment in disciplinary and, especially, campus administrative authorit that opens the tenure system to abuse by administrators or colleagues.
— Marc Bousquet Mar 28, 01:30 PM #
Two points in regards to tenure and unionizing. This comes from my experience as department rep for a faculty union and now in my third year as assistant prof. – I am curious why most calls to get rid of tenure come from tenured people. Would they be equally willing to give up tenure for a greater good? I find I ironical that the freedom that tenure grants is used to get rid of the system which provided the fredom in the first place. In order to seriously consider to get rid of tenure we need better evaluation systems in place to avoid abuse by administration. – one proposed measure is the faculty union. I was for two years unit rep at a Canadian U – what a reality check! The university hired a huge body of new and young faculty. The power struggles within the union – on the senior/junior and the discipline boundaries – left the junior people hanging in the wind. The union was more concerned about the retirement package for senior people than for adequate payment for junior, similarly disparity at other issues more important to junior than senior faculty. In short, junior did not get adequate representation. Now imagining, that tenure would have fallen away, there would have been few processes left in place to represent and protect junior faculty.
— JS Mar 28, 03:09 PM #
I’m all for tenure and unions together. That’s why I’d like to see my tenured colleagues at private institutions who are so against tenure organize and challenge Yeshiva, the weak Supreme Court decision responsible for the current limitation of faculty unions to public universities. Why advocate for the abolition of tenure w/o first putting something better in its place?
In response to R, NY has been dealing with bad budgets for a generation, and the first thing UUP always tries to get from all concerned is a no-layoffs pledge. But it’s up to individual university presidents to interpret—some do lay off nontenurable faculty. But more often what happens is that lines lost to retirement or people leaving for another job disappear, new searches are put on hold, new equipment purchases are put off, and other belt-tightening measures are put into place to make sure the classes still get covered.
I think the answer is more federal support for public higher ed and other means for improving the finances and growing the endowments in that sector. Tenure has little to nothing to do with that, IMHO.
— The Constructivist Mar 28, 03:42 PM #
I think some of JS’s remarks may have been garbled in pasting from another program. But I’m NOT suggesting getting rid of tenure NOR am I suggesting that unions are an “alternative.”
Unions guarantee tenure—not just to faculty, but also to groundskeepers.
But in a larger sense it IS “tenured people” calling for the end of tenure—in the form of tenured senior administrators. See Joel Trachtenberg’s recent exchange with me in which he promotes tenure-like job security for administrators one day, while the next day calling for more “flexibility” in getting rid of tenured faculty.
In another sense, JS, tenure ALREADY has “fallen away” for most faculty. The overwhelming majority of faculty serve contingently.
And no, unions aren’t perfect guarantors of workplace democracy. Any more than political democracies guarantee justice, or physicians guarantee perfect health. But imperfect doctoring isn’t an argument against health care, just an argument for working to improve it. Likewise for faculty democracy, and the institutions working for faculty democracy, such as unions. Unionism didn’t create the disciplinary struggles and the willingness of senior workers to sell out the young.
But, empirically, at unionized institutions there is much less wage disparity between disciplines, and, empirically, a reduced permatemping of younger faculty. Of course many unions have been complicit in permatemping—fortunately, the trend is away from that.
— Marc Bousquet Mar 28, 03:48 PM #
I have worked at a University that has a union agreement that requires the option of a tenure exam for anyone who has had 4 years of full time equivalent employment.
They can’t hire permanent temporary employees and so are forced to staff their departments properly.
The point is the adjunct problem is structural and the solution has to be structural, administrators need motivations to staff with full timers. Simply making rules does not work, you need to provide consequences, while not tying the arms of the administration. The Union did not forbid the university from hiring part-timers, it just made sure that temporary workers were that, and if they weren’t then it made the university treat them like like they weren’t temporary.
— steve Mar 29, 03:00 AM #
What the faculty lack (and what is helping to erode the academic freedom and tenure system) is collegiality.
No, not in the sense used by administrators (and faculty) to deny an outspoken faculty member tenure.
Real collegiality — back to its etymology. The “bound together”-ness that was the source of academic freedom and tenure in the first place.
Instead, too often the tenured take an “independent contractor” approach to their “job” (vs. profession). And that mentality is not eroded by the faculty unions, either.
Unionization simply means that everything is “bargained” — and that includes the academic freedom definition clause. (Ah yes, what is the dollar value of academic freedom…?)
As for the courts, Yeshiva only eliminates unionization without the permission of the administration in the privates. (Heck, AAUP specializes in this kind of union.)
And as for academic freedom in the publics, y’all been reading Waters v. Churchill and the recent Ceballos case and all? How the employer’s right to a peaceful workplace supercedes the public employees’ rights to free speech on matters of public concern? And that’s not the half of it….
As MB says above, unionization helps to protect the rights of the untenured. (Not that the faculty unions have given true due diligence to that effort, but nonetheless.)
The public’s response to all of this that is likely on the horizon is a call for governmental intervention: if we’re lucky, professional licensing (and discipline) as in other professions (medicine, etc.). If we’re unlucky: full-fledged regulated speech.
A real shame. Academia (higher ed, actually) was the last bastion of the medieval guild which fiercely protected its right to set and enforce standards for both its work and its workers without outside intervention. Now, the tenured faculty’s refusal to be true professionals has led to administrative and governmental hijackings of “assessment”, the proliferation of contingent labor systems — which the tenured even use to their advantage after retirement (as adjuncts) — and on and on.
Oh yes, and AAUP fiddles, while Rome burns….
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate Mar 29, 08:26 AM #
It’s somewhat ironic that some of the most educated people on the planet need organizations to protect their jobs. If you were actually providing a valuable service then market economics would provide you job security.
How about at-will employment? (like everyone else).
Yeah, yeah, I know… academics love to crow about “academic freedom” and how tenure grants you that. And without it, you’ll have to suffer like everyone else, poor you.
I do feel for the folks stuck in adjunct hell and believe tenure is partially responsible. There are tons of tenured faculty not really contributing much of anything. Universities need to spend money to support them — who are not producing anything new — and cannot hire new faculty as a result.
I think academia needs to take a hard look at itself. There’s a reason why the saying “it’s academic” exists. There’s a reason why the general public holds academics in contempt.
— J Mar 29, 12:14 PM #
15 is correct that the tenured have abused the tenure system in this nation and will pay the price.
However, it is not correct that tenure means a job for life no matter what. Academic tenure is the guarantee of due process and thereby the freedom to pursue the truth wherever it may lead.
Tenure and academic freedom are rooted in the “collegium” of the faculty who have the obligation to set and maintain the standards for academic work and academic workers.
The faculty have, by and large, abandoned the solemn duty to police themselves — to confront and eliminate the “dead wood” among their number, to “assess” their work, individually and collectively, etc.
And administrations have been equally cowardly in failing to require the faculty to do so (in part because of mutual unspoken agreement on such matters as the “usefulness” of an expanding contingent labor force in teaching, granting faculty “release time” from the classroom, etc.).
So, as the tenured faculty act more and more like “independent contractors” vis a vis the administration (negotiating personal perqs, suppressing dissent in return for merit pay, etc.), and abandon the duties of their “collegium” — they are indeed “taking down” the American college with their solipsism.
— Anti-hypocrisy Advocate Mar 29, 07:21 PM #
So, really? Tenure doesn’t guarantee a job for life? Well, then whomever designed tenure had a hillarious misunderstanding of human nature — because in effect, tenure means a job for life.
Don’t get me wrong — academics are delightful people in small numbers, they are intelligent, well-educated, interesting, polite. But still, there is something pathetic about how hard-up academics are for jobs. And even when they do get jobs, they get paid like crap (compared to their private-industry peers) and have go through hell to get it.
There’s something rotten when (private school) tuitions increase by so much every year, but academic job growth is zero. Where’s the money going? Layers of administration?
Tenure is fundamentally cruel on another level — the 7 years you must work your behind off are typically the prime child-rearing years of your life. What can be more sexist for women than a job that essentially requires you to choose between children or keeping your job? (Sure, that’s true to some extent with every job, but the situation is more severe because of tenure I think).
What I’ve observed first-hand with tenure is that after a certain amount of time, faculty stop applying for grants, stopping advising graduate students, essentially stop research, and just come in to teach their courses. At this point, they are fairly senior, so they’ve acquired a large office and now unused lab space.
And perhaps when it comes time for the department to change directions? Nope. Try getting these tenured faculty to branch into new areas and teach something new. The result is many departments are stuck about 20 years in the past. (Then of course, the school decides to shut down the department because it is no longer useful, and everyone loses their jobs — so much for job security!).
Academia needs to get off its high horse. Academia likes to think itself above the rest of the world. Providing an “escape from capitalism” or be “the conscious of capitalism”. (question: how can academics be the conscious of capitalism if they’ve never really participated in it?). In reality, there’s a foul stench emenating from the ivory tower, and that stench is tenure.
— J Mar 30, 09:19 AM #
Well, 17 has clearly described the “dead wood” tenured of academe — who engage in “hazing” rituals of younger colleagues.
And those “dead wood”/deadbeat tenured faculty only have a job for life because neither the faculty nor the adminstration have the guts to enforce peer review —- HONEST peer review — followed by discipline and/or where appropriate, removal.
Here’s a revealing excerpt from a debate between Cary Nelson (incumbent AAUP President) and David Horowitz (proponent of the Academic Bill of Rights):
CARY NELSON:
“At my own institution, one technique is to sometimes punish people in terms of their salaries. We had a physics professor who wasn’t functioning well. We gave him no salary increase for 20 years by the end of which he was earning less than teaching assistants in his department. Perhaps that should have been the punishment for Ward Churchill.
There are lots of things that universities can do if they want to, for if they want to behave responsibly they have systems in place to deal with ethical violations. That’s why I don’t see the need for external surveillance and I don’t see the need for a system different than the one that we have now.
DAVID HOROWITZ: I think there are a lot of people in the television audience going Huh? You might reexamine tenure policies that will keep an incompetent professor in the classroom and on the faculty for 20 years at taxpayer expense, because Professor Nelson is teaching at a taxpayer-funded university”
(http://www.cary-nelson.org/nelson/horowitz-nelson-debate-2.html).
There is indeed a foul stench emanating from the ivory tower — and the stench is from the unprofessional among tenured faculty who, like the fabled emperor, wear no clothes….
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate Mar 30, 02:21 PM #
Am I just incredibly lucky? I was junior faculty at an R1 and they didn’t require major service and also made sure we had reasonable teaching assignments, so we could publish enough to meet rising standards. That meant senior faculty was making things function so that junior faculty could develop, and in
some cases it meant their research programs took a hit so that we could develop ours. I don’t call that dead wood, I call it highly collegial.
My current proposed alternative is to be careful in hiring and hire everyone to tenure in the first place! :-)
Why: because I am so old fashioned. I think faculty plus library plus students equals university.
— Professor Zero Mar 30, 09:08 PM #
Profacero, this happens mostly off the R1 track, where departments are generally understaffed and need people to step up from day 1. They hire people they expect to tenure. And most get it, unless they leave before-hand (either academia, or for a job with a smaller teaching load). It’s only at a very tiny proportion of the 4000+ colleges and universities that the tenure process is dysfunctional.
As for the supposed glut of dead wood in academia, I challenge J and AHA to visit my department and identify the tenured people who should be fired. (Sorry that we don’t have any lab space to be wasting at taxpayer expense.) Identifying deadwood from afar is about as productive by judging the state of the English profession by titles at the MLA convention, the prevalence of classic literature in curricula by titles in the course catalog, and the legitimacy of a judgment by “in my personal experience.” Which is to say that it happens all the time, even in comment boxes.
But hey, turn it into a consulting business and you all can hit the road with your Chicken Little act!
— The Constructivist Mar 30, 10:04 PM #
One point that should be mentioned when talking about abolishing tenure, is that it’s never going to happen, at least at top schools or schools that aspire to be top schools.
Places such as Princeton, MIT, UC Berkeley, etc.. have no reason to abolish tenure, as it’s a system that served them well, making them the top universities in the world. Why take a chance that you’d ruin something that works? Also, it’s almost a certainty that any university that abolishes tenure unilaterally will place itself at a huge disadvantage in recruiting talented faculty, no matter how much salaries are raised to compensate. (After all, most academics do not place the highest priority on maximizing income.) The same considerations will ripple down to any school that has academic ambitions.
Tenure may be an imperfect system, but I’m not sure what is a good replacement. Moreover, it’s not without parallels with other systems in the so-called “free market” such as partnership for lawyers. Generally the U.S. system of higher education is very good, (especially considered that on average U.S. elementary and high schools are not so good) and so any suggestion for radical changes should be treated with suspicion.
— Scientist Mar 30, 11:22 PM #
Both David Horowitz and I (and likely a few other commentators here) obviously take the incumbent president of the AAUP at his word.
As for the rate of tenure in SUNY and colleges elsewhere, well, I do not believe the stats support the allegations in 20 that “most get it.” Such statements are generally contradicted by the large numbers of unemployed PhDs in this nation who have been scarred by a failed tenure process. And SUNY has been particulary noteworthy for its revolving door for minority faculty.
Every campus has its open secrets as to where the “dead wood” are. If the faculty won’t tell you, surely an adminstrator (or even some students) would be happy to oblige. Hint: they rarely apply for merit raises….
BTW Who said firing was the preferred alternative? Have we not learned from the Enlightenment about the “perfectibility of man”?
Besides, just how many tenure-tracks are there in English Departments these days (20’s field) where the majority of the writing classes are usually staffed by contingent labor in the first place.
In fact, New York State is currently being bombarded by a television ad from the SUNY faculty union begging for more full-time staff. Why is that?
Paid consulting, yes, yes, been there, done that — and served as an external accreditation evaluator, etc.
The sky isn’t falling in academe — the bottom is falling through the cracks.
AHA-Erlebnis
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate Mar 30, 11:35 PM #
As someone who has earned tenure twice and enjoyed its protections, I have some great reservations about some of its outcomes, especially ones I have noticed in recent years. Some younger colleagues have shocked me and others right after getting tenure by saying, “Now that I have tenure, I can speak my mind,” or making similar comments. These revelations made me distrust them, for good reason. Also, tenure has certainly protected some colleagues who “packed it in” right after getting tenure, some doing so in blatant ways. At the same time, however, I and others have been “saved” by tenure from the consequences of taking non-PC stands. In short, it’s a mixed bad.
— J. Edward Mar 31, 11:48 AM #
I have tenure, and I do realize that my suggesting that it be examined and revised (perhaps with five-year continuing contracts) is a little like using protections of the First Amendment to argue for the abolition or curtailing of the First Amendment: It may seen a bit nuts, but some academicians actually do it and perhaps it has a certain internal logic.
— J. Edward Mar 31, 11:58 AM #
I was just denied tenure, largely because of negative student evaluations (tests too hard, too much work, a need more more fun activities). I would have been very happy to spend my academic career at that university, but I have suddenly been given a second chance. A second chance to find a “fit” where students want to learn, where my colleagues support my efforts to challenge students, where being a contributing member of the university community is welcomed. You know, those things that you aren’t told during interviews but come to learn over time.
My denial has forced me to not take the easy route, to seek greater personal challenges, and I haven’t been this free since I started at my current university six years ago.
The only thing better than having tenure is having been turned down. My ego will take a hit, but I was able to salvage my soul. I’ll also find a better job, something I probably wouldn’t have done if I had been awarded tenure.
— DrMink Mar 31, 12:11 PM #
Re: 15 and 17.
I am a great fan of free markets, but they work best in a liquid situation where there are a lot of buyers and sellers in the same place. That works great for things you can put in a truck and move around but it works less well for people.
Oh, sometimes it can work well. In the heyday of Silicon Valley, engineers knew that there were probably a half-dozen potential employers within commuting distance at any moment. Semiconductor plants spotted the entire region near San Jose. There was a liquid market for both employers and employees. The same is true for many jobs.
However, it is emphatically not true for academia. I’m lucky to have two potential employers within commuting distance. But then, the other one isn’t advertizing a job this year, so they don’t really count. Moving to another University would be expensive in lots of personal senses: children have friends, my spouse works, we’ve been here for 5 years and know some people in the community. So, it’s not at all a liquid market from my point of view.
In a sense, the market for academics/jobs is much the same as the current market for mortgage-backed securities: Creaky. It is emphatically not what people base their mental images of a smoothly functioning free market on.
So, unfortunately, given the current geographic distribution of universities, hiring cannot be a symmetric process. Really, it’s more like the real-estate market than buying shoes. Each property is a one-of-a-kind unique item, they’re hard to compare, they only come on the market a few at a time, and you’ll never buy another house from the same seller.
We all know how weird real-estate markets can be.
— variable Apr 6, 07:22 AM #
“I think the answer is more federal support for public higher ed and other means for improving the finances and growing the endowments in that sector. Tenure has little to nothing to do with that, IMHO.”
—The Constructivist, above.
This, I think, really gets to the meat of the matter. Also, I appreciate the comments on collegiality in comment 14.
— Leslie Bary Apr 13, 08:44 PM #