Crisis on Campus_ A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities - Mark C. Taylor [74]
Of all the suggestions advanced in this book, the abolition of tenure is the most controversial among academics. To get a sense of the impact of tenure, conduct a thought experiment. Imagine that a new company is being formed and you have been hired as the CEO. The board of directors says to you, “We want this venture to be as successful as possible. Pay employees whatever the market demands. Go out and find the very best and brightest people and hire them as quickly as possible. You have complete freedom and our full backing to assemble your team.” Would you give any person, no matter how talented he or she is, a contract granting lifetime employment with no possibility of dismissal regardless of performance? If you answer yes, your company will fail and you will soon find yourself without a job. And yet, this is exactly what the policy of tenure does. After a six-year trial period, candidates are evaluated by their departments and often a panel of their peers, which recommends to the administration whether or not the person should be granted tenure. If the decision is negative, the faculty member must leave the institution within one year. If it is positive, the person is granted tenure and usually promoted to the rank of associate professor. Four to six years later there is a review for promotion to full professor. Once tenure is granted, there is no possibility of dismissal except in cases of egregious ethical transgression or criminal activity.
The traditional defense of tenure is academic freedom. In the absence of tenure, the argument goes, professors would not be free to express controversial ideas, new ideas that question conventional wisdom, without fear of dismissal. But on the basis of my experience, this argument is completely without merit—in forty years of teaching, I cannot think of a single person who was more willing to express his or her views after tenure than before. Less noble motives actually lie behind the impassioned defense of tenure. Further, tenure more often reinforces the status quo than encourages new ideas.
The practice of tenure was introduced to American higher education in 1915 by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and was reaffirmed in the “1940 Statement of Academic Freedom and Tenure,” which remains the accepted norm governing colleges and universities. If one reads this document carefully, it becomes clear that the justification for tenure is not as pure as its defenders claim.
Tenure is a means to certain ends; specifically: (1) freedom of teaching and research and of extramural activities, and (2) a sufficient degree of economic security to make the profession attractive to men and women of ability. Freedom and economic security, hence, tenure, are indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society.
The two justifications for tenure, academic freedom and economic security, are not even weighted equally. Elsewhere in the 1940 document, the AAUP insists that all faculty members, tenured and untenured alike, should be granted academic freedom, making clear that tenure is hardly a prerequisite for academic freedom. Proponents of tenure never explain why the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment, which is good enough for everybody else, is not adequate for them.
Tenure is not primarily about academic freedom; it’s about job security and economic well-being. Why should tenured professors