Big science: Academic tenure

The notion of academic tenure for professors at American universities came about in the early 1900s, spearheaded by the foundation of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 1915. At the time, a number of incidents had occurred in which professors were fired because their views did not line up with those of the university trustees or more established faculty. The event that perhaps sparked the foundation of the AAUP was the forced resignation of economist and sociologist Edward Ross from Stanford University. University co-founder and trustee Jane Stanford disapproved of Ross’s radical views on eugenics, race and Asian-American immigration, pressuring his eventual leave from the university.

In their 1940 “Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” the AAUP outlined a set of academic rights that teachers should be entitled to and a potential outline of a tenure process for professors, which have since been adopted by nearly every university in America. The path towards becoming a tenured professor in the United States has become an arduous process that typically consists of a six-to-seven-year probationary period, during which newly minted assistant professors must demonstrate their capacity to publish papers, acquire grants and teach students. Once their performance has been deemed acceptable by more highly established faculty, they will join their ranks and essentially secure a lifetime job guarantee.

Especially in recent years, a number of people have spoken out on negative effects of tenure. Foremost, tenure can breed a sense of complacency. Once a professor is tenured, it becomes much more difficult for him/her to be let go, which is the very intent of tenure. However, some professors abuse this lenience by slacking off their responsibilities, and there is often very little action a school can take. A number of possible solutions have been suggested; most notably, Jim Wetherbe and others propose a multi-year rolling contract following the normal probationary period for new professors. In this scenario, professors would be re-evaluated every several years, keeping them in line throughout their term. But this alternative would severely hurt those who have controversial opinions or clash with administrators, making it difficult to speak out with dissenting viewpoints.

Other criticisms of tenure include the point of the probationary period. During this time, professors are under pressure to publish papers and obtain grants quickly, which can lead to focusing on trivial research projects that are bound to be successful, but may not have any significant conclusions. Furthermore, professors must be able to play politics and keep their views aligned with the current administration, muting any contrasting opinions they may hold. Therefore, many claim that the tenure process rewards those who “fit the mold” and don’t think or reach outside the status quo. However, without the tenure process altogether, professors would never be able to get to a point at which they didn’t have to worry about these issues; fundamentally, they would persist in a constant “probationary period,” which is objectively worse than a simply temporary one.

Overall, we can boil down the issues as such: in the big picture, professors, as a collective group of people, at large institutions like Duke essentially have two objectives: first, to conduct research and develop new ideas towards extending humanity’s knowledge and ability to think; and second, to train, teach and prepare students for whatever goal they plan to pursue following graduation.

The tenure process helps this first objective. A professor with tenure has the freedom to incite debate by raising controversial opinions without fear of retaliation, allowing universities to maintain a healthy atmosphere of free discussion and make people consider things they may never have thought about otherwise. A professor with tenure has the freedom to dive into risky research projects that may not have any short-term gains, without the pressure of immediate publication or success. Tenure allows the best thinkers to reach their potential, and without it, they would be intellectually stifled into simply conventional points of view or non-innovative, inconsequential research.

However, the second objective is at odds with the tenure process. There has been evidence showing that students learn worse from tenured professors than those who aren’t. As mentioned above, the job security offered by tenure can render professors, especially those who are primarily interested in doing research, indifferent to their teaching responsibilities. In this regard, it would be ideal for schools to have checks in place to ensure the quality of teaching remains high.

The question over whether schools should offer tenure to professors lies in the main priority of the school. If administrators feel that fostering critical thinking and top research is the more important aim, then tenure is absolutely necessary to offer tenure. In contrast, if successfully guiding students through the curricula of their respective major is more important, it may be beneficial to offer professors multi-year contracts to protect the integrity of the students’ training. At this point in time, tenure is too deeply ingrained within the root of academia to be completely removed from American universities. But reforms are possible, if not likely, to make the process less black and white.