Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.
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In the 19th century, university professors largely served at the pleasure of the board of trustees of the university. Sometimes, major donors could successfully remove professors or prohibit the hiring of certain individuals; nonetheless, a de facto tenure system existed. Usually professors were only fired for interfering with the religious principles of a college, and most boards were reluctant to discipline professors. The courts rarely intervened in dismissals.
In one debate of the Cornell Board of Trustees, in the 1870s, a businessman trustee argued against the prevailing system of de facto tenure, but lost the argument. Despite the power retained in the board, academic freedom prevailed. Another example is the 1894 case of Richard Ely, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor who advocated labor strikes and labor law reform. Though the Wisconsin legislature and business interests pressed for his dismissal, the board of trustees of the university passed a resolution committing itself to academic freedom, and to retaining him (without tenure):
"In all lines of academic investigation it is of the utmost importance that the investigator should be absolutely free to follow the indications of truth wherever they may lead. Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere we believe the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found."[1]
The notorious case of the dismissal of G. B. Halsted by the University of Texas in 1903 after nineteen years of service may have accelerated the adoption of the tenure concept.
In 1900, the presidents of Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago each made clear that no donor could any longer dictate faculty decisions; such a donor’s contribution would be unwelcome. In 1915, this was followed by the American Association of University Professors' (AAUP) declaration of principles—the traditional justification for academic freedom and tenure.
The AAUP's declaration of principles recommended that:
While the AAUP pushed reform, tenure battles were a campus non-issue. In 1910, a survey of 22 universities showed that most professors held their positions with "presumptive permanence". At a third of colleges, assistant professor appointments were considered permanent, while at most colleges multi-year appointments were subject to renewal. Only at one university did a governing board ratify a president’s decisions on granting tenure. Finally, there were approximately 20 complaints filed in 1928 with the AAUP, and only one merited investigation. Colleges slowly adopted the AAUP’s resolution; de facto tenure reigned; usually reappointments were permanent.
Tenure is also offered in many states to public schoolteachers. Louisiana, under state education superintendent T. H. Harris, led the move to establish a teacher protection policy in the 1930s because of past political considerations in hiring and dismissal of educators.
In 1940, the AAUP recommended that the academic tenure probationary period be seven years—still the current norm. It also suggested that a tenured professor could not be dismissed without adequate cause, except "under extraordinary circumstances, because of financial emergencies." Also, the statement recommended that the professor be given the written reasons for dismissal and an opportunity to be heard in self-defense. Another purpose of the academic tenure probationary period was raising the performance standards of the faculty by pressing new professors to perform to the standard of the school's established faculty.
The most significant adoption of academic tenure occurred after 1945, when the influx of returning GIs returning to school led to quickly expanding universities with severe professorial faculty shortages. These shortages dogged the Academy for ten years, and that is when the majority of universities started offering formal tenure as a side benefit. The rate of tenure (percent of tenured university faculty) increased to 52 percent. In fact, the demand for professors was so high in the 1950s that the American Council of Learned Societies held a conference in Cuba noting the too-few doctoral candidates to fill positions in English departments. During the McCarthy era, loyalty oaths were required of many state employees, and neither formal academic tenure nor the Constitutional principles of freedom of speech and association were protection from dismissal. Some professors were dismissed for their political affiliations, but of these, some likely were veiled dismissals for professional incompetence. During the 1960s, many professors supported the anti-war movement against the war with Vietnam, and more than 20 state legislatures passed resolutions calling for specific professorial dismissals and a change to the academic tenure system.
Two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases changed tenure in 1972: (i) Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 US 564; and (ii) Perry v. Sindermann, 408 US 593. These two cases held that a professor’s claim to entitlement must be more than a subjective expectancy of continued employment. Rather, there must be a contractual relationship or a reference in a contract to a specific tenure policy or agreement. Further, the court held that a tenured professor who is discharged from a public college has been deprived of a property interest, and so due process applies, requiring certain procedural safeguards (the right to personally appear in a hearing, the right to examine evidence and respond to accusations, the right to have advisory counsel).
Later cases specified other bases for dismissal: (i) if a professor’s conduct were incompatible with his duties (Trotman v. Bd. of Trustees of Lincoln Univ., 635 F.2d 216 (2d Cir.1980)); (ii) if the discharge decision is based on an objective rule (Johnson v. Bd. of Regents of U. Wisc. Sys., 377 F. Supp 277, (W.D. Wisc. 1974)). After these cases were judged, the number of reported cases in the matter of academic tenure increased fourfold: from 36 cases filed during the decade 1965–1975, to 81 cases filed during the lustrum 1980–1985.
During the 1980s there were no notable tenure battles, but three were outstanding in the 1990s. In 1995, the Florida Board of Regents tried to re-evaluate academic tenure, but managed only to institute a weak, post-tenure performance review. Likewise, in 1996 the Arizona Board of Regents attempted to re-evaluate tenure, fearing that few full-time professors actually taught university undergraduate students, mainly because the processes of achieving academic tenure underweighted teaching. However, faculty and administrators defended themselves and the board of trustees dropped its review. Finally, the University of Minnesota Regents tried from 1995 to 1996 to enact 13 proposals, including these policy changes: to allow the regents to cut faculty base- salaries for reasons other than a university financial emergency, and included poor performance, and firing tenured professors if their programs were eliminated or restructured and the university was unable to retrain or reassign them. In the Minnesota system, 87 percent of university faculty were either tenured or on the tenure track, and the professors vehemently defended themselves. Eventually, the president of the system opposed these changes, and weakened a compromise plan by the Dean of the law school that failed. The board chairman resigned later that year.
The period since 1972 has seen a steady decline in the percentage of college and university teaching positions in the US that are either tenured or tenure-track. United States Department of Education statistics put the combined tenured/tenure-track rate at 56% for 1975, 46.8% for 1989, and 31.9% for 2005. That is to say, by the year 2005, 68.1% of US college teachers were neither tenured nor eligible for tenure; a full 48% of teachers that year were part-time employees.
Under the tenure systems adopted as internal policy by many universities and colleges, especially in the United States and Canada, tenure is associated with more senior job titles such as Professor and Associate Professor. A junior professor will not be promoted to such a tenured position without meeting the goals of the institution, often (though not always including) demonstrating a strong record of published research, teaching, and administrative service, with emphasis different across institutions (though often focused on research in universities). Typical systems (such as the Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure)[2] allow only a limited period to establish such a record, by limiting the number of years that any employee can hold a junior title such as Assistant Professor. (An institution may also offer other academic titles that are not time-limited, such as Lecturer, Adjunct Professor, or Research Professor, but these positions do not carry the possibility of tenure and are said to be "off the tenure track.")
Academic tenure is primarily intended to guarantee the right to academic freedom: it protects teachers and researchers when they dissent from prevailing opinion, openly disagree with authorities of any sort, or spend time on unfashionable topics. Thus academic tenure is similar to the lifetime tenure that protects some judges from external pressure. Without job security, the scholarly community as a whole might favor "safe" lines of inquiry. The intent of tenure is to allow original ideas to be more likely to arise, by giving scholars the intellectual autonomy to investigate the problems and solutions about which they are most passionate, and to report their honest conclusions.[3] In economies where higher education is provided by the private sector, tenure also has the effect of helping to ensure the integrity of the grading system. Without tenure, professors could be pressured by administrators to issue higher grades for attracting and keeping a greater number of students.
Universities also have economic rationales for adopting tenure systems. First, job security and the accompanying autonomy are significant employee benefits; without them, universities might have to pay higher salaries or take other measures to attract and retain talented or well-known scholars. Second, junior faculty are driven to establish themselves by the high stakes of the tenure decision (i.e., lifetime tenure vs. job loss), arguably helping to create a culture of excellence within the university. Finally, tenured faculty may be more likely to invest time in improving the universities where they expect to remain for life; they may also be more willing to hire, mentor and promote talented junior colleagues who could otherwise threaten their positions. Many of these rationales resemble those for senior partner positions in law and accounting firms.
One cost of a tenure system is that some tenured professors may not use their freedom for the common good. Tenure has been criticized for allowing senior professors to become unproductive, shoddy, or irrelevant. Universities themselves bear this risk: they pay dearly whenever they guarantee lifetime employment to an individual who proves unworthy of it. Universities therefore exercise great care in offering tenured positions, first requiring an intensive formal review of the candidate's record of research, teaching, and service. This review typically takes several months and may include the solicitation of confidential letters of assessment from highly regarded scholars in the candidate's research area. Some colleges and universities also solicit letters from students about the candidate's teaching. A tenured position is offered only if the tenure-granting groups on campus (often a mixture of both senior faculty and senior administrators) judge that the candidate is likely to remain a productive scholar and teacher for life.
In North American universities and colleges, the tenure track has long been a defining feature of employment. However, it is becoming less than universal.[4][5] In North American universities, positions that carry tenure, or the opportunity to attain tenure, have grown more slowly than non-tenure-track positions, leading to a large "academic underclass".[6] For example, most U.S. universities currently supplement the work of tenured professors with the services of non-tenured adjunct professors, academics who teach classes for lower wages and fewer employment benefits under relatively short-term contracts.
For these, and other reasons, academic tenure was officially restructured in public universities in the United Kingdom by the Thatcher government in the 1980s. It is no longer offered in Australia, New Zealand and in most of Europe. Note that most European university systems do not allow any teaching by young researchers, postgraduates, post doctoral fellows, or residents. This is especially the case in Germany, where practice in universities (but not advanced technical colleges) often differs from theory. In principle, teaching duties in German universities are restricted to tenured faculty and a few non-tenured staff members paid for research and teaching. In reality, much teaching is done by non-tenured research students and adjunct faculty. In France, tenure is granted early in academic ranks as well as to CNRS and other researchers. In Italy tenure is granted in early academic ranks as well as to Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche researchers.
Outside the United States and Canada, it is still common to offer a long contract to candidates who pass a less stringent review or confirmation, but with somewhat less job security than in lifetime tenure systems. Moreover, tenure is under attack in state universities in the United States. New Zealand offers "Confirmation" which is similar in effect to tenure, except that all university lecturers in New Zealand have a duty, enshrined in law, to act as a critic and conscience of society, whether their position is permanent or not.
Tenure can only be revoked for cause, normally only following severe misconduct by the professor. Revocation is usually a lengthy and tedious procedure.
In 1994, a study in The Chronicle of Higher Education found that "about 50 tenured professors [in the US] are dismissed each year for cause."[7] A study in the Wall Street Journal published January 10, 2005 estimated that 50 to 75 tenured professors (out of about 280,000) lose their tenure each year.
While tenure protects the occupant of an academic position, it does not protect against the elimination of that position. For example, a university that is under financial stress may take the drastic step of eliminating or downsizing some departments.
See also the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) website.[8]
The AAUP (American Association of University Professors) has handled hundreds of cases where it alleges that tenure candidates were treated unfairly. The AAUP has censured many major and minor universities and colleges for such alleged tenure abuses.[9][10]
Tenure at many universities depends solely on research publications and research grants although the universities' official policies are that tenure depends on research, teaching and service.[11] Even articles in refereed teaching journals and teaching grants may not count towards tenure at such universities.
At some universities the department chairperson sends forward the department recommendation on tenure. There have been cases, such as one case at The University of Texas at San Antonio (2008), where the faculty voted unanimously to tenure an individual but the chairperson sent forward a recommendation not to grant tenure despite the faculty support.
Tenure decisions can result in fierce political battles. In one tenure battle at Indiana University, an untenured professor was accused of threatening violence against those who opposed his promotion, his wife briefly went on a hunger strike, and many called for the entire department to be disbanded.[12] In another instance in February 2010, Dr. Amy Bishop with the University of Alabama at Huntsville reportedly shot and killed colleagues after losing her appeal for tenure.[13]
Since the 1970s[14] philosopher John Searle has called for major changes to tenure systems, calling the practice "without adequate justification." Searle suggests that to reduce publish or perish pressures that can hamper their classroom teaching, capable professors be given tenure much sooner than the standard four-to-six years. However, Searle also argued that tenured professors be reviewed every seven years to help eliminate "incompetent" teachers who can otherwise find refuge in the tenure system.
It has also been suggested that tenure may have the effect of diminishing political and academic freedom among those seeking it - that they must appear to conform to the political or academic views of the field or the institution where they seek tenure. For example, in The Trouble with Physics, the theoretical physicist, Lee Smolin says "... it is practically career suicide for young theoretical physicists not to join the field of string theory. ...". It is certainly possible to view the tenure track as a long-term demonstration of the candidate's political and academic conformity. Patrick J. Michaels, a controversial part-time research professor at the University of Virginia, wrote: "...tenure has had the exact opposite effect as to its stated goal of diversifying free expression. Instead, it stifles free speech in the formative years of a scientist's academic career, and all but requires a track record in support of paradigms that might have outgrown their usefulness."[15]
Other criticisms include the publish or perish pressures creating trivial junk research, a caste system treating those without tenure poorly, and indolence after having achieved tenure. The tenured faculty can resist necessary reforms by administrators who they generally outlast. The tenured faculty also usually can control appointments which contributes to political correctness and groupthink. [16]
As more academics publish research in Internet and multimedia formats, organizations such as the American Council of Learned Societies and Modern Language Association have recommended changes to promotion and tenure criteria, and some university departments have made such changes to reflect the increasing importance of networked scholarship.[17]
After the Ward Churchill controversy, a poll by the American Association of University Professors found that 82 percent of Americans wanted to "modify or eliminate tenure". Another poll found that 65% believed that "non-tenured professors as more motivated to do a good job in the classroom".[18]