Tenure & Academic Excellence, by L. L. Carroll, ACADEME, Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors, May-June 2000, pp. 22-25.

Summarized by J. T. P. Yao, 6/8/00

"Defenders of tenure have traditionally focused on its ability to protect academic freedom. … To be effective, the work of the university - the objective discovery and dissemination of knowledge - must be protected from outside influence. By vesting the faculty with wide autonomy in pedagogy, research, and institutional governance, tenure serves this function. …"

"… In the United States, the recent trend toward accountability - which is the chief characteristic of what I call the 'managerial university' - appears to result from a period of weakness. … In the managerial university, top-down control, short-term contracts, and limits on faculty governance effectively curb the scope of faculty research and the range of faculty professionalism. … One way in which the managerial university erodes educational quality is by driving away talented faculty. …"

"Managerial universities weaken tenure and erode faculty autonomy in several ways: one of the most important is post-tenure review. Under post-tenure review, faculty members may not feel free to undertake lengthy projects that cannot be completed in time for a periodic evaluation. And they may not even be free to choose the venue for publishing their work, given that some institutions now deem only certain kinds of scholarly publications acceptable. …"

"Another feature of the managerial university is excessive use of adjunct or multiyear contracts. A university that views its faculty as short-term or part-time employees, gives them little or no say in governance, and subjects them to continuous outcome checks blunts its competitive edge by encouraging timidity and conformity among its faculty. …"

"Constant turnover robs programs of stability and direction, as a parade of short-term faculty members with different academic backgrounds alters course selection and contents. It also damages the relationship between faculty members and students that is critical to the quality of higher education. …"

"… The Faculty Work Project of the Associated New American Colleges recently conducted a national study with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The study found that faculty members work an average of 53.6 hours a week, with 34 of these hours devoted to student-connected activities (teaching, advising, and the like), 10 to research and 9 to institutional service."

"Indeed, the shoe is often on the other foot: it is often not faculty members who fail in their obligations to their institutions, but the institutions that fail in their responsibilities to the faculty. … Managerial universities lacking in tenure do not achieve excellence; instead, they condemn themselves to passivity and susceptibility to fads. The direction of the managerial university does not come from faculty who create their fields through independent research and training of the next generation of scholars. On the contrary, these universities must follow the trends set by the leading universities, whose tenured faculty members perform this vital work."

"The weakening of tenure also threatens the quality of research. Good research requires much time and some risk taking. Obsessive checks on outcomes will favor small, safe projects with predictable results over the daring, conceptually complex projects that have produced cutting-edge research in many fields. …"

"Some people argue that tenure is unnecessary because courts protect free speech. … Courts are often unfamiliar with the academic world and may not make decisions appropriate to it. Further, faculty who have been dismissed from one institution will hesitate to pursue legal remedies that could jeopardize future job prospects, and finally, the legal process is costly, time-consuming, and uncertain in its outcome."

"To protect the traditional excellence of the American academic system, faculty members must fight to preserve academic freedom, the professional status of the faculty, and the faculty role in university governance. Doing so means safeguarding tenure. The tenure system is like democracy: it is not perfect, but it is light years ahead of any alternative."

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