Tenure at HBCUs - historically Black colleges and universities

Black Issues in Higher Education, Oct 16, 1997 by Cheryl D. Fields

Tenure is as valued at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) as it is at traditionally White institutions (TWIs). Given the current political and economic climate, however, faculty at HBCUs may ultimately be in greater danger of losing their tenure privileges than scholars at other institutions.

The main factor threatening tenure at HBCUs is money. Tenured faculty is a big ticket item on any institutional budget. For HBCUs that are financially strapped, the number of tenure appointments that can be granted is sometimes limited by cost. This explains, in part, why HBCUs have a higher proportion of part-time and non-tenured faculty than do other institutions.

"With the economic constraints, one of the primary targets is tenured faculty and tenured faculty positions," says Jonathan Alger, spokesperson for the American Association of University Professors. "People say how do we cut costs? Non-tenure track positions are often the answer."

Alger views the increasing financial pressure on HBCUs as a direct threat to tenure at these institutions, particularly at the public HBCUs.

"In many states, HBCUs have always been tinder funded, relative to other institutions," he says. "So when budget cuts are necessary, the state legislators look at [which] institutions are not performing up to national standards and the temptation is to go after HBCUs because their programs may not be [perceived] as prestigious or [as] competitive as other institutions. UDC [University of the District of Columbia] is a prime example of that."

According to Sam Carcione, president of the UDC Faculty Association, the university's tenure policy is nominal. Instead, UDC faculty are protected by a "just cause" clause in their employment contracts. Unfortunately, that clause had little affect on sparing jobs in the current fiscal crisis at UDC.

"People have a misconception of what tenure gives you," Carcione says. "It gives you the right to job security except if they can show just cause for removing you. But all that goes out the window in a financial exigency situation....

"I think, frankly, the idea [behind tenure] is to protect people from arbitrary dismissal," he adds. "Otherwise you do not have academic freedom, and if the academy gives up academic freedom, it ceases to be an academy."

Since HBCUs are subject to greater public scrutiny, Carcione feels there is even more reason for them to retain tenure.

Generally, HBCUs have a higher percentage of Black faculty - tenured and non-tenured than do other institutions. According to the most recently published National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, HBCUs employ roughly 13,406 full time faculty members, 7,777 of whom are African American; 3,520 of these are Black women. Among the Black scholars working full-time at HBCUs, nearly one in five (1,612), has the rank of professor.

There is a perception among some Black scholars that achieving tenure at an HBCU is actually more difficult than getting it at a TWI.

"It has been my experience, from talking to people who've worked at other HBCUs, that they feel [HBCUs] are pretty heavy handed, and that getting tenure is far more difficult than it should be, with far more people being denied than should be," Carcione says.

One reason this perception of the HBCU tenure process exists is that even though these institutions grant tenure to a higher percentage of African American scholars, they also deny tenure to a greater number of Black scholars than do most other institutions.

"It is difficult now to determine if there is a [national] trend toward the abolition of tenure," says Dr. Wendel Rayburn, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and the former president of Lincoln University. "I don't know of any HBCUs that are grappling with this issue. From my experience HBCUs hold tenure very dearly, because it is added security."

However, Ansley Abraham of the Southern Regional Education Board believes it is only a matter of time before most public, and many private, HBCUs will be forced to re-examine their tenure policies.

"The question is whether anyone should be given lifetime guaranteed jobs," Abraham says, "especially at a time when legislators are asking for more accountability out of higher education. We do [after all] have just plain old employment laws that protect people. The academic freedom question, however, is a very real dilemma."

Dr. Claudie Mackey, faculty senate chair at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina, is not as concerned about whether tenure will endure at HBCUs as he is about clarifying the process of achieving tenure at schools like his. Too often the perception is that because some HBCUs assume less of a publish-or-perish attitude, their tenure process is somehow less rigorous.

"What does it take to get tenure at Harvard, Berkeley or Elizabeth City?" Mackey says. "Trying to compare Elizabeth City with a major school is okay conceptually, but there are a lot of other variables that come into play. We are not a research institution, so the expectations we have of a professor are somewhat different that those placed on a professor who is dealing with a multi-million dollar research project."