The Velvet Prison - teacher tenure offers little benefit to students in many cases

Washington Monthly, May, 1999 by Robert Worth

The most effective defense of tenure may be the most practical one: faculty still tend to view it as nonnegotiable. When the regents of the University of Minnesota tried to reform the tenure code in 1996, the faculty threatened a union drive, and compromise became impossible. In the end Tom Reagan, the chair of the board of trustees, conceded that "we will not be revisiting the tenure code for at least a year and a half and probably never." It's also been difficult for top-ranked universities to draw talent without offering tenure. "You can't be competitive if you don't offer tenure," declared Boston University president John Silber in 1995, after BU had tried and failed to lure economics professors to non-tenured positions.

That may be changing. One alternative to tenure that has begun to gain ground is post-tenure review, whereby tenured faculty are subject to periodic evaluations by fellow teachers. This has been tried in about a dozen schools around the country, with the oldest program going back 10 years. So far, the results are mixed. "The evaluations tend to be love letters," says Harvard's Cathy Trower, and even when they're not the consequences are minimal. No one has been fired because of a post-tenure review. However, adds Trower, "the reviews have been very successful at encouraging fallow faculty to take early retirement." That's no small consideration, given that retirement is no longer mandatory and that many departments will soon start to look like geriatric homes.

Another approach has been to offer faculty a choice: traditional tenure, or a limited-term contract at a higher salary and (in some cases) better sabbatical options. North Carolina's Evergreen College started offering 10-year contracts at higher pay as an alternative to tenure in 1992, and so far about half the faculty have accepted the contracts. The Boston University School of Management started doing the same thing in 1995, with roughly the same results. "Our objective is not to get rid of people," says BU Dean Louis Lataif, "but to find ways such that you need to get rid of fewer. If my theory is correct, it will make people more accountable, and yield a group of scholars who'll have fewer problems."

These ideas still sound like heresy to many academics. But sooner or later they'll have to face the fact that tenure is already being reformed, like it or not--and in the worst possible way. As universities slowly cut back on tenure-track lines and replace them with adjunct positions, the majority of faculty may soon be without any job security or academic freedom. If the trend continues, there'll be no excuse for not offering these people a better deal--guaranteed benefits, longer contracts, better pay. Once that happens, the justification for granting anyone a job for life will start to look thinner than ever.

RELATED ARTICLE: Passing the Lemons

If tenure creates a lack of accountability for college professors, the problem is far worse at the K-12 level. In most states, teachers become permanent employees of their school district after completing a three to five year probationary period. After that they can be fired for "just cause," but the district must prove its case against a well-prepared teachers' union in an agonizing process that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and last for years. According to a 1994 study by the New York State School Boards Association, it takes New York districts an average of 455 days and $177,000 to dismiss a teacher. With appeals, the average cost jumps to $317,000. Principals can and do transfer lousy teachers to other schools--a ritual administrators call "The Dance of the Lemons" or "The Passing of the Trash" But someone will end up with that teacher.