Tenure under the microscope

ASEE Prism, Apr 2002 by Creighton, Linda

TEACHING TOOLBOX

Under pressure to provide more accountability to students and parents-and state legislators-- schools are increasingly scrutinizing the performances of tenured faculty members.

Chances are, in the past year you've had more than one discussion about tenure--probably a heated one. Once considered as integral a part of university life as textbooks, tenure has become a topic of debate and friction both on campus and off. Changes in the economy, technology, and society have forced many colleges and universities to balance traditional practices against practical considerations. The result is that the commitment of lifetime employment, practiced for more than half a century on American campuses, is coming under increasing scrutiny--or attack.

Post-tenure review is regarded by some in the academic world as a direct assault on tenure. But many educators now feel that post-tenure review is perhaps the strongest weapon in the defense of that tradition-as long as its primary objective is to enhance the faculty excellence and not to fire instructors.

By last year, over half of the states in the nation had instituted or were considering some form of mandatory tenure review for publicly funded institutions in an effort to tie the new accountability to funding. At private colleges and universities, the combination of skyrocketing tuition and the quest for excellence has resulted in the close scrutiny of quality of teaching.

At the country's top engineering schools, the explosion of new technology and growth in the field have prompted changes aimed at improving teaching techniques and approaches, including outreach programs that include high school and extend all the way down to the elementary level. Such moves may have given engineering schools a head start in assessing tenured professors' track records as part of a larger effort of encouraging their faculty members--tenured or not--to max out their potential without penalizing them. At Texas A&Ms College of Engineering, faculty dean Karan Watson says of their post-tenure review, "We didn't want it to be a big stick."

The policies of formal evaluations go by different names and range widely in their origin, application, and outcome. At one end of the spectrum is the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where reviews are mandatory and their intention largely punitive. At the other end of the spectrum is Drexel University, with a voluntary "post-tenure renewal" program that gives faculty a chance to improve their teaching skills in a threeyear program and earn a pay raise, no threat to tenure included.

Putting a tenure review policy into place can be a nasty process. Administrators and faculty at the University of Minnesota waged a four-year battle over tenure review that included a faculty revolt and a near miss at unionization. The faculty at Northeastern University, one of the first major private universities to consider firing tenured professors, voted down that proposal, with strong feelings remaining on many sides.

Positive policies tailored to each institution seem to have the smoothest transitions. Two years ago, the Pratt Engineering School at Duke University inaugurated a salary review program that requires each faculty member to meet with a department chair once a year to formally evaluate the teacher's performance. Associate dean Phil Jones says, "It is just a way to ensure consistency in terms of what is rewarded and what is important."

Jones says Duke's experience points out that even with a constructive rather than critical approach, one-size-fits-all is a hard way to judge academics. "We're still grappling with how to weight things," says Jones. "For instance, you could have an excellent teacher who doesn't do much research, and maybe isn't very active in university affairs. How do you weight those different things, when he's doing such a good job teaching?"

And the reaction of the faculty to the annual review? "Very quiet. I don't know of any impending riot," he says, although he regretfully points out that administration is rarely included in frank chats about post-tenure review.

Merit-Based Raises

One of the positive outcomes for faculty is a more performance-driven distribution of pay raises, says Jones. "Previously, you had a salary pool, and guess what? Everybody, unless they were really bad, got that x-percent raise. I think it's easier with this new program to justify bigger raises for some individuals."

More aggressive and regular assessments can be a boon for top-performing teachers, says Jones, while turning up the heat may force out those who are no longer up to snuff "That would be a side benefit;' he says. "There are a number of people whose productive days are over, and they're holding a slot." At the University of Texas at Austin, a post-tenure review system was put in place in 1997, and the number of retirements rose from 12 for the year '94-95 to 49 last year.

At Texas A&M's College of Engineering, a mandate from state legislators resulted in a post-tenure review policy, defined by the college on its Web site in a single-spaced threepage document. Appended to it is a two-page statement by the faculty senate, acknowledging the feeling among many faculty members that the policy is unnecessary.