The Tenure Trap, Part 4

I've recently read two books on higher ed, Higher Education? and Crisis on Campus, that make the claim that somehow ending tenure will help to create an entirely new kind of university. Of course, letters defending tenure have been sent by the bucketful to any magazine, newspaper or major website that reviews these books and concurs with this assessment. Those letters warn of a mass calamity should tenure be abolished.

I don't think either claim is correct. What do I think would happen if tenure would be abolished? It's true that making predictions about the effect a change will have on any system is almost always a fool's errand. But since there have been so many willing to be fools on this topic, I might as well join them.

First I note that both books bemoan all the old fart professors on campus who are no longer productive. Abolishing tenure will supposedly get rid of them. Huh? The existence of those tired professors, the authors damn well know, isn't the result of tenure. It's the result of the age discrimination legislation created by the late Congressman Claude Pepper. Before those laws, there was mandatory retirement. After those laws, there wasn't. Tenure has little or nothing to do with any of this.

Let's say we abolish tenure. A professor turns 65. The light is barely on in his brain (I'm not trying to condemn all 65 year old professors here, there are plenty that are still vigorous; I'm just using a single example), but he's teaching courses, attending department meetings, and taking part, when required, in faculty governance. Students don't complain about him because he grades easily and his work loads are light. Just how are you going to get rid of this person without ending up with an age discrimination lawsuit?

So getting rid of tenure is not going to eliminate deadwood faculty. It won't save money either. Those same senior faculty members will still be there thanks to the late Claude Pepper. I have no idea why an editor didn't hit the authors of these books over the head when they made their claims concerning abolishing tenure and said, dude get a brain.

Getting rid of tenure will likely have other effects, though. Professors will no longer be de facto part owners of their schools, something that tenure confers to them. Instead, they will be just regular employees that happen to have Ph.D.s. That means that it is possible that they will have less freedom in the classroom; they may be forced to teach in certain ways and on certain topics.

I think that change is more than possible. It's likely. Overall, I'd say that change would be a plus. Professors are often awful instructors and are inclined to teach their own arcane area of research regardless as to whether there is any interest or need for classes on their research area. Having a boss man or boss lady doing a little lording over their teaching might be a good thing.

On the negative side, that same lording over would likely take place with regard to research. Given the financial constraints on institutions, it's likely that professors would be pushed to go where the money is research-wise. To a large extent that's happening already. For example at Duke, a joint college/medical school department in anthropology was put in deep freeze mostly because it wasn't generating as many grant dollars per square foot of lab/office space as other departments in the medical school (yes, some bean counter dean actually had that calculation done for him). Abolishing tenure, would likely make such decisions even more common.

Besides being crass, the push to chase after money - essentially making professors the Ph.D. equivalent of ambulance chasing lawyers - will diminish the intellectual quality of research on a campus. The fact is that granting agencies with a fair amount of easy money tend to want very mundane work done.

My guess is, though, that the influence on both teaching and research will be minor. Deans and even department chairs only have so much time on their hands. Some may micromanage and actively try to alter the teaching and research habits of professors. But most won't. It will be the same old, same old, except professors will be on contract.

I think the most profound change with the loss of tenure would take place with faculty governance and the management of a university. Currently at most colleges and universities, the faculty's role in management is a curious thing. The faculty has committees and a senate body to look at school policy. But most faculty members hate working on these committees or being a member of a faculty senate.

The reasons for this lack of interest in faculty governance are two-fold. One, as noted in an earlier post (part 2, I think) professors are far more interested in impressing their colleagues at outside institutions with their research than they are in influencing their own school. Their promotions are based on research prowess and as a result their loyalties are less with their school than they are with their professional research organizations. Why should they waste their time on something that gets in the way of them being productive researchers?

Second, these faculty bodies hardly have any power. Usually, they are advising bodies only, and usually they are expected to simply rubber stamp changes wanted by leadership. And that's what they almost always do. Why do tenured faculty do this? Why don't they exert some influence? I think it's partly because of the loyalty problem described above. Basically, professors don't give a sh*t.

It can get to be comical, this dance between faculty and leadership. A few years ago, the faculty at Notre Dame wanted to abolish its faculty senate because it was so toothless and a waste of time. The faculty wasn't allowed to do so. Leadership basically admitted that the faculty was powerless, but they insisted that professors go through the motions with their committees and "governing" bodies.

At Duke when I was there, the faculty senate related to undergraduate affairs completely fell apart for a few years. There were no senators. There were no meetings. University leadership forced it to be resurrected. I know what these senate meetings were like. The head of the senate talked. Virtually no one listened and instead read research articles, student papers or worked on their lecture notes, raising their hands yes when asked.

This I know sounds completely cynical. But I'm just reporting what I observed. It was a farce.

Despite all this lack of real power, for some strange reason leadership remains fearful of faculty opinion. Getting the faculty to agree on policy takes time. The faculty will almost always say yes, but you still have to go through a lengthy process of getting professors to meet in committees and then getting a vote in a faculty senate. It can take months.

There may also be one loose canon faculty member who decides not to go along and suddenly energizes the other faculty to delay leadership's desires for at least for one or two meetings or maybe even a year (I did that once or twice).

The presence of tenure gives the faculty the kind of power - even though they barely exercise that power - that makes leadership slow down. It's a check on the system. Remove that check, and leadership can swiftly move.

This sounds like a potentially good thing. But look at the quality of leadership on American campuses. It's not a pretty sight. We've have had decades of poor leadership across the country. For example, I served under three presidents at Duke. They were all bad. They all had serious lapses in character and integrity. They were all incredibly thin skinned. They didn't do their homework and understand what was really happening at their university (basically, they were too distracted with raising money to effectively manage anything).

Serving under them were deans that were rather pathetic as well. They all aspired to be future college presidents. In all my years, I admired one provost. He left to go back to teaching after one year on the job. I admired one dean. She left after a few years to be a provost elsewhere and now works in the Obama administration. That's two out of maybe 20 people in positions of leadership with whom I had to interact that I felt deserved any respect. That's not a good track record.

Given the general absence of competence and integrity in university leadership, those checks that tenured faculty put on the system are actually a good thing. They limit the damage that leadership can do.

This little discussion has gone on for far, far, far too long I know! It needs an editor. But if you've gotten this far, you might be wondering why I haven't mentioned the reason tenure is defended time and time again, free speech. I peripherally mentioned it with regard to research. Pushing faculty to chase money instead of good ideas is in a way, restricting free speech. Should tenure be abolished, would faculty be more circumspect in what they say? No doubt.

I'll end with a pre-tenure story about a university in about 1900, Vanderbilt. The school wanted to beef up its science and had some idea about developing a nationally recognized geology department. They hired a Harvard educated Ph.D. to head up this effort. After a few years, it was clear there was a conflict. The professor believed in evolution. He taught evolution in his classes as any geologist would. In Nashville at the turn of the 20th century, teaching evolution was not at all acceptable. The professor was canned. The department was essentially eliminated. Vanderbilt never developed any research prowess in geology.

Now I doubt in today's environment that a professor or department would run into trouble teaching evolution (except at places like Liberty and Oral Roberts). But it's likely that the elimination of tenure would occasionally inhibit the teaching of controversial ideas.

What would the abolition of tenure do to colleges and universities? It would be a mixed bag. Given the awful quality of university leadership over the last few decades, the overall influence would likely be negative. Should the quality of university leadership dramatically improve nationwide, I might give tenure abolition a thumbs up. But I don't see that happening anytime in the near future.