Tenure immunity diminished
Tenured professors can now be fired with greater ease by department heads and deans, due to a policy adopted in November by the Utah Board of Regents. This change mandates periodic evaluations for faculty on tenure.
This is not the first time the board has attempted to alter tenure, said Holly Braithwaite, director of communications for the Utah System of Higher Education. Last year, a bill was introduced that proposed to get rid of tenure completely but got killed early on.
Part of the reason committee members and others do not want to get rid of tenure is because it has been a part of education for a such a long time, Braithwaite said.
“It is an old practice, and is the process by which a new faculty member must show that he or she is capable of teaching well, doing credible research and providing some service to the institution, such as writing grants,” she said.
The requirements to become tenured are not uniform, and vary widely by department, according to the USU faculty tenure handbook. Once achieved, however, tenure largely protects those faculty members from being fired.
The revised policy will modify this policy, making a thorough post-tenure review mandatory in all universities. It also makes it possible for tenured faculty to be fired for “just cause,” such as incompetence in the classroom, or program or department closures, Braithwaite said.
This change affects all eight public institutions of higher education in Utah.
“We want faculty to do their best so students can do their best,” Braithwaite said. “The purpose is to strengthen instruction so students are better served.”
Students and faculty have varied opinions on the new changes.
Eric Willeitner, a junior majoring in aerospace engineering, said he likes the change.
“Some teachers get pretty crazy,” he said. “After so many years of being tenured, they do whatever the heck they want.”
It’s good for professors to be constantly evaluated on their performance, said Heather Clawson, an elementary education major.
“How good a teacher is doesn’t depend on how long he or she has been a teacher,” Clawson said. “You are only as good as your most recent performance. For example, when I was younger, one of my teachers had been teaching forever, but she was mental. She told us she was Pocahontas’ grandmother, and on our spelling tests she would spell words wrong. When we corrected her, she would say, ‘I was just testing you guys.'”
Such teachers — no matter their status or how long they have been at an institution — need to be fired, Clawson said.
However, many tenured professors claim tenure is a vital and necessary part of an institution, Braithwaite said.
“Tenure has a positive tradition in higher education,” Braithwaite said. “Some of our institutions would not be able to attract talented faculty without the ability to confer tenure. It has protected faculty who study and advocate controversial points of view.”
Tenure is definitely a positive thing, said Mary Stewart, another elementary education major. Her father is a professor at Utah Valley University, she said, and without tenure, he would have no job security.
Justin Jenson, an animal science professor, agreed with Stewart’s claim that tenure provides protection, but said this kind of job safety is not necessarily a positive thing.
“It seems to me like once a professor is on tenure, they have reached untouchable status, and then they don’t care about their performance anymore,” Jenson said.
Abass Al Sharif, a non-tenured statistics professor, said he doesn’t think tenure was always a bad thing but certainly needs reform.
“I think (tenure) is good for teachers,” Al Sharif said. “This means you proved with your research you are good, but at the same time a lot of teachers get lazy. Maybe we don’t get rid of tenure, but we definitely need to change, like, the criteria and the way it functions.”
Tenure, and any changes made to it, is something students should pay attention to, Braithwaite said.
“The issue of a quality professoriat has a large impact on student learning,” she said. “Low-quality professors have major negative effects on departments and on students’ attitudes toward subjects.”
“When I was a student,” Jenson said, “my classmates used to joke, ‘Yeah, you can go talk to the professor, but he won’t help you — he’s tenured.'”
– evan.millsap@aggiemail.usu.edu