Arguably at no time in this century has tenure in the United States come under attack as vociferously and consistently as it has over the last few years. Tenure came about in U.S. colleges and universities in large part to protect infringements on academic freedom that occurred at the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century. Throughout this century critics and protectors of tenure have argued about tenure's effectiveness and import.

I have been involved in two studies over the last four years that deal with faculty productivity and tenure's effectiveness.¹ The arguments pertaining to tenure revolve around six key issues.

Tenure's Flaws: The Critic's Concerns
Tenure rigidifies positions, argue some. At a time when an institution needs to reorganize it cannot. Some have said that tenure imposes an inflexible financial burden upon institutions. Academe needs to be nimble, suggest critics, and tenure prohibits that.

It is said that tenure protects unproductive individuals. The assumption is that in business and industry such individuals would be fired. Howard Bowen and Jack Schuster write that "the procedures for ridding the profession of misfits are so arduous and so embarrassing that few administrators are willing to take the time of themselves and the faculty to prosecute the cases. The procedures take on the flavor of a trial for murder."² I have not been to any institution where someone has pointed to more than two tenure dismissals over the last decade. The critics allege that such a number is too small if we are serious about getting rid of dead wood.

Another concern is that tenure actually does the opposite of what it is supposed to do. Rather than enable people to experiment, it makes people risk-averse. Tenure does not move people toward creativity, but rather toward conformity. Assistant professors are socialized to publish articles rather than take risks.

It is argued that tenure does not enable faculty to focus on teaching excellence. State legislatures and the public want faculty to do more teaching. Critics assert that tenure makes such a goal impossible. Tenure rewards research, goes the thinking, and if we want to change priorities then we need to get rid of tenure.

Opponents argue that tenure only protects those with tenure. We have an odd system of haves and have-nots that creates large cadres of second-class citizens. Again, rather than creating a democratic organizational structure that enables all people to be creative and innovative, it is said, we have a system where senior professors with structured employment contracts control the texture of academic life so that those who do not conform will find themselves in jeopardy.

Finally, critics say that we might have needed tenure to support academic freedom a long time ago, but not today. We are more enlightened and enjoy legal protections. Further, the vast majority of faculty never write or say anything that tests the limits that academic freedom is expected to protect. Increasingly, faculty surveys report that faculty do not feel the need for a protection of their academic freedom--either it is not needed for them, or they are not concerned.

Tenure' s Strengths: The Defenders Respond
The problems attributed to tenure have received vigorous rebuttal from tenure's protectors. Tenure does not preclude, they argue, an institution's ability to act when it faces fiscal problems. It only clarifies relationships and responsibilities. Numerous institutions have retrenched over the last generation, letting tenured faculty go in the process.

While most individuals admit that unproductive faculty exist in the academy and some of them have tenure, there are no data indicating that colleges and universities are more unproductive than other organizations. Henry Rosovsky, for example, has estimated that unproductive faculty make up under 2 percent of an institution's faculty.³ Can a business or other organization boast of a better level? Unproductive personnel are a problem that every business faces; to blame this on tenure is unwarranted.

One of the key concerns of the protectors of tenure is that critics rely on anecdote in order to attack a perceived problem. Experimentation may be a problem for some junior faculty coming up for tenure. However, there are numerous individuals who have tenure and have developed breakthroughs in multiple areas because they had the time that tenure afforded for scientific or scholarly work without the fear that they had to produce. Certainly getting rid of tenure will not increase experimentation of the kind necessary for intellectual thought.

Advocates reserve their toughest responses for those who propose that the untenured are not protected and that academic freedom no longer needs protection. The fact that few faculty test the principles of academic freedom today does not mean that the protections are no longer needed. There are still plentiful examples that highlight abridgments of academic freedom in late 20th century America. An analogy is apt: simply because most U.S. citizens do not test the limits of free speech, we do not say we should abolish the First Amendment. If academic freedom is a central totem of the academy, then we must protect it or risk fundamental redesign. And although it is true that tenure does not provide the untenured the legal protections it affords those with tenure, surely getting rid of tenure is not the solution. If anything, those with tenure have an obligation to ensure that their nontenured colleagues are protected. The tenured act as guardians of the institution; they are not simply beneficiaries of tenure.

Whither Tenure?
One criticism I mentioned above pertains to teaching. Presumably the system of tenure does not help us improve teaching. Indeed, relatively new ideas, such as posttenure review, quite often have the opposite effect. If the requirements and framework for tenure remain the same, then the implementation of a posttenure review system will only focus more attention on research, as opposed to teaching.

Moreover, to improve teaching, or address issues such as nonproductive faculty, we ought not reject out of hand the importance of ideas such as academic freedom. It seems wrong-headed to suggest that we must give up the cherished value of academic freedom to help make the academy more efficient. And I have seen no work that proposes alternative structures that will provide as rigorous a support of academic freedom as does tenure.⁴ At the same time, we also must recognize the fiscal and productivity-related issues that currently confront the academy. What should we do?

One step is to move the debate away from the pros and cons of tenure. If issues such as productivity are a concern, we should address them alone--just as we would in business and industry. Tenure is a structure that is governed and defined by faculty and administrators--it can change according to communal desire.

A second step is to consider ways to implement performance reviews that do not bring into question whether tenure should or should not stay. Instead, we might develop a system that enables a professor to talk about the kind of work he or she intends to do, and allows the faculty to assess these plans to ensure that all individuals are able to make a contribution to their academic communities while we still maintain an adherence to academic freedom and the tenure system. The best of both worlds--the maintenance of academic freedom and a more productive academy--are surely possible if we put our minds and hearts to it.

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