The costs of doing away with tenure

Republican governors and legislatures, as well as university boards of trustees to which they have appointed majorities, have taken various steps to roll back tenure for professors at public universities in several red states. The Florida state university system has mandated post-tenure reviews for professors even after they have earned tenure. The Texas state legislature is considering a measure to stop awarding tenure for all new hires, beginning in September 2023.  Iowa, Louisiana and North Dakota are also considering various restrictive measures. 

What those promoting them do not seem to be considering, though, is the potential costs these measures will impose on their state universities and the students who attend them.

Tenure, or appointment without term, was instituted to protect the ability of professors to conduct research and teach without interference, including from donors to universities who do not like what they have to say. This, of course, is exactly what a lot of Republicans, in particular, object to since they believe that tenured professors “do nothing” after receiving tenure — presumably unlike people working in other professions, or even Republican judges who also have lifetime appointments.

A lot of these concerns are based on misconceptions about what professors do and how they are assessed, especially after they receive tenure. Basically, tenure-track and tenured professors are expected to undertake research, teaching and service. Non-tenure line professors are usually not expected to conduct research and focus their efforts on their often heavy teaching loads.

Tenured professors, along with others, typically undergo annual reviews from their department chair or dean (often with the help of a committee) based on the annual activities report they must file. These reviews do not affect whether a professor retains tenure, but they definitely affect whether he or she is eligible for a merit-based pay raise. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want one of these. And professors who earn tenure and become associate professors usually don’t stop producing research, especially if they want to be promoted to full professor — a rank which nobody is required to attain, but which many work hard to earn. Further, full professors usually continue along the same trajectory of writing and publishing that tenure allows them to pursue.

None of this may impress the critics of tenure. But there is something that they should consider:  Although American universities have become increasingly reliant on non-tenure track faculty, a full-time tenure-track position is what newly-minted Ph.D.s who want to be professors seek out.  As long as tenure-track positions are being offered by America’s leading universities, red state public universities where tenure is being undermined are going to be at a disadvantage in attracting and retaining talented faculty. Given the choice between accepting a tenure-track position at one university or a position at a university where tenure is no longer offered or secure, young scholars are far more likely to accept an offer from the former. And senior faculty already awarded tenure where it is becoming insecure are going to try to move to a university where it is.

Some will say that this doesn’t matter because — even if the range of academic job applicants from new Ph.D.s through senior professors all prefer to have appointments at universities where tenure is available and secure — there is a limited supply of such positions. As the enormous number of people who agree to work in non-tenure track and even part-time positions demonstrates, there are many who settle for fixed-term, non-tenure track positions if they want to have any sort of academic career. Whether academics like it or not, those seeking to eliminate or weaken tenure may calculate, they will simply have to adjust to the new reality.

But here’s the thing: Graduate students who want to undertake the years-long process necessary to earn a Ph.D. are not going to want to risk enrolling at universities where there is no guarantee that the professors with the specialties they need to advise them are going to be able to stay around to shepherd them all the way through completion of their Ph.D. dissertations. And universities rely on doctoral students to teach and grade undergraduates. Without them, universities will have to undertake the time-consuming task of constantly recruiting large numbers of faculty, whom they are not willing to offer the prospect of tenure or even full-time employment to. Many of these, of course, will be applying for tenure-track positions elsewhere and will leave for one if offered.

Another feature of tenure that those outside of academia might not appreciate is that it involves a trade-off: In exchange for tenure, professors are generally paid lower salaries than those prevailing in other professions where continued employment may be less secure (though some of these, like civil servants, often enjoy protections similar to tenure). Granting tenure also makes it less likely that those who earn it will jump ship and go elsewhere, since universities usually (though not always) prefer to hire junior professors at lower salaries than senior professors at higher ones. 

The only way, then, that red-state public universities ending or weakening tenure will be able to compete with universities that award it when trying to attract and retain top faculty (especially those capable of bringing in sizable grants) will be to pay much higher salaries than those prevailing elsewhere.

I sincerely doubt, though, that this is what Republican politicians seeking to end or weaken tenure have in mind. What this means, then, is that their states will end up with much weaker public universities, where there is a constant churn among faculty who will remain no longer than they have to at schools which they do not see as valuing them. The most likely fix, which these red state public universities will have to resort to but will not want to advertise, is for the five-year (or whatever interval) contract review to become a largely pro forma exercise in which faculty are almost all rehired to avoid the turmoil that constantly replacing more experienced professors with less experienced ones will entail. Even then, the most capable ones will leave anyway if they find a tenure-track or tenured position elsewhere.

In short, states where politicians undermine tenure are going to have public universities with less capable faculties than universities that grant and respect tenure. These diminished universities are probably not where politicians undermining tenure will want to send their children — or where their children will want to attend. These politicians should show more concern for the children of their constituents by acting to protect tenure and not pandering to public misconceptions about it.

Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University where he began teaching in 1988, earned tenure in 1992, and was promoted to full professor in 1998.