singabob@gmail.com
Fall 2013

The Ethics of Academic Tenure
A Brief Assessment by Robert M. Armstrong
Chaminade University MBA Program singabob@gmail.com Fall 2013

The Ethics of Academic Tenure
A Brief Assessment by Robert M. Armstrong
Chaminade University MBA Program
C

THE ETHICS OF ACADEMIC TENURE by Robert M. Armstrong

Most everyone at the University of Illinois agrees engineering professor Louis Wozniak can be a pain at work, even though he is generally well-liked by his students. Since August 2010, he has been on paid suspension from the Springfield campus after publicly embarrassing a student he believed contributed to his denial of a $500 teaching award. Yet, this month, in what is believed to be a first-time action by University of Illinois trustees, Wozniak’s 41-year tenure was revoked and his employment immediately terminated after making a(n untrue) joke online about remembering only the names of students with whom he’s had sex. While clearly showing poor judgment and a lack of sensitivity, Wozniak’s situation calls into question the ethical justification for academic tenure, which is the focus of this paper.
I will briefly examine tenure’s unique role in higher education from its start to its present-day limitations and whether its institution is ethical, by both those who covet it and those who provide it. In the end, hopefully the reader will understand the forces at play and whether its continuation is merited at American colleges and universities of the future. Academic tenure was proposed as early as 1915 and formally defined, following a series of conferences by 1934. A formal statement of academic tenure was officially agreed to by the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges (and Universities) in 1940. It states that after the expiration of a probationary period [usually seven years], teachers “should have permanent or continuous tenure…and be terminated only for adequate [or just] cause.” As war clouds formed around American academia, the participants felt tenure essential to the furthering of ‘the common good’ which is dependent “upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.”
The start of academic tenure was not particularly controversial. Since the beginning of the 20th century, 22 schools (mainly prestigious ‘Ivy League’ institutions) offered a form of employment ‘permanence’ before it was formally proposed by the AAUP. Back then, academic tenure was seen as an important and necessary ‘benefit’ to retain and build needed faculty following World War II, when the ‘GI Bill’ created enormous demand for qualified and sustaining professors. It also contributed to the rise in prominence of American research, especially in complex, difficult or sensitive areas of academic study; eventually leading to the development of the military-industrial complex and the rise of the American ‘consumer class.’ The exception to the above would be reserved for faculty who espoused communist ideology during the McCarthy era of the 1950’s or anti-war sentiments during the Vietnam War years. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on two important aspects of tenure: first, its expectation must be contractually stated, and two, outside conduct viewed as “incompatible with (one’s teaching) duties,” was a sufficient reason for termination. Today, estimates suggest tenure termination occurs less than fifty times (or two percent) across the country each academic year. It is equally difficult to find a percentage of university and college professors who currently have tenure. The American Federation of Teachers, a union of educators, estimates the number to be about 30 percent, down from 57 percent in 1975.
It is essential academic tenure be understood correctly by the reader. It is NOT a scheme for lifetime employment, but rather, a guarantee of a process at public institutions (only). This is especially important to promote research (almost always a requirement for tenure) free of bias, religious doctrine (as many schools were originally oriented), and administrative meddling. While First Amendment rights to ‘free speech’ are Constitutionally-protected, court challenges have proven this to not be enough (especially since September 11 and the passage of the Patriot Act). While a marketplace of new ideas is often the intent of a ‘liberal arts’ or humanities-based education, problems may arise if a teacher speaks to the contrary of student beliefs, government edict or commonly-held understandings. It was never intended to insulate nor protect incompetence, unprofessional, and/or morally wrong activity in or out of the classroom.
The decision to award tenure is not a one-time decision. It comes after annual evaluations and extensive peer assessment of an applicant’s teaching, service and research record. If one does not succeed in any of these three areas, he or she is essentially fired the following academic year, without recourse. If it is awarded, faculty members remain accountable to employers for additional scholarship, promotion and (merit) pay raises. At private institutions, the awarding of tenure is not legally binding. It is merely an expression of “good faith” by one’s employer for continued employment. It probably also indicates that in addition to one’s scholarship, the individual is well-liked by his or her department and administrators.
The public at large and students in particular are generally divorced from the issue of academic tenure and its ethics. While college and university websites and view books often proudly list the number of full-time faculty, a study by Figlio, Schapiro and Soter, found these same materials rarely cite the number of tenured faculty. Kim Wall, a senior at the University of Memphis may speak for many undergraduates when she tells a student newspaper reporter she’s had “plenty of tenured professors (with)…the attitude, ‘I don’t care if you pass or fail, I’ll still be here.’” Clearly, this type of behavior creates few sympathetic devotees.
Particularly in the physical sciences, mathematics and economics, law, engineering, and often in business schools, tenured professors are well-paid compared to those teaching in the arts or social sciences at the same institution. Still, the pay is a fraction of what they could make working in the profession (assuming qualification), where corporate executive ‘parachutes’ pay twenty to thirty times more than the average salary at the same firm. Accordingly, many view academic tenure as a long-term low-stress contract at a modest salary while still being able to work as a consultant on the side.
As with education in general, the public greatly misunderstands the role of an educator. While he or she may not be physically inside a classroom from sunrise to sunset, most faculty members seem to have a substantial workload. Individuals in higher education often spend a large amount of time in lecture preparation, writing examinations and grading papers, conducting original scholarship to remain ‘current’ and furthering the latest information and changes in their discipline, being ‘on call’ to demanding student wishes and questions, and in providing service to the department which may often be extensive. Newer faculty, wanting to be the ‘complete’ colleague often take on administrative requirements of advising, hiring new faculty, shepherding graduate theses (if applicable), helping admissions and retention efforts, and participating in the larger community in a visible and substantial way. In short, today’s teachers at America’s colleges and universities serve several roles beyond teaching, giving the institution enormous flexibility.
However limited, forces may be currently organizing (mainly for economic and political reasons) to do away with the concept of tenure, or at the very least, change it. In trying to earn tenure, many young academics take very conventional paths of research in order to gain the favor of their senior faculty colleagues. They may also try to find the ‘biggest bang’ for the shortest ‘buck of time’ given they are on a very aggressive timetable for tenure, which rewards short, intensive bursts of activity and publication (while certainly not supporting nor helping new families get started in childrearing), as opposed to thoughtful and life-changing research in specific and directed journals. New faculty members are also less likely to have pools of research support monies or governmental grants to further innovative or non-conventional research, especially compared to the senior faculty members. For some with more conservative principles and orientations, they many find tenured faculty members openly hostile and sabotage research running counter to their own political or social mores. Those who are at secondary universities or colleges may be forced to teach subjects or topics outside of their core discipline or first-year students and sophomores, as senior faculty members no longer want to lead basic, physically challenging or information-rich introductory sections in their discipline. This constant process of creating new notes and activities, which essentially re-invents the wheel each semester, does not create a secure teaching style, good student evaluations, or provide much time to focus on how best to reach young adults who have short attention spans, very poor study skills, and numerous distractions. Sadly, senior faculty may also not want to hire bright, secure and unconventional professors who may compete with him or her within the department for administrative attention, positive student evaluations, and limited departmental resources. They undoubtedly recognize they could be hiring their own replacement, thus insuring those who pass through the system will never be much of a threat to innovation or change. In short, the newly tenured faculty member is taught by the process to “cool his jets” and to continue the metaphor, “shape up and fly right” in order to be successful long-term.
On the other hand, tenure also squeezes faculty who’ve not pleased administrators or senior department members for whatever reasons. Rather than keeping a marginal candidate around, the necessity of the tenure process requires most schools to ‘cut bait’ quickly so as to not to be saddled by mistaken hires, cases requiring remedial intervention, or problematic personalities down the road. In other words, it is easier to start over (especially if teaching undergraduates is of minor consequence) and incur the modest expense to advertise and interview for a new faculty member than to work through whatever issues might arise in a longer-term tenure candidate. Perhaps Miron makes the most persuasive argument for the eradication of tenure when he writes “the safety provided by tenure may be most attractive to those without the gumption to take real risks, while those who disdain mundane concerns like having a job are the ones who generate the great ideas.”
The current economics of most major public universities do not give advocates of the tenure process much hope in this day and age. Most land-grant and Division I schools such as the University of Hawai’i at Manoa are financially burdened and backlogged with few options at hand. Asking them to take on more long-term debt in the form of hires is not only unthinkable in the current landscape of priorities, but is politically difficult and intuitively unnecessary. As we have seen, hiring part-time, adjunct or non-tenured faculty is far cheaper, creates more human diversity, and is less hazardous than making significant employment commitments.
For the most part, there is no discernable difference in teaching outcomes, either. A long-term research study of more than 15,660 incoming students at Northwestern University shows students learn more deeply and successfully from non-tenure line professors than those who are tenured or on a tenure-track. The students also report liking those instructors more than permanent faculty, regardless of the level of difficulty inside the classroom or their individual grading standards.
So, where does this leave the reader in regards to tenure and ethics? While incoming undergraduates (not to mention their parents) have future employment in mind when initially choosing a college or university, the principle role of a higher education institution is to impart knowledge and to hopefully have its graduates critically apply the information they learn in the world they find. This knowledge is not unimportant or trivial, it is not conservative or liberal, and it is not the domain of one individual researcher or teacher but serves for the good of society, the country and its progress. But higher education is not only a business transaction (although most forget this by the way it is set up and run) but a quest to expand the mind, socialize an individual to both his or her discipline and others, and ultimately, to improve one’s life.
In this idealized way, academic freedom would be the norm and the protection of lifetime employment would not be needed for faculty members. There would be no ‘big time’ sports (with its associated revenue streams) and supporters who pressure trustees and college presidents for quick changes. There would be no debate, negative news coverage, or political pressure applied to administrators as was seen in Oklahoma following the very public testimony of tenured OU faculty member Anita Hill against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. But sadly, that is not the world in which we live.
Hopefully, during the previous pages of this paper, I’ve helped to elucidate some of the parameters of academic tenure and its ethical orientation. In my experience of two decades in teaching at the university-level, being on a tenure-track employment route was a less-than-satisfying experience. For one, the pressure was constantly ‘on’ to produce and live up to the expectations set by both the department and the institution. Those involved with me were not interested in my scholarship, they just wanted the work done and the obstacle eliminated. They were not interested in reducing my class workload (at one school, I taught nine new courses in one year) or my out-of-class obligations. They were interested in my having instant success teaching but provided no resources, training or support in achieving such goals, much like my doctoral program at Ohio University. In fact, several of my colleagues were legendary in the classroom for being poor teachers and lazy academicians.
However, the ethical dilemmas I faced were substantial. From the start of my graduate program in international communications, I knew I could eventually ‘pass’ the ‘endurance test’ of tenure in academia, even though I was several years out of my undergraduate work and one of the older students in the program. I chose to include three years of difficult Mandarin language study to my studies, which deflated my overall grade point average, especially in relation to my peers in the department. (I later learned from a faculty member on my committee that I was the focus of a fairly heated discussion within the senior members of the faculty as to whether my grades---then around a 3.2---warranted continuation in the program and the awarding of a teaching assistantship each year.) Several faculty members in my graduate program were openly hostile to my qualitative research choices and my professional media background. In the eyes of feminists and critical-culturists in the department, my experiences were the reason television and radio was so vapid (even though I also worked in ‘educational’ public media). My scholarship and article production as a graduate student was also slow due to some personal indecision with my dissertation topic and having a committee chairperson who desperately wanted me to become a Malaysian scholar, like him. My decision to proceed with a focus on Singapore and to get a full-time teaching position after passing my comprehensive examination, meant he was no longer in ‘my corner.’ Just this spring we saw each other at an academic conference in Las Vegas and he refused to speak to me, some fifteen years later.
Being awarded the single Fulbright research award in the United States to the Republic of Singapore in 1993 was a life changing shot-in-the arm and a ‘vote’ of confidence I needed. It helped me get employed almost immediately upon return. However, I found the salaries for freshly-minted ABD’s to be slightly better than the money I made fifteen years earlier as a mid-market television reporter and weekend anchor. Despite having some decent multicultural research to write about and sensing much of the current scholarship to be lacking (it wrongly applies ‘Western’ values to what is essentially an Asian culture, and vice versa, is fiercely and unfairly anti-American), it was also extremely difficult to get my teaching workload finished and travel abroad to refresh my data or complete a missing interview. I wanted to do the best for my career, but also was mindful I was responsible for the molding of two to three hundred students each term who took my classes, did what I required, and asked for advice.
In the end, I never finished writing my dissertation (the single most disappointing event in my life, perhaps an appropriate ‘yan’ to my Fulbright ‘yin’) and never was offered tenure. In fact one early employer, a no-name private university in Northeast Pennsylvania, seemed to take great pleasure in firing me after two years, saying I deceived them during the process, even though I wrote a winning grant for them on civic engagement and provided effective service to their newly-opened pharmaceutical school.
If there is a ‘silver lining,’ I did become a very good and strongly evaluated professor with my last employer, the State University of New York at Buffalo, who called me a ‘teacher of teachers.’ Unfortunately, compliments don’t pay the bills.
I see tenure as a conformity-inducing process which I reject (after it rejected me). I am not convinced faculty members with Ph.D.’s are any better instructors than am I (and the evidence is on my side, as demonstrated earlier). I also think more universities and colleges should see ‘scholarship’ as something more than unread research printed in juried publications.
In the end, I’ve chosen to go a different path. And like Robert Frost in the poetry anthology Mountain Interval, “that has made all the difference.”

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[ 1 ]. While most tenure revocations are made at administrative levels, Wozniak had been cleared of recent charges by a faculty committee, causing the Trustees to intervene. His pension is not affected by this action.
[ 2 ]. The agreement held tenure was needed for academic freedom, particularly in research, and was “indispensable” in the institution’s fulfillment of “its obligation to…students and…society.”
[ 3 ]. Ibid.
[ 4 ]. Wikipedia definition of “tenure (academic).”
[ 5 ]. See Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 US 564; and Perry v. Sindermann, 408 US 593.
[ 6 ]. This exact number is nearly impossible to determine with certainty. The figure cited is the generally cited figure in several sources, as most cases are quietly disposed.
[ 7 ]. This statistic is provided by Dr. Gregory Scholtz of the AAUP. While beyond the scope of this paper, the numbers cited suggest a growing reliance on part-time and adjunct faculty. Even when full-time faculty is hired, the majority of positions are not tenure track. Perhaps a future ethics paper should address this new ‘exploited’ class.
[ 8 ]. The 14th Amendment, which limits the extent to which ‘public’ officials may act, may also offer some protection.
[ 9 ]. An institution’s financial exigency is another reason but that is beyond the scope of this paper.
[ 10 ]. Private institutions that run into financial difficulty may use tenure as a ‘last resort list’ in preparation for layoffs.
[ 11 ]. Admittedly, there are some faculty members who do not want tenure. They may find the requirements too rigid, difficult or limiting.
[ 12 ]. Later in the article, a Memphis University professor admits ‘not doing his best’ because tenure ‘protected’ him.
[ 13 ]. Miron suggests the average tenured professor works less than a forty hour week and only 30 weeks a year.
[ 14 ]. Some industries, particularly in Japan, guaranteed long-term employment but it was never the same as tenure, as practiced in higher education. Due to poor economic conditions in northern Asia, this practice is quickly ending.
[ 15 ]. It is interesting to note, nonetheless, the author is a tenured faculty member at Boston University.
[ 16 ]. A recent newspaper article estimates the much delayed repair bill to be $487 million, 84% to be used on the aging Manoa campus buildings alone.
[ 17 ]. In one study spanning twelve years, this accounts for 35% of hired faculty at public institutions (up 11%), and a whopping 46% at private universities (up 28%), since 2007.
[ 18 ]. Admittedly, all first-year students at NU are well qualified as it is one of the most elite universities in the Midwest and perhaps the United States, but the results were most significant for those at the lowest end of the academic accomplishment ladder. Except for the top ten percent of the student body (who showed no difference), the overall results are significant. The authors of the study do indicate non-tenured instructors tend to be among the ‘cream of the crop’ in teaching, at least in the Chicago-area, and the results may be a phenomenon to newly arrived students who know little, if nothing, about their professors upon entering the institution.
[ 19 ]. Ibid.