It is Labor Day in the United States, so it is a good time to reflect on some of the labor issues that are currently affecting academia. Several conservative states in the country, in particular, are attempting to abolish the tenure system in public universities. These politicians argue that "no one should have a job for life" and that professors should be held accountable in order to keep their jobs. Many of these initiatives, however, are motivated by a desire to be able to discipline a professor who is teaching things that conservatives dislike, such as critical race theory.
While I am deeply concerned about the rationale conservatives are using to abolish the tenure system, I am not opposed to fundamentally reimagining how universities operate. The problems I see with the tenure system as it is now are that far more white men reach the level of professor than anyone else and that tenure and tenure-track faculty are actually a minority of those who make up academic staffs at institutions. Yet, this small number of people still has far more power and stability than those employed as lecturers or on adjunct contracts.
Are traditional tenure systems still relevant in today's rapidly changing academic landscape, or do they impede innovation and discourage fresh perspectives because so few people actually enter those ranks? What should alternatives look like?
I don't think abolishing tenure all-together will help, but I think tenure-line folks need to do a lot better.
We should not put all of the problems of current faculty work at the feet of tenure-line faculty, but I see tenure as a kind of golden book rather than a meaningful representation of merit, potential, or ability.
Tenure-line jobs are constructed with the assumption someone has no responsibilities outside of work, which punishes caregivers of all kinds. Tenure-line folks get a lot of perks and access denied to other faculty, and tenure-line folks keep advancing because institutions throw resources behind them. There are a lot of internal and external grants and programs that are tenure-line only, so NTT looking for a tenure-line job have to work even harder.
I remember our institution's fastest response to the pandemic was ensuring tenure-line faculty that the tenure clock was paused, and the institution announced this publicly as if it were a boon to all faculty rather than a very small subset. Watching tenure-line hires from the outside, I found the best way to get a tenure-line job is to already have a tenure-line job elsewhere. Tenure appears like an exclusive club that someone enters from grad school rather than an upward promotion.
IME, tenure-line faculty are the hardest to organize into any kind of labor union. I somewhat understand the not-yet tenured afraid of losing tenure, but the already tenured are no better. If someone has tenure and doesn't use it to fight for better labor conditions, what is it for?
Very few academics want to abolish tenure, but it's fair to say that tenure affords an extremely inequitable two-tiered system without a lot in between. When tenured people ask for help in protecting tenure, they are surprised that no one is around to help them (and shouldn't be). Tenure-track folks did not cause all of the problems, but they did not do the radical work necessary to fight these bad trends because, well, the set-up benefitted them in the short-term. If tenure is to survive, the tenure-line folks need to treat their colleagues with greater dignity, fight for people not like themselves, help construct jobs that meet the basic needs of all people, and recognize that protecting academic freedom means protecting it everywhere and not just for themselves.
You bring up so many great points here, Ian! "If someone has tenure and doesn't use it to fight for better labor conditions, what is it for?" Yes! I also think that the most visible laborers in this discussion are the tenure line vs non-tenure track and contingent workers; yet, the more invisible issues is the people making the rules at the top that says we have to allocate more funds to adjunct labor instead of tenure lines because it's cheaper. I know you know these realities and it doesn't negate anything you say, but I do think some folks on the outside tend to assume that tenure line folks have more power at the moment than they do. All the more reason to organize!
> I do think some folks on the outside tend to assume that tenure line folks have more power at the moment than they do. All the more reason to organize!
This is true. A lot of us on the outside assume tenure-line folks are more powerful and more unified than they actually are. I'll add that those who have tenure are better at understanding the actual power they have, but they also hold inaccurate beliefs about the strength of tenure protection.
> the more invisible issues is the people making the rules at the top that says we have to allocate more funds to adjunct labor instead of tenure lines because it's cheaper.
This is a context where I think tenure-line folks are not responsible, but they are also not part of the solution frequently enough. A lot of the forces are overall public divestment, rising costs, a market full of PhDs with relatively few jobs, and other forces as well. Replacing or changing administrators and other decision-makers will not resolve all of the problems. That said, relatively few people from the adjunct or NTT pool get to be administrators or decision-makers. A lot of those invisible decision-makers are recruited from tenured faculty, so they are part of the problem.
As for cost-cutting and some level of compromise, I think we need to make some kind of in-between job that is not an extremely-precarious adjunct and near-lifetime appointment of tenure. A challenge in defending tenure, which is a good idea, is that the alternatives are mostly bad.
I think tenure protections should be expanded, but so should mechanisms that correct abuses of power within academia. Graduate workers should especially be professionalized/ given better protections. So I guess I think these protections should start at the bottom, not the top.
Ooooo I love this approach, jordie! Start at the bottom! Imagine how amazing the academy could be if we really took care of our future by investing and supporting in graduate students?!!!
The argument that no one should have job protections because some people (who deserve them!) do not have job protections is so misguided and puts us in a race to the bottom. Tenure is how we guarantee freedom and security—which all workers deserve—in academia, and more of us should have access to it.
Sep 4, 2023·edited Sep 4, 2023Liked by Jenn McClearen
Tenure has moved into the crosshairs of the anti-union movement and will have a difficult time surviving.
There is plenty of blame to spread around. The academy must share some of that blame with tenure-track research that is very inward looking based on "impact factors" of how often research is cited within the academy. Administrators and boards also share in the blame with the penchant towards fund raising for capital projects that produce stunning new assets for outdated programs lacking economic sustainability.
My suggestion is that faculty should turn to a different model of moving towards the university or faculties as worker-owned cooperatives. It will not work everywhere but it can offer a substitute for some HEIs. Mondragon University in Spain has operated as three faculty cooperatives since 1997. https://www.mondragon.edu/en/meet-mu/cooperative-university There were cooperative structures even earlier but the reorganization in 1997 brought the university up the standards of a modern European technical university.
I think this is also (not only) a US issue because in some other countries there is more job security generally. In Austria, for example, once you are past your initial notice period in any profession (typically a few months), you can only be fired with due cause. For things like mat/paternity leave this is also really important, but I think it can be changed and extended. So basically I think there should be some kind of job security especially for academic jobs so that researchers are not afraid to share knowledge that might not be hip or in sync with the university’s views (ie the board) but I think it needs to be reimagined and maybe this kind of more general job security is a good starting point to consider.
Love this idea of general job security! It speaks to jordie's comment above about about starting with graduate students. How do we make work better for everyone, not just people in tenure line positions or traditional academic roles? I think that's probably a better place to start.
I've been curious about European institutions because I know that some countries/institutions have probationary periods of two years or less and it isn't associated with rank. Tenure is less important because it's more of a guaranteed right if you are fulfilling your duties while promotion is "merit" based.
All this! Yes I think some of the hesitancy to question tenure is for this job security, but the way one achieves this can be challenged and updated. Agree there is incentive to “do well” (publishing and - hopefully - teaching) to promotion or awards, etc.
I’ve left academia (also weird it is so black and white, but that’s a different post!) but I’ve witnessed one of my best friends who is an anthropology professor with many many renowned publications wait with crippling anxiety for her department to vote her in. It’s just so archaic in my opinion! And yes, grad students who are also working for the university need more protection.
Thanks for such a great post! I’m enjoying the other comments.
As someone who has been bouncing between contingent positions for several years, I'll say that it has been extremely frustrating feeling like tenured colleagues can use (or abuse) tenure to do the minimum at their jobs. I know several tenured faculty members who haven't published anything in 10 or 15 years, consistently have poor teaching evaluations, and don't contribute to the intellectual life of the department. The fact that the university has almost no recourse whatsoever to challenge those attitudes—especially when there are scores of bright, eager, over-qualified young scholars who would be happy to perform at a much higher level, but can't—feels to me like a structure that rewards mediocrity.
This isn't necessarily an argument against tenure. But I do think we need to consider whether, at times, tenure can actually be detrimental to the intellectual life of the university. (It's also worth pointing out that tenure emerged initially in a historical moment when there were mandatory retirement ages. Most tenured faculty members had to retire at 65, and were strongly incentivized to retire at 62. That feels remarkably young today, and it would be ageist and problematic to reinstitute a similar policy. I do wonder, though, if we could develop some kind of system for transitioning more fresh, young talent into tenure stream jobs. What about, for example, a semi-retirement position, where a senior colleague takes a pay cut, teaches 1 or 2 classes per year, and the university uses a portion of that person's salary to hire a new colleague? I'm sure there are lots of issues with that suggestion that I'm not equipped to think about fully!)
And thanks, Jenn, for raising this topic! I think it's an important conversation.
You bring up some really fascinating points here, Penelope! I think you are totally right about some of the affordances of tenure line jobs in terms of two-career families and maternity leave. On the flip side, because those tenure line jobs are so scarce, so few people actually get to take advantage of these benefits. I'd love for someone to write a book on the realities of the modern academic workforce and compare and offer strategies for improvement from other sectors. I think there are many of us who don't understand how "industry," as if its a singular thing, works.
I don't think abolishing tenure all-together will help, but I think tenure-line folks need to do a lot better.
We should not put all of the problems of current faculty work at the feet of tenure-line faculty, but I see tenure as a kind of golden book rather than a meaningful representation of merit, potential, or ability.
Tenure-line jobs are constructed with the assumption someone has no responsibilities outside of work, which punishes caregivers of all kinds. Tenure-line folks get a lot of perks and access denied to other faculty, and tenure-line folks keep advancing because institutions throw resources behind them. There are a lot of internal and external grants and programs that are tenure-line only, so NTT looking for a tenure-line job have to work even harder.
I remember our institution's fastest response to the pandemic was ensuring tenure-line faculty that the tenure clock was paused, and the institution announced this publicly as if it were a boon to all faculty rather than a very small subset. Watching tenure-line hires from the outside, I found the best way to get a tenure-line job is to already have a tenure-line job elsewhere. Tenure appears like an exclusive club that someone enters from grad school rather than an upward promotion.
IME, tenure-line faculty are the hardest to organize into any kind of labor union. I somewhat understand the not-yet tenured afraid of losing tenure, but the already tenured are no better. If someone has tenure and doesn't use it to fight for better labor conditions, what is it for?
Very few academics want to abolish tenure, but it's fair to say that tenure affords an extremely inequitable two-tiered system without a lot in between. When tenured people ask for help in protecting tenure, they are surprised that no one is around to help them (and shouldn't be). Tenure-track folks did not cause all of the problems, but they did not do the radical work necessary to fight these bad trends because, well, the set-up benefitted them in the short-term. If tenure is to survive, the tenure-line folks need to treat their colleagues with greater dignity, fight for people not like themselves, help construct jobs that meet the basic needs of all people, and recognize that protecting academic freedom means protecting it everywhere and not just for themselves.
You bring up so many great points here, Ian! "If someone has tenure and doesn't use it to fight for better labor conditions, what is it for?" Yes! I also think that the most visible laborers in this discussion are the tenure line vs non-tenure track and contingent workers; yet, the more invisible issues is the people making the rules at the top that says we have to allocate more funds to adjunct labor instead of tenure lines because it's cheaper. I know you know these realities and it doesn't negate anything you say, but I do think some folks on the outside tend to assume that tenure line folks have more power at the moment than they do. All the more reason to organize!
> I do think some folks on the outside tend to assume that tenure line folks have more power at the moment than they do. All the more reason to organize!
This is true. A lot of us on the outside assume tenure-line folks are more powerful and more unified than they actually are. I'll add that those who have tenure are better at understanding the actual power they have, but they also hold inaccurate beliefs about the strength of tenure protection.
> the more invisible issues is the people making the rules at the top that says we have to allocate more funds to adjunct labor instead of tenure lines because it's cheaper.
This is a context where I think tenure-line folks are not responsible, but they are also not part of the solution frequently enough. A lot of the forces are overall public divestment, rising costs, a market full of PhDs with relatively few jobs, and other forces as well. Replacing or changing administrators and other decision-makers will not resolve all of the problems. That said, relatively few people from the adjunct or NTT pool get to be administrators or decision-makers. A lot of those invisible decision-makers are recruited from tenured faculty, so they are part of the problem.
As for cost-cutting and some level of compromise, I think we need to make some kind of in-between job that is not an extremely-precarious adjunct and near-lifetime appointment of tenure. A challenge in defending tenure, which is a good idea, is that the alternatives are mostly bad.
I think tenure protections should be expanded, but so should mechanisms that correct abuses of power within academia. Graduate workers should especially be professionalized/ given better protections. So I guess I think these protections should start at the bottom, not the top.
Ooooo I love this approach, jordie! Start at the bottom! Imagine how amazing the academy could be if we really took care of our future by investing and supporting in graduate students?!!!
A completely better environment is possible!!
The argument that no one should have job protections because some people (who deserve them!) do not have job protections is so misguided and puts us in a race to the bottom. Tenure is how we guarantee freedom and security—which all workers deserve—in academia, and more of us should have access to it.
Tenure has moved into the crosshairs of the anti-union movement and will have a difficult time surviving.
There is plenty of blame to spread around. The academy must share some of that blame with tenure-track research that is very inward looking based on "impact factors" of how often research is cited within the academy. Administrators and boards also share in the blame with the penchant towards fund raising for capital projects that produce stunning new assets for outdated programs lacking economic sustainability.
My suggestion is that faculty should turn to a different model of moving towards the university or faculties as worker-owned cooperatives. It will not work everywhere but it can offer a substitute for some HEIs. Mondragon University in Spain has operated as three faculty cooperatives since 1997. https://www.mondragon.edu/en/meet-mu/cooperative-university There were cooperative structures even earlier but the reorganization in 1997 brought the university up the standards of a modern European technical university.
Worker-owned cooperatives?! Now that's a compelling idea, Doug. Will have to look more into that.
I think this is also (not only) a US issue because in some other countries there is more job security generally. In Austria, for example, once you are past your initial notice period in any profession (typically a few months), you can only be fired with due cause. For things like mat/paternity leave this is also really important, but I think it can be changed and extended. So basically I think there should be some kind of job security especially for academic jobs so that researchers are not afraid to share knowledge that might not be hip or in sync with the university’s views (ie the board) but I think it needs to be reimagined and maybe this kind of more general job security is a good starting point to consider.
Love this idea of general job security! It speaks to jordie's comment above about about starting with graduate students. How do we make work better for everyone, not just people in tenure line positions or traditional academic roles? I think that's probably a better place to start.
I've been curious about European institutions because I know that some countries/institutions have probationary periods of two years or less and it isn't associated with rank. Tenure is less important because it's more of a guaranteed right if you are fulfilling your duties while promotion is "merit" based.
All this! Yes I think some of the hesitancy to question tenure is for this job security, but the way one achieves this can be challenged and updated. Agree there is incentive to “do well” (publishing and - hopefully - teaching) to promotion or awards, etc.
I’ve left academia (also weird it is so black and white, but that’s a different post!) but I’ve witnessed one of my best friends who is an anthropology professor with many many renowned publications wait with crippling anxiety for her department to vote her in. It’s just so archaic in my opinion! And yes, grad students who are also working for the university need more protection.
Thanks for such a great post! I’m enjoying the other comments.
As someone who has been bouncing between contingent positions for several years, I'll say that it has been extremely frustrating feeling like tenured colleagues can use (or abuse) tenure to do the minimum at their jobs. I know several tenured faculty members who haven't published anything in 10 or 15 years, consistently have poor teaching evaluations, and don't contribute to the intellectual life of the department. The fact that the university has almost no recourse whatsoever to challenge those attitudes—especially when there are scores of bright, eager, over-qualified young scholars who would be happy to perform at a much higher level, but can't—feels to me like a structure that rewards mediocrity.
This isn't necessarily an argument against tenure. But I do think we need to consider whether, at times, tenure can actually be detrimental to the intellectual life of the university. (It's also worth pointing out that tenure emerged initially in a historical moment when there were mandatory retirement ages. Most tenured faculty members had to retire at 65, and were strongly incentivized to retire at 62. That feels remarkably young today, and it would be ageist and problematic to reinstitute a similar policy. I do wonder, though, if we could develop some kind of system for transitioning more fresh, young talent into tenure stream jobs. What about, for example, a semi-retirement position, where a senior colleague takes a pay cut, teaches 1 or 2 classes per year, and the university uses a portion of that person's salary to hire a new colleague? I'm sure there are lots of issues with that suggestion that I'm not equipped to think about fully!)
And thanks, Jenn, for raising this topic! I think it's an important conversation.
You bring up some really fascinating points here, Penelope! I think you are totally right about some of the affordances of tenure line jobs in terms of two-career families and maternity leave. On the flip side, because those tenure line jobs are so scarce, so few people actually get to take advantage of these benefits. I'd love for someone to write a book on the realities of the modern academic workforce and compare and offer strategies for improvement from other sectors. I think there are many of us who don't understand how "industry," as if its a singular thing, works.