Tenure Versus Integrity…Or Lack Therof

By Professor Doom
3-26-14

Many is the time I’ve mentioned what tenure has turned into at many of our institutions of higher education. Tenure used to be a reward for scholarship, a seal that the professor was a legitimate researcher, and that he should have protection, so that he need no longer fear repercussions against whatever his research might find.

I’ll grant that “job for life” on paper sounds like a huge potential for a person to take advantage of things to just sit on his butt and do nothing, and I suppose it’s happened. But, back when tenure was about research and scholarly activity, this wasn’t a huge concern—the kind of person that devotes a decade or more of his life to studying minute esoterica isn’t simply going to stop just because he’s guaranteed a job in a subject he obviously loves. While this fear of “dead wood” faculty is often played upon to justify the elimination of tenure, the bottom line is it just doesn’t work that way in general.

I ask the gentle reader to think of something he’s loved doing for the last ten years…would the reader really stop doing what he loved just because he got permission to do it for the rest of his life? “Job for life” might sound great, but do realize the pay can still be very minimal, especially if the faculty member really isn’t doing anything.

I’ll grant that elimination of mandatory retirement laws have factored into the “deadwood” issue, and there are elderly tenured faculty around that probably should have retired years ago…but that’s a question of bad retirement law.

Nowadays, of course, administration has put a stranglehold on tenure. Instead of tenure being about research, it’s more about administrators awarding it to each other while leaving scholars in the cold (the most egregious example would be the president of Penn State getting a $600,000 a year tenure position in a weird department of no economic value, but I digress). Again, it’s not tenure that’s the problem there, it’s administrative plundering of the system—administrators with tenure were dead wood long before they got tenure.

Last year’s tenure shenanigans at public Kean University illustrates what tenure is for faculty members today: a lie and a deathtrap. See, some faculty were up for tenure, but no longer is tenure about faculty determining if the scholarship is worthwhile, instead tenure only flows from administration…it’s a stranglehold by those that probably shouldn’t be in that position, any more than they should be in control of any other part of higher education.

“..Farahi argued tenure, which is essentially a lifetime job guarantee, is "not an entitlement" and should not be given out lightly at the public university. But members of Kean's faculty union said most of the fifth-year professors up for tenure this year have spotless records and the unanimous endorsements of their college and department tenure committees.”

Now, tenure has lengthy rules about how it is to be rewarded. Administrators could follow those rules, but, that would require integrity. So, spotless records and unanimous endorsements are simply not going to cut it. Note the change here: scholars’ endorsements are irrelevant to scholarship now, it’s only up to the whims of administration.

I know of institutions that have done extraordinarily scummy things when it comes to promotion; the article I’m quoting from above is not really mentioning anything exceptional, compared to what I’ve seen with my own eyes.

“…If the professors are denied tenure, they will lose their jobs at the end of the school year….”