Tenure

Tenure commonly refers to academic tenure systems, in which professors (at the university level)—and in some jurisdictions schoolteachers (at primary or secondary school levels)—are granted the right not to be fired without cause after an initial probationary period. Tenure systems are usually justified by the claim that they provide academic freedom, by preventing instructors from being fired for openly disagreeing with authorities or popular opinion. Such systems may also have an economic rationale, similar to the rationale for senior partner positions in many law and accounting firms, in that employees who cannot be replaced may be more likely to give accurate assessments of more junior colleagues who might otherwise threaten their positions. A further reason tenure exists is because, in the realm of academic and intellectual persuits, individuals produce output of a higher quality when they have job security than when they don't. When they have the job security and autonomy of a tenured position, academics are able to pursue their own topics of interest, which they are usually more passionate about, and produce better results. Without job security, they will generally attempt to measure what pursuits they are "supposed to" follow, and in imitation of those guidelines, produce a lower quality of output.

Academic tenure is politically unpopular in many places, where opponents charge that it removes incentives for its holders to be productive and unfairly relieves professors of the economic uncertainty felt by other workers. For these reasons, tenure was officially abolished in public universities in the United Kingdom by the Thatcher government in the 1980s, and has repeatedly come under attack at state universities in the United States. Many universities have also moved to supplement tenured professors with non-tenured adjunct professors, who teach classes on a contract basis for relatively low wages and few benefits.

Table of contents

1 How tenure is awarded
2 See also
3 External links

How tenure is awarded

In most cases, tenure is not given immediately to new professors upon hiring. Instead, open jobs are designated eligible for tenure, or "tenure-track," during the hiring process. Typically, a professor hired in a tenure-eligible position will then work for approximately five years before a decision is made on whether he or she should be awarded tenure.

The academic department will then vote to recommend the candidate for tenure based on the tenure-eligible professor's record in teaching, research, and service over this initial period. The department's recommendation is given to a tenure review committee made up of faculty members or university administrators, which then makes the decision whether to award tenure, and the university president approves or vetoes the decision. The tenure process is fraught with institutional politics so often despised that many capable individuals avoid academia altogether because of it.

A candidate denied tenure is sometimes considered to have been fired, but this is not entirely accurate: employment is often guaranteed for a year after tenure is denied, so that the non-tenured professor can conduct an extended search for new employment. Also, some prestigious universities and departments award tenure so rarely that being denied it is scarcely an insult.

Professors who have earned tenure at one institution are often offered tenure along with any new position (as "senior hires"); otherwise, tenured faculty would rarely leave to join different universities.