Tenured Faculty - Part I

Let’s start with a question:

Is tenured faculty good for the institutions who employ them, and for our students who pay tuition which in part goes to their tenured salaries?

This writer recalls a very recent conversation with a Knoxville resident, tenured faculty member of a local College or University telling me that he had just had his annual evaluation and he could  not understand why the evaluation took place because he was tenured.  This writer also recalls when attending College in the 60’s that one of my tenured faculty members boasted that he had not changed his lesson plans for 20 years because the material in the textbook never really changed.

In an article entitled:  Tenure: What is it? the author, Dennis G. Jerz states, “In higher education, tenure is a professor’s permanent job contract, granted after a probationary period of six or seven years. A faculty member in such a probationary position is said to be in a ‘tenure-track appointment.’  At most smaller colleges, a faculty member’s eligibility for tenure is determined by first by teaching ability, second by publication record (academic or creative, depending on what the candidate was hired to teach), and third by a combination of departmental service (participation in various faculty committees) and student advising.  At larger universities, the ability to attract funding and publish research plays a much larger role in tenure decisions.” (August 5, 2011)

Ten years ago, Good Practice in Tenure Evaluation – Advice for Tenured Faculty, Department Chairs, and Academic Administrators was released, a joint project of:  The American Council on Education, The American Association of University Professors, and United Educators Insurance Risk Retention Group. 

Their findings produced the following suggestions

1. Clarity in Standards and Procedures for Tenure Evaluation
2. Consistency in Tenure Decisions
3. Candor in the Evaluation of Tenure-track faculty
4. Caring for unsuccessful candidate

But, nowhere is there a statement of maintaining “academic rigor” in the classroom once tenured or while pursuing a tenure track which this writer find curiously interesting and alarming.