An Unfounded Critique of Florida’s Tenure System
Copyright © 1996 Bruce W. Hauptli
In his “Reform Tenure Now: Addressing Florida’s Failed System,”1 Steven Uhlfelder contends that
a system, such as tenure, that encourages complacency and mediocrity has no place in an educational system that is striving to produce graduates who will succeed in a fast-paced, complex and highly competitive world.2
Since he is one of the nine members of the Board of Regents which administers and sets policies for Florida’s State University System (SUS) and an outspoken critic of the tenure system, Regent Uhlfelder’s remarks are worthy of serious consideration. In his comments Uhlfelder mis-characterizes tenure and offers four criticisms of the “system of tenure.” Before addressing these points, however, it will be helpful to ensure that we understand what individuals must do to achieve tenure.
Regent Uhlfelder notes that nation-wide “seventy-nine percent of all faculty members considered for tenure in 1986-1987 were accepted,”3 and this figure may make it appear that this “prize” is literally being given away at the door by an incompetent and corrupt higher educational system. There is a good reason why such a high percentage of applicants achieves tenure however: the extended period required to qualify for tenure, and the multiplicity of evaluative hurdles which candidates encounter provide an already highly selective process which generally ensures that the unqualified and under-motivated have already disappeared from the applicant pool.
First, an advanced degree is a job prerequisite for a tenure-earning position, and admission to a graduate program is itself a highly selective process. Moreover, not all those admitted to graduate programs end up earning an advanced degree—those who do so spend at least four years beyond an undergraduate degree (and can often take between four and eight or more years) acquiring an advanced understanding of a field of human inquiry. During this time these individuals will generally also begin to teach undergraduate students under the supervision of experienced faculty members. This apprenticeship is an essential part of their advanced education (a mark of advanced understanding is the ability to transmit an understanding of the fundamental concepts in a discipline to those who are beginning their higher education).
Having completed an advanced degree, the successful candidate for a tenure-earning faculty position must emerge from a highly qualified field of candidates in a nation-wide search. Enormous amounts of time are expended by senior faculty members and by university administrators as they evaluate extremely detailed application files (often from hundreds of applicants) and carefully interview candidates. Once a group of finalists is selected from the applicant pool, several candidates are brought to campus where they will be asked to teach a class or present a paper to faculty and students, and where they will be carefully interviewed for one or more days by faculty and administrators. Finally, lengthy deliberative meetings are conducted where the strengths and promise of the different applicants are weighed and assessed.
Having emerged successfully from this already long and rigorous series of selection processes, new tenure-earning faculty members in the Sate University System face a five to six year long probationary period during which their professional activities (their teaching, research, and professional service) will be regularly reviewed by faculty members, chairpersons, and deans. During this period the tenure-earning faculty members are regularly counseled regarding any deficiencies in their job performance, and extensive efforts are made to ensure that they have the best opportunity to develop their strengths and correct any weaknesses. Moreover, those whose teaching or research are deemed deficient may be dismissed prior to the end of this long probationary period. At the end of the probationary period, applicants for tenure must submit to a comprehensive review of both their performance to-date and of their promise as continuing faculty members.4 A number of faculty members choose not apply for tenure because they recognize that they will not survive the impending exhaustive tenure evaluation process. These individuals voluntarily leave the State University System for other institutions with different standards, or they leave the field of higher education altogether.
It is not surprising, then, that a very high proportion of the applicants are awarded tenure—indeed, it would be a fantastic waste of resources if this were not the case. The extended search process employed in the endeavor to hire new faculty members is an expensive process designed to ensure that the State University System hires the most talented and promising faculty members possible. In addition to the time and expense involved in the nation-wide searches, significant funds are expended to provide for the requisite start-up activities associated with the hiring of new faculty (laboratories, library resources, computers, etc.). The extended probationary period constitutes another significant expenditure of university time and resources as faculty are further trained, counseled and initiated into the myriad responsibilities that university faculty have (time and resources must be allocated to make them effective advisors within the university system, and to work to ensure that their goals and those of the SUS are congruent). Were the process to yield far fewer successes, Floridians should criticize it as wasteful.
These comments regarding the length and selectivity of the period leading up to tenure may help us understand why those who “survive” to the point of application are generally successful applicants, but they do not address the criticisms which Regent Uhlfelder brings against the system of tenure itself. As noted above, he contends that tenure “encourages complacency and mediocrity.” Moreover, Regent Uhlfelder maintains that “once approved for tenure, professors are often no longer subject to evaluation or other forms of review.”5 As he tells the story, tenure provides faculty members with a form of lifetime job security which encourages inefficiency, stagnation, complacency, and mediocrity.
Regent Uhlfelder is not correct however. In the State University System tenured faculty members are subject to regular evaluations and reviews. These reviews identify deficiencies in job performance which may arise as the faculty member’s career within the State University System continues. Moreover, salary raises, promotions, and other rewards and punishments are contingent upon continued solid performance. Tenured faculty members who stagnate or become complacent are identified and the available system of rewards and punishments is brought to bear to encourage them to rededicate themselves to their professional responsibilities. Those who become incompetent, or who fail to do their assigned duties may be fired, but this is sometimes not necessary as such individuals sometimes will resign rather than face the stigma of dismissal. In point of fact, tenure does not guarantee a life-time job, and individuals are indeed dismissed for incompetence, fraud, and other reasons.
We should note that inefficient, stagnant, complacent, and mediocre “industries” do not attract consumers in the international market place. But the American higher educational system is the envy of many other nations. As any parent knows, one important measure of the quality of an educational system is the willingness of others to pay significant sums to avail themselves of the sort of educational experience which their own children can receive at a lesser charge. Imagine that parents in other countries, or in other states, were willingly paying several times what the local parents were paying to send their children to our Florida elementary and secondary schools. Here would be a clear index of the high quality of these educational institutions. While we have a very good system of elementary and secondary education, however, few parents are willing to send their children away to another state for this level of education.
On the other hand, we find that this does indeed happen at the higher educational levels. Parents in other states and countries frequently send their undergraduate and graduate students to Florida’s State University System to receive their undergraduate and graduate education even though this involves the expenditure of extraordinarily large sums of money—far larger expenditures than those which Floridians pay. If the picture were as grim as Regent Uhlfelder and the other critics of American higher education paint it, it would be inconceivable that these parents would send their children to us for their undergraduate and graduate training in anything like the numbers which we presently see.
Regent Uhlfelder also contends that the system of tenure is “symbolic of the past and the status quo,” and that we need a system “more consistent with today’s economy and business practices.”6 He believes the system of tenure promotes inefficiency and stagnation in the academic labor market by limiting mobility and turnover.7 From his point of view a higher “turnover” of faculty members in the “industry” of higher education would be a sign of its health. I believe we should reject his premise that higher education is an “industry,” however. Higher education aims to transform the student. What is central to such an education is not that the student come to acquire specific bits of information (certain formulas, equations, or bits of cultural literacy, for example), but rather that a habit of reasonableness and critical thinking become inculcated.
The “general education” component of an undergraduate education in the State University System aims at providing students with a familiarity with a variety of disciplines and intellectual perspectives which will facilitate their transformation into critical thinkers. As J.D. Brown notes, “one does not take a wide range of courses from art to zoology to encompass content, but primarily to utilize the differing kinds of subject matter and ways of working with each as a means of enhancing the intellectual powers and the evaluative sensitivities of one’s mind.”8 In addition, of course, the “major” component of an undergraduate education takes students far more deeply into one area of human inquiry. This aspect of their education provides them with a focused area in which to hone their critical abilities.
This transformation of the students which occurs in both the “general education” and “major” components of the undergraduate educational process requires an experienced and dedicated faculty composed of individuals with expertise which collectively spans the fields of human inquiry. These individuals can not effect this transformation simply by standing before the students and speaking. As Floridian Harvey Siegel notes, a critical thinker is someone who is “appropriately motivated by reasons: she has a propensity or disposition to believe and act in accordance with reasons; and she has the ability properly to assess the force of reasons in the many contexts in which reasons play a role.”9 Critical thinkers must not simply understand how to critically assess a position, they must be moved by reason and, as Siegel notes, “when we take it upon ourselves to educate students so as to foster critical thinking, we are committing ourselves to nothing less than the development of a certain sort of person.”10 This activity requires that the faculty members themselves not only be such critical thinkers themselves, but that they incorporate this critical thinking in their instructional activities.
Behind many of the critiques of contemporary higher education is the complaint that the faculty are too involved in “research” when they should be doing more teaching. This is a continuing complaint of the Florida Legislature and of many of the critics of higher education in America. This lament is encouraged by the “industrial” model of higher education, and by talk of “productivity” which is construed only in terms of hours spent (by faculty and by students) in the classroom. Higher education is not an immersion program, however, and “research” is not an extraneous activity conducted by faculty members in an effort to avoid spending time in the classrooms. If the university faculty are to foster the transformation of their students into critical thinkers, they must remain such thinkers themselves, and this is just what their research activities should ensure. Their researches constitute their continuing activity as critical thinkers while also ensuring their continuing expertise in the areas of knowledge in which they will “instruct” their students.
An examination of Regent Uhlfelder’s complaints discloses that beyond the lament that the State University System is inefficient, stagnant, complacent, and mediocre, his specific complaints are that the system of tenure encourages faculty to devote themselves to research and ignore their teaching responsibilities (“more than half of freshman and sophomore classes in the SUS are taught, not by full-time faculty, but by graduate assistants, adjuncts, or teaching assistants”),11 and that it is difficult to dismiss ineffective professors. The first complaint is tied to the issue of system of tenure, presumably, by the fact that the professors are “off doing research” rather than teaching (coupled with the perception that their research activities are essentially unrelated to their teaching activities and constitute a pursuit of some merely personal goals which are at variance with their jobs as university instructors). As I have maintained above, nothing could be further from the truth—a university without research is a fraud.
Regent Uhlfelder’s contention that so many classes are not taught by full-time faculty is correct. The presumption that graduate assistants, teaching assistants, etc. are unqualified to engage in this activity is demeaning to these dedicated individuals who constitute the faculty members of the future in the earlier stages of their professional training (under the supervision of experienced faculty members). If we did not have such a training system, new faculty members would nonetheless have to acquire the pedagogic skills and demonstrate the sort of advanced understanding which comes from teaching the fields they are developing expertise in. This would still require the careful supervision of these beginning teachers by experienced faculty members who would have to devote extensive amounts of time to this activity. Such supervision is best done within the context of a graduate education while the beginning university teachers are still students so that they can learn to meld their research and instructional activities.
Regent Uhlfelder also ignores a very important fact in raising this complaint. One of the reasons that such a high proportion of the courses in the first two years of an undergraduate’s career are not taught by full-time faculty members is that the level of funding support provided by Florida’s legislature for higher education has been drastically been reduced when calculated relative to the number of students to be taught. In the period from 1989-1990 to 1994-1995, this ratio has decreased for the SUS from approximately $7,100 per student to less than $5,500 per student. Given this sort of reduction, corners have been cut, and the students have suffered. This is not the fault of the either the faculty or of the tenure system however. It is a direct result of the fact that the Legislature is not willing to appropriate the funds requisite to provide the appropriate educational experience for Florida’s undergraduate students.
Faculty members in the State University System have been pushed to the point where they are not able to handle all the students they are asked to teach (indeed, in some cases the institutions are not simply short of faculty, there are not enough classrooms, parking spaces, laboratory stations, or library books for the students). The problem here is not the system of tenure but that of funding.
Regent Uhlfelder also complains that the system of tenure makes it difficult to dismiss ineffective professors. He does not provide any evidence that there are a large number of such individuals however. Moreover he does not discuss what does happen when such an individual does surface. Of course, if he means to tar all those who engage in research as ineffective, then it is good that there is a system of tenure—without it, such a Regent would destroy the university system. During my employment I have observed cases in the State University System where tenured faculty members have been suspended without pay for significant periods of time, and cases in which they have been fired (and, of course, some have resigned rather than face such fates). These actions have arisen because of allegations of research fraud, unprofessional conduct, or failure to perform duties. I believe that if the Regent is aware of a problem here, the appropriate thing to be demanding is that the university administrators avail themselves of the extant procedures to discipline or dismiss such faculty members. I do not believe that there are many incompetent or unmotivated faculty members, but there are procedures in place for dismissing such individuals, and they are utilized. It is important to recognize that tenure does not guarantee life-time employment, where incompetence arises these procedures should be (and are) employed, and tenure is not the villain in such cases.
Another of Regent Uhlfelder’s specific criticisms of the system of tenure is that it is unequally applied. He cites statistics which show that “tenure has been found to be less frequently awarded to women and minorities.”12 Here I think he is right on target. Of course this argument does not constitute a reason for getting rid of the system of tenure. It constitutes a rationale for a serious program of affirmative action. Florida’s Board of Regents has had such a program in place for an extended period of time, and significant gains have been made. Given the extended periods of time involved in graduate education, and the long probationary periods of tenure-earning faculty members, rapid change can not be reasonably expected however. The State University System clearly needs to do much to address this concern, but the elimination of the system of tenure (or the wholesale use of non-tenured appointments) would certainly not increase the number of tenured female and minority faculty members!
In his article Regent Uhlfelder discusses a number of suggestions for reforming the system of tenure and he correctly notes that a number of other states have developed systems of post-tenure review which aim at
identifying strengths and weaknesses in performance, preparing a professional development plan to address deficiencies, and monitoring progress toward achievement of the professional development plan goals.13
In addition to recommending that the State University System pursue such a program, Uhlfelder recommends the following as ways of improving the system of tenure:
that the SUS seek finding for a “Superior Faculty Performance Program” to reward professors who have achieved the highest rank and continue to demonstrate “sustained excellence and high merit since promotion to this rank,”14
that the SUS place more emphasis upon the quality of classroom teaching in considering faculty for tenure,
that the SUS redefine scholarship so as to encourage and emphasize the forms of scholarship which are directed toward teaching, and
that the SUS provide additional opportunities for its administrators to “improve their knowledge and skills in the areas of faculty assignments and evaluations.”15
All these are worthwhile suggestions which need to be discussed and pursued. While I believe that the system of tenure is important for our universities, I do not think it is perfect. Thus while I disagree with his complaint that it is a “failed system,” disagree with his claim that it encourages complacency and mediocrity, and believe that his arguments to this effect are seriously wanting, I agree with his constructive suggestions for improving the system.
Notes:
1 Steven Uhlfelder, “Reform Tenure Now: Addressing Florida’s Failed System,” Outside the Lines: Educational Policy Series, Series Number 001 (Coral Gables: Foundation for Florida’s Future, 1995). The Foundation’s address is P.O. Box 144155, 3399 Ponce de Leon Boulevard, Coral Gables, Florida, 33134. This response was sent to this organization (and to Regent Uhlfelder) on February 23, 1996 and was reproduced in a UFF newsletter later that year (but is no longer available from that source, so I have placed it on my site). Back
2 Ibid., p. 14. Back
3 Ibid., p. 3. Back
4 The tenure review itself requires that a candidate’s scholarly work be critically reviewed by a number of independent national scholars whose evaluations of this work are included in an application file. In addition to including the candidate’s scholarly work and the evaluations of the independent experts, the tenure file contains the yearly evaluations of the candidate, the student evaluations of the candidate’s teaching throughout their career in the SUS, and numerous other measures of the candidate’s job performance. This application file is independently reviewed by university faculty members, chairpersons, deans, vice presidents, and presidents. These individuals carefully assess the accomplishments and potential of the candidate in the areas of teaching, research, and professional service. Back
5 Ibid., p. 9. Back
6 Ibid., p. 1. Back
7 Cf., ibid., p. 9. Back
8 J.D. ·Brown, The Liberal University: An Institutional ·Analysis (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 106. Back
9 Harvey Siegel, Educating Reason (New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 23. Back
10 Ibid., p. 41. Back
11 Steven Uhlfelder, “Reform Tenure Now: Addressing Florida’s Failed System,” op. cit., p. 6. Back
12 Ibid., p. 8. Back
13 Ibid., p. 10. Back
14 Ibid., p. 11. Back
15 Ibid., p. 11. Back
File revised on 07/02/2008.