Faculty tenure is widely assumed to be essential for a college or university — a protection for academic freedom so professors can write and speak as they wish without having to worry that they’ll be terminated if someone in power gets upset.
Many schools adopted tenure, but not all. One such institution is Cairn University in Pennsylvania and in today’s Martin Center article, Cairn’s president, Todd Williams, explains why his school is better off without it.
Williams observes, “Once tenure is in place, though, it is usually accompanied by such a high degree of faculty control that terminating a tenured faculty member is a daunting and arduous task, often abandoned outright or resulting in a significant financial settlement.” Tenure, in short, makes it far more difficult for a school to react to changing circumstances, and that is becoming increasingly important as higher ed enters a period of rapid change.
Instead of tenure, Cairn has one year contracts for all its faculty members.
Williams explains, “Faculty appointments and contract extensions are determined by performance, institutional fit, and need. These are the same dynamics that apply to employment in most other environments. At first, it may appear that faculty positions at Cairn are tenuous rather than tenured. But the faculty ranks include a significant number of individuals who have taught at Cairn for more than 20 years, as well as younger and newer faculty who joined the ranks fully aware of their employment arrangement.”
The costs of tenure may exceed its benefits.
Williams concludes, “At Cairn, and at many other schools without tenure, alternatives to the tenure trap can be found, and encouragement can be given to those who think the established consensus cannot be countered. It is possible to create a harmonious, fair, performance-oriented, student-centered, mission-driven academic environment. But the way to do so is not by employing a practice that exists almost nowhere else in the American economy.”