When the tenure system began roughly a century ago, it was not thought of as guaranteeing professors who had it the right to lifetime job security, but it has become that, with adverse consequences for our higher education system. In today’s Pope Center piece, law professor Dan Subotnik argues that the system should be changed because it protects many relatively (if not entirely) unproductive older academics at the expense of job opportunities for younger scholars.

One result of tenure as it currently exists is that it has caused some universities to offer expensive buyout packages to faculty members willing to bow out.

Professor Subotnik advocates changing the tenure system so that it would have to be renewed at the discretion of the dean once the professor reached the age of 70. He argues that this change would improve the incentives for faculty members to remain as valuable as possible, but also making them plan for the possibility that they’ll have to do something else after 70.

But there are big hurdles. He points out that such a change might be challenged as a violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Is Congress likely to revise that statute? I foresee a ferocious battle to protect the status quo led by the AAUP. Perhaps, though, Subotnik’s approach could be written into new faculty contracts.