A Report Issued by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities
January 12, 1999
Like other higher education organizations, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) has thought it necessary, and rightly so, to respond to the criticisms of higher education in general and faculty tenure in particular. The report offers some fifty recommendations in three areas: faculty employment policies, faculty development policies, and faculty review policies. The purpose of the recommendations is, first, to help restore the public's trust of higher education, which is essential to the public's support for education. Second, the recommendations are meant to "help colleges and universities improve their flexibility to respond to the challenges of the 21st century." The flexibility that is sought for colleges and universities ranges widely: from the proportion of faculty who should be eligible for tenure or for part-time appointments; to the length of the probationary period; to types of leaves of absence; to the grounds for terminating faculty appointments for financial or program reasons. The report is the work of three policy groups consisting of thirty-four administrators and two faculty members.
There is much to applaud in the report. It unequivocally endorses tenure as a safeguard for academic freedom, and asserts that a "core of tenured professionals promotes the educational mission of higher education." It calls for the expansion of professional development programs for faculty members, especially those who are probationary or part-time. It urges institutions to develop orientation programs to assist search committee members in such tasks as writing a job description, interviewing candidates, reading curricula vitae, and evaluating credentials. Diversity is lauded as a goal in appointing faculty members and admitting students, institutions are encouraged to prepare and distribute handbooks on retirement issues, and, strikingly, part-time faculty members are to be "compensated equitably" and have "opportunities for career advancement and collegial participation" in department or program decisions "whenever feasible."
At the same time, however, the report offers recommendations that are not only at odds with Association-supported principles and standards, but some of them, if enacted, also would impose new administrative burdens on colleges and universities. The result would be less, not more, flexibility to the detriment of an institution's ability, in the report's words, to "take a proactive approach in preparing the higher education workforce and workplace for the 21st century." In particular
1. While the report acknowledges that a maximum probationary term of seven years is "standard" in higher education, it recommends that "institutions should explore the utility of variations in the probationary period, appropriate to variations in discipline and/or assignment." Elsewhere the report states that the "optimal length of the probationary period may vary by type of institution and even by type of faculty member." Currently there are a few institutions that have probationary periods longer than seven years, and considerably more, mostly in the two- year sector, with shorter periods. There is also a small group of institutions--those with medical schools affiliated with teaching hospitals--where the maximum term of probation is longer than seven years for those faculty members on the campus who, in addition to teaching, research, and service, have clinical duties.
AASCU's report appears to envision something quite different: a higher education community where there is no standard or uniform maximum term of probation, but instead numerous maximum terms that could vary according to the type of institution and, within an institution, by type of discipline or type of faculty member. One would be hard pressed to devise a more inefficient, unfair, and unwise personnel system than what seems to be contemplated here: inefficient, if only because of the extra demands on the time and effort of faculty committees and administrators to evaluate different "types" of faculty members consistent with their different lengths of probation; unfair, if only because criteria for establishing different maximum terms of probation are likely to be strongly colored by short-term or temporary variations in student enrollments and program funding; unwise, because a plethora of maximum terms among and within colleges and universities would make it impossible to define excess, and would endanger academic freedom by inevitably expanding the number of faculty members who do not have the protections of tenure. A maximum probationary term of seven years was set forth in the joint 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. This broadly accepted maximum period of probation, limiting the number of years a faculty member can serve without the safeguards of tenure, should remain the guiding principle for institutions of higher learning.
2. The report recommends that "institutions should establish [the] locus of tenure upon hiring tenure-track faculty and should consider varying the locus of tenure for faculty, appropriate to differences in discipline/assignment and institutional need." The report adds that institutions may wish to "rethink" the locus of tenure to "increase flexibility," and that "varied loci of tenure within a single institution may be desirable." Questions about the locus of tenure typically arise when administrations move to terminate faculty appointments for financial or programmatic reasons. Under Association standards, administrations are expected to make every effort to place faculty members elsewhere in the institution before actually terminating an appointment on grounds of financial exigency or program or department discontinuance not mandated by financial concerns. Why make every effort? Because tenure is held in the institution and not in one's department or academic specialty, and, as one court has held, the "university's obligation is not discharged unless it has considered other departments and schools as well as the displaced teacher's." Obviously, if the locus of tenure is not the institution but some part of it, then the obligation to make every effort at relocation is correspondingly diminished. Indeed, the obligation may disappear completely, for the AASCU report opens the way to having a single faculty position identified as the locus of tenure. If the individual's appointment is terminated, the locus vanishes and the administration's obligation to make every effort is lost, too. There is also the concern that a malleable locus of tenure will leave faculty members vulnerable to an administration's discretion to narrow or expand the locus, thus diminishing their sense of security to the detriment of academic freedom.
3. The report recommends that "institutions should be able to consider several reasons for layoff, including redirecting institutional mission, strengthening course offerings, loss of grant revenue, responding to state budget cuts, and streamlining the institution." In addition, "layoff/retrenchment policies should provide institutions with flexibility to preserve strong programs by taking into account measures of performance as well as seniority." On the first point, the termination of tenured appointments, or other appointments before the end of their terms, for financial or program reasons should occur only under highly demanding standards and with strict procedural safeguards. Colleges and universities, and not only public ones, constantly seek to streamline their operations, or strengthen their academic programs, or rethink their missions. Whatever kinds of problems these activities generate, they ordinarily do not convey any sense of crisis or urgency. Quite the opposite: their ordinariness suggests that, were such reasons a legitimate basis for terminating faculty appointments, no faculty member could have any assurance of continuing service. What this might mean for the stability of academic programs and the education of students is not difficult to imagine.
As for the second point--that retrenchment policies should take into account performance as well as seniority--termination of a faculty appointment because of deficiencies in performance amounts to a dismissal for cause, and as such cannot be effected without affording the faculty member requisite safeguards of academic due process. In other words, "layoff/retrenchment" is not a mechanism for ending the appointments of faculty members on the basis of relative academic merit.
4. The report declares that "every institution that grants tenure must require post-tenure review." There is a temptation to consider this mere hyperbole. After all, some colleges and universities (perhaps many) will decide that a system of post-tenure is not needed, and their so deciding cannot be construed as evidence of a lack of concern for the quality of faculty performance. But the report's uncompromising language is not a rhetorical flourish. It is of a piece with the entire thrust of the document: institutions of higher learning must do a great deal more to demonstrate to the public that they take seriously their obligation to act responsibly; they should exhibit this intent by holding faculty members to greater accountability; and administrative leadership is the key to achieving these ends.
It is thus not surprising to come across the following recommendation: "Annually, each full-time faculty member must establish short-range goals compatible with the mission of the institution and its strategic initiatives, as well as with the individual's long-range professional development plan. . . . Faculty goals and professional development are subject to review and approval by the appropriate administrator." But the conflation of the exercise of academic freedom with institutional missions and programs is both false and harmful, and the assertion of an administrative prerogative to review and approve faculty "goals" would compromise the freedom to teach and to do research. If, to cite the title of the AASCU report, this is the "faculty of the future," then the prospects for winning public support for the independence of colleges and universities are not enhanced.