Tenure and the Constitution of the University

Extract

Should university professors be exempt from the job insecurity that afflicts much of the population? As businesses become leaner and meaner, shouldn't universities do the same? After all, Universities have become expensive. Wouldn't abolishing tenure make change possible—especially by eliminating deadwood?

These are fair questions. One answer is that a great many savings of the same kind that have become commonplace in business are already extensively employed by universities. For example, much of the teaching at our universities, is done by poorly paid part-time employees or graduate students, and as older faculty retire, they are often not replaced. So universities HAVE been part of the larger trends. In many respects, universities were, in fact, leaders in shifting work to part-timers.

Why shouldn't university presidents be like corporate CEO's and (as they were in the 19th century) able to hire and fire at will? Wouldn't a workforce responsive to changing organizational goals be good for universities? These questions look like two parts of the same question, and surely many people outside the university do not see the two questions as distinct. Indeed, perhaps precisely because of the way in which organizational change is occurring in business presently, the two problems seem to be one.

The two issues are not the same, and separating them is crucial to understanding the role of tenure in universities.