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Tenure is a type of academic appointment that protects its holder from being fired or laid off except for cause, or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency or program discontinuation. Academic tenure originated in the United States in the early 20th century, and several other countries have since adopted it. Tenure is a means of defending the principle of academic freedom, which holds that it benefits society in the long run if academics are free to hold and espouse a variety of views, even if the views are unpopular or controversial.
One notable instance was the case of the resignation of Brown University president Elisha Andrews, who advocated Free Silver to reduce the impact on Americans and farmers who owed larger and larger loans due to deflation. The board of Brown University, many of whom were creditors and landowners (positions that benefited from deflation), told Andrews to cease his public advocacy. The dean of Yale Law School, Francis Wayland, argued that Andrews' free expression threatened donations to Brown, and that money was the life blood of universities. In 1897, Andrews was forced to offer his resignation, but there was a backlash by faculty and students who advocated that he should be protected under the principles of free speech. The board reversed its decision and refused Andrews' resignation. A year later, Andrews resigned anyway.
Before Nazism, Germany had been a leader in academic tenure, but free speech and tenure were severely curtailed under the Third Reich. Adolf Hitler called universal education "the most corroding and disintegrating poison". He appointed Education Minister Bernhard Rust, to ensure Nazi racial theories were integrated in university curriculums. This caused a purge of 1500 professors, and by 1939, nearly half of all faculty posts were occupied by Nazis.
In the late 1940s, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign fired several untenured economists, all of whom subsequently had distinguished careers, for teaching the "heresy" Keynesian economics.
Denmark adopted a more hierarchical management approach for universities in the early 2000s. This new system was introduced by parliament on proposal by the Minister of Science, Technology and Development, Helge Sander, based on his vision that Danish universities in the future should compete about funding in order to increase their attention to marketing and industry.
The controversial understanding of tenure in Denmark was demonstrated by University of Copenhagen in 2016, when the university fired the professor, Hans Thybo, due to what they regarded as unacceptable and untenable behavior (putting pressure on postdoc in regards of an employment survey and using private emails for work related matters despite repeated warnings about it). Thybo disputed the causes of his firing, and the researcher in question stated that he did not feel pressured.. The handling of the firing was criticized by other researchers. A later court decision ruled that the dismissal had not followed the collective agreements and Thybo received an economic compensation. Thybo had insisted that he should be reinstated in his previous position, but this was not supported by the court and the university did not rehire him.
Due to a university system that guarantees universities relative academic freedom, the position of professor in Germany is relatively strong and independent. As civil servants, professors have a series of attendant rights and benefits, yet this status is subject to discussion. In the W pay scale the professorial pay is related to performance rather than merely to age, as it was in C.
In response to Nazi manipulations of university faculty in Germany, the modern conception of tenure in US higher education originated with the American Association of University Professors' (AAUP) 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Jointly formulated and endorsed by the AAUP and the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), the 1940 Statement is endorsed by over 250 scholarly and higher education organizations and is widely adopted into faculty handbooks and collective bargaining agreements at institutions of higher education throughout the United States. This statement holds that, "The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition" and stresses that academic freedom is essential in teaching and research in this regard.
In the United States, tenure rights for teachers serving in (K-12) State school also have been in existence for more than a hundred years.
Supporters of tenure argue that the security granted by tenure is necessary to recruit talented individuals into university professorships, because in many fields private industry jobs pay significantly more; as Schrecker puts it, providing professors "the kind of job security that most other workers can only dream of" counterbalances universities' inability to compete with the private sector: "Universities, after all, are not corporations and cannot provide the kinds of financial remuneration that similarly educated individuals in other fields expect."Ellen Schrecker, The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University (The New Press, 2010), p. 26 Furthermore, Schrecker continues, because research positions require extreme specialization, they must consolidate the frequency and intensity of performance evaluations across a given career, and they cannot have the same flexibility or turnover rates as other jobs, making the tenure process a practical necessity: "A mathematician cannot teach a class on medieval Islam, nor can an art historian run an organic chemistry lab. Moreover, there is no way that the employing institution can provide the kind of retraining that would facilitate such a transformation... even the largest and most well-endowed institution lacks the resources to reevaluate and replace its medieval Islamicists and algebraic topologists every year. Tenure thus lets the academic community avoid excessive turnover while still ensuring the quality of the institution's faculty. It is structured around two assessments – one at hiring, the other some six years later – that are far more rigorous than those elsewhere in society and give the institution enough confidence in the ability of the successful candidates to retain them on a permanent basis."Ellen Schrecker, The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University (The New Press, 2010), p. 27-28 Tenure also locks in the non-pecuniary aspects of academic compensation, lowering the required salary.
Above all, however, tenure is essential because it protects academic freedom: not only in cases in which a scholar's politics may run counter to those of their department, institution, or funding bodies, but also and most often in cases when a scholar's work innovates in ways that challenge received wisdom in the field. As much as Ellen Schrecker identifies its flaws, she asserts tenure's crucial role in preserving academic freedom:
In elementary and secondary schools, tenure also protects teachers from being fired for personal, political, or other non-work related reasons: tenure prohibits school districts from firing experienced teachers to hire less experienced, less expensive teachers as well as protects teachers from being fired for teaching unpopular, controversial, or otherwise challenged curricula such as evolutionary biology, theology, and controversial literature.
If the "social justice" element of Schrecker's defense makes it seem like present-day assurances of academic freedom create a politically left echo chamber in academic departments, Skoble observes that tenure thus becomes all the more necessary to preserve a diversity of ideas: "There is an orthodoxy in the academy, a well-documented leftward slant in political affiliation. To Bruce, this is an argument against tenure, but my point is that the more I am persuaded that there is groupthink orthodoxy afoot, the more I want assurances that I would not get fired if I write an essay on free trade or the Second Amendment or a book on anarchism. I take it the counterargument is that the more entrenched the orthodoxy becomes, the less likely a heterodox scholar will be tenured, or even hired, in the first place... I can see that this poses a problem but fail to see how abolishing tenure would help. As things stand, some heterodox scholars do get hired and tenured.. If only the heterodox need formal protection, and we have a problem with growing orthodoxy, then eliminating the formal protection will exacerbate the problem."Aeon J. Skoble, "Tenure: The Good Outweighs the Bad – A Surresponse to James E. Bruce," in Journal of Markets & Morality Volume 22, Number 1 (Spring 2019): 207–210, quoted at 208–9.
Skoble argues categorically and plainly against critics that say "tenure protects incompetent professors": "My argument is that when this happens, it is a malfunction of the system, not an intrinsic feature of its proper use. The way it is supposed to work is that incompetent professors do not get tenure in the first place. The rebuttal is 'but they do, therefore tenure is a bad idea.' But that is like arguing that because you ran a red light and caused a train wreck, driving is a bad idea."Aeon J. Skoble, "Tenure: The Good Outweighs the Bad – A Surresponse to James E. Bruce," in Journal of Markets & Morality Volume 22, Number 1 (Spring 2019): 207–210, quoted at 209.
Economist Steven Levitt, who recommends the elimination of tenure (for economics professors) in order to incentivize higher performance among professors, also points out that a pay increase may be required to compensate faculty members for the lost job security. Organizational theorist Russel Ackoff did not believe in it, and went as far as to deposit a signed but undated resignation letter with the Dean of the Wharton School, to be used if and when the Dean thought it could be appropriate to do so.
Some U.S. states have considered legislation to remove tenure at public universities.
A further criticism of tenure is that it rewards complacency. Once professors are awarded tenure, they may begin putting reduced effort into their job, knowing that their removal is difficult or expensive to the institution. Another criticism is that it may cause the institution to tolerate incompetent professors if they are tenured.
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