by Marie Josée M. Tremblay, CFICE Volunteer
If you are a community partner who participates in community-campus engagement (CCE) with a Canadian university, you may have heard of “tenure” or “tenure-track” professors. You may be wondering “What exactly is tenure? What does it do?” These questions are important as the value of tenure in academia is being increasingly put into question in Canada and the United States.
CFICE will help shed light on what tenure is, how it works (at Carleton), and some of its criticisms with these 5 things you should know about tenure.
- What is tenure?
Tenure is the greatest job security for professors in universities. According to Carleton University’s policies on tenure and promotion, it can be defined as the “permanency of appointment.” In other words, professors with tenure don’t need to worry about losing their jobs due to the nature of their research because they are permanent faculty members of their universities. (They can still lose their job if they break laws or violate institutional policies).
- How does tenure benefit universities and their faculty?
A few reasons why universities offer tenure concern the protection of academic staff and the reputation of the institutions.
Historically, tenure was a way to protect professors from losing their jobs for teaching, researching, or advocating for certain ideologies or facts that violated ideologies of religious institutions. Tenure is still founded on this idea and relates to what is now known as “academic freedom,” or the rights for professors to engage in practices that allow them to create knowledge, teach, and criticize their institutions without endangering their jobs. In essence, tenure was and remains a safeguard for professors’ jobs by allowing them to fully participate in academia without fear of negative consequences.
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Another justification for tenure is to celebrate the achievements of professors and promote institutions. Tenure is one of the greatest ways to reward and celebrate a professor’s academic career. Tenure is meant to motivate professors by being awarded to professors that contribute significantly to their institution, their community, and their field of study. In doing so, universities encourage professors to become better teachers, researchers, and active contributors within Canadian society. This reflects well not only on the professors themselves but also on the university as a whole.
- How do professors become tenured?
Becoming a tenured professor is an important achievement in the career of a professor, which is why the process is lengthy. A professor must undergo a yearly review until they merit, or earn, tenure. To determine who does or does not deserve to be tenured, universities outline criteria for tenure and promotions in collective agreements between the faculty and staff’s association and the university.
- What are the criteria for tenure and promotion?
Most universities have similar criteria and procedures for tenure and promotion. The criteria for becoming tenured usually considers the following:
- Credentials (i.e., doctorates)
- Teaching: Tenure considers all courses taught by a professor, including student feedback in teacher evaluations.
- Research: Universities tend to be focused on research and often value the research that their professors do and how this research contributes to their particular field.
- Contributions or service to the university
- Contributions to the community: To become tenured, professors need to show how they have contributed to the community. These contributions must be aligned with the university’s mandates and engagements to their societies and be related to their fields of study. This can include involvement in governmental departments, community organizations, and the private sector.
- What are some of the critiques of tenure?
Although, in theory, tenure sounds extremely beneficial to professors and universities, critics argue it can present an array of issues in practice:
- Professors with tenure might feel less pressure to publish and participate in research as they no longer need to do so to meet criteria for promotions or to safeguard their jobs. This means that academics could produce less research that could help shape public policy, advocate for changes in government organizations, or change societal values.
- In some cases, tenure has affected teaching in that it has limited innovation in teaching methods and a professor’s desire to change their teaching methods despite negative student feedback.
- Tenure is costly. It can cost millions for universities to tenure professors. This greatly impacts the quality of the educations that students receive, for universities are now employing part-time professors whose salaries are significantly lower than tenured (or non-tenured) professors. This also means that the number of persons conducting research is reduced. Part-time professors rarely receive funding for research from academic institutions and can have trouble finding funding elsewhere with the support of an accredited post-secondary institution.
- Universities are rewarding faculty members with tenure less and less often. A recent publication from Statistics Canada showed a 10% drop in the number of tenured professors between 1981 and 2007. The profile links these drops to a lack of demand for PhDs and university professors.[9] This is important as professors may feel that publishing academic articles might help them obtain academic positions and tenure more than their participation in the community. This impacts professors who work in community based research and participate in community-campus engagement with organizations aimed at tackling social issues such as homelessness prevention and violence against women, food security, and environmental sustainability.
These 5 things about tenure provide a brief explanation of tenure and its criticisms. Do you believe that tenure benefits universities or is it an outdated practice?
Want to know more about tenure and CCE? Then check out our piece The Impact of Tenure on Community-Campus Engagement!