<p>*"...Today some institution somewhere has, unaware, hired its last tenured professor. To be sure, there will be tenure-track hires next year, and the year after, and perhaps for a decade or more, but today somebody accepted a tenure-track job, and that person will outlive tenure at his or her institution.</p>
<p>The dismal numbers need only a brief review. According to the Department of Education, in 1975, 57 percent of university faculty members were tenured or on the tenure track. By 2007 that number had dropped to 31 percent.</p>
<p>A conservative projection puts the effective end of tenure within sighta generation might be enough to finish it off. Or perhaps we'll slide under 10 percent and stay there, making "tenured faculty" a rare and archaic academic designation, like the verger or the beadle....</p>
<p>...Attacks upon professorial tenure are a standby in the op-ed pages. The scenario is familiar: Professor A (edgy, tenured) does or says or publishes something controversial, perhaps brushing against the hot button of Aggrieved Group B. Media Outlet C picks up the story (or "reports on the controversy"), with wider coverage following. Professor A's university administration circles the wagons, issuing a that's-how-the-sausage-is-made reminder that academic freedom comes with a price. Finally, broader questions about the nature of and justifications for tenure are batted about, usually in the context of an economy where lifetime employment is an anachronistic luxury.</p>
<p>And that is why those skirmishes no longer matter, if they ever did. Tenure's fate has already been determined. It will be killed not by irresponsible academics or the barbs of the commentariat, but instead by the tightening grip of the American economy. Those who have criticized tenure may find its incremental oblivion less emotionally satisfying than a formal abolition, but the results will be the same...." *</p>
<p>Does anyone know the statistics on a person who attempts a PhD program vs. completing a PhD program vs. vs. obtaining a tenure track professorship vs. being a hired tenure professor?</p>
<p>I’d like to know the statistics on that as well. I always hear how difficult it is to be a tenured track professor but I never see any statistics. </p>
<p>Something like % of applicants in the US who applied for TT and % who were accepted by each field would be awesome.</p>
<p>I don’t have statistics, but the last open faculty position in my department had 200 applicants. This is a field that sends a lot of people to industry, too.</p>
<p>At MIT and Stanford, about half of the assistant professors will eventually attain tenure, although many will choose to voluntarily leave for a tenured offer, or at least a higher chance for tenure, at another school. At Harvard and Yale, the rate is about 20-25%. </p>
<p>However, note that the rates are heavily dependent upon the department. For example, certain departments at Harvard are notorious for not having tenured any of their junior faculty a decade or more, as all new tenure offers were provided to established senior faculty at other schools who transferred to Harvard. The same is surely true in certain departments at other schools.</p>
<p>Of course a simplistic examination of tenure rates doesn’t account for the difficulty of obtaining a tenure-track job offer at one of those schools in the first place. MIT and Stanford may boast of higher tenure rates than some lower-ranked schools, but only a tiny handful of scholars could ever garner a tenure-track job offer from those schools.</p>
<p>This would not be so much of a problem if the alternative wasn’t adjuncting for the equivalent of $25,000 a year with no benefits and no office. If they’re going to discontinue tenure, the field also needs to find a better way to hire contracted labor.</p>
<p>I agree, Juillet. In most universities, teaching three courses is a heavy/normal course-load (depending on whether it’s science or humanities) for tenure-track faculty, but for an adjunct, that’s still part-time, mostly because the adjunct isn’t expected to perform duties beyond teaching. I knew an adjunct who used to teach SIX courses at three different universities; he earned $16,000 with that schedule, with no benefits. You have to question the education that the students are getting, too, when the department hires cheap labor, not because the adjuncts are unqualified but because they have to spread themselves too thin to make a meager living.</p>
<p>I continue to believe that tenure is a good thing, simply because it does allow faculty to pursue areas of research that don’t fit into a neat academic niche. While some may slack off once tenure is granted, most do not. </p>
<p>The tenure process is long and arduous; it’s not always granted because high standards must be met, so those people who get it should be theoretically deserving of it. What I would like to see changed is the all-or-nothing part of the tenure process. Faculty who are denied tenure usually have a year in which they must find a position elsewhere. I’d like to see a third category, contract employment, where the person is deemed good enough to continue at the university but not accomplished enough for tenure. They could be hired for two-year intervals, renewable upon review, with full benefits and salary, more or less doing the same job without the guarantee of employment. This, of course, would put more pressure on departments and deans to evaluate the individual’s worth, especially since the denial of tenure is usually a non-confrontational way to get rid of mediocre professors.</p>
<p>I totally agree, MWFN, with the caveat that I think the contract periods should be longer (5-7 years, with 3 years for the more tentative professors). It can take 2 years just to win any grant funding to try to convince them that you are good enough stay on. I think any department can survive with a small contingent of tenured professors and maybe a larger contingent of contracted professors who have labs, offices, benefits, the whole nine, and go back to adjuncts being professionals in the field who moonlight to teach classes because of their expertise in a particular area - not out-of-work PhDs struggling to get by. It’s not fair to anyone involved, really (well, except the administrators who get to line their pockets by overpopulating themselves).</p>
<p>Wow - really, 5-7 year contracts? The opportunity for tenure - and hence an effectively guaranteed position for life - is already a fantasy beyond what regular Americans could ever expect. But now you’re proposing that even those profs who fail their tenure reviews but nevertheless fall into Momwaitingfornew’s intermediate third category should be provided 5-7 years of job security, which is almost as good as tenure itself? Most private sector jobs won’t provide even 5-7 days of job security. </p>
<p>Full disclosure: I’m of the opinion that academic tenure should probably be abolished or at least vastly reformed. Tenure suffers from adverse selection: it is those faculty who value tenure the most who are precisely the ones who deserve it the least. Productive tenured faculty do not really need tenure, as their productivity ensures that they will always have a job, either at their university or another. It is the unproductive tenured faculty who reap by far the greatest benefit from tenure, as their tenure shields them from the consequences of their lack of productivity, but they are also precisely the ones who should not be allowed to shelter behind the shield of tenure. {Note, I also agree that there is an issue regarding the measurement of productivity of interdisciplinary work that momwaitingfornew alluded to, but that calls for improved measurement systems, not for simply providing blanket lifetime job security.} </p>
<p>But, even putting the problems of tenure aside, to propose a 5-7 year guaranteed contract for those who barely miss tenure would be a truly tough sell today, given the current financial system at many universities.</p>
<p>From my view in the technical fields, tenure offers a benefit since labs are often very expensive and time-consuming to set up. I know my lab’s been around for well over 30 years, and we benefit from all the various machines we’ve accumulated through the years. It’s also a nice way for people with currently unpopular research to stay around, even though they might not be bringing in the most money at the moment (the people that have been involved in fuel cells/photovoltaics for are probably aware of the political cycle that happens).</p>