Improving the Tenure Process
Inside and outside the walls of higher education, the luster of tenure has diminished. What should its future be? As of 2023, only 23% of faculty members held full-time tenured positions. The public increasingly perceives that tenure has devolved from its original noble purpose of safeguarding academic freedom to become a mere promise of job security, even for incompetent or unproductive professors. This frustration is not unfounded. The rising cost of obtaining a college degree has outpaced wage growth, while a majority of recent college graduates find themselves underemployed because their degrees have not prepared them for success in the workplace. These trends, combined with a lack of meaningful reforms from within the academy, have led policymakers in several states to enact policies that limit or eliminate tenure at public universities.