It’s the End of Tenure as We Know It

Those who have had a near-death experience talk about seeing their lives pass before their eyes. Sitting in a Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents meeting in August, I saw my 21-year career as a college professor pass before me. After less than 10 minutes of discussion, the regents voted almost unanimously to lay off 32 tenured professors from two branch campuses that had joined the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in a merger back in 2018. This was a group of experienced educators focused on teaching students in the first two years of college; one, ironically, was a Regents Teaching Excellence Award winner.

While the board seemed mostly indifferent to this precedent-making measure of tenured faculty members losing their jobs as a cost-saving strategy, the UW Milwaukee Faculty Senate weeks earlier rejected Chancellor Mark Mone’s proposal to lay off faculty by a vote of 24 to 11. Senate members voiced concerns that the regents’ policy had not been followed, in that “all feasible alternatives” had not been “considered.” In addition, they raised ethical questions about calling one of the university’s colleges, the College of General Studies, which served as the academic home for the merged branch campuses, a “program”—which it had never been deemed before—in order to fit relaxed tenure policies that allow for faculty layoffs when “programs” are eliminated.

“Tenure” is a term that is perceived differently in various circles. Those hostile to higher education or at least wary of its potential to align young minds with the political left have used it as a punching bag to deflate the perceived power of faculty. Here in Wisconsin, former governor Scott Walker led such a crusade and successfully eliminated tenure protections from state law in 2015. To help complete this weakening of tenure in the state, the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents changed their policies in 2016 to make it easier to lay off tenured faculty members.

The public often is not sympathetic about the rare instances of tenured faculty losing their jobs because they believe no one should have a “protected” job for life, since there are few other careers that enjoy a similar special status. In the short discussion of Mone’s proposal, Regent Timothy Nixon voiced that popular sentiment when he said, “People think of it [tenured professor] as a permanent job, because it functionally has become that. But that’s not what it is.” He prefaced that comment by saying the discontinuance proposal was not “an attack on tenure.” But many of us in academia could not disagree more.

According to the American Association of University Professors, the concept of tenure refers to an “indefinite appointment” that faculty members earn based on excellence in teaching and research that would be “terminated only for adequate cause or under extraordinary circumstances.” Only 20 to 25 percent of faculty jobs carry this status as universities and colleges increasingly rely on adjunct or part-time instructors, who often have less job stability, lower salaries and fewer benefits.

Academic freedom has always been the key justification for tenure to allow professors to impart knowledge to their students without having to worry that their jobs could be compromised by covering content displeasing to some faction. The same goes for research; many believe that professors should be able to explore their ideas in scholarship freely and fully without the threat of being fired for controversial aspects of their inquiry. Having a stable faculty workforce achieved by tenure is positive for students as well, since mentoring relationships can develop over time, and often professors who have worked at their institutions for years bring a host of networking opportunities that benefit students through internships, research projects and service learning.

The prospect of a tenure-track job lured me to Wisconsin from Chicago, where I was teaching as an adjunct with little job security. The idea of establishing myself at a two-year UW system college sounded ideal, as I anticipated working closely with students starting out in higher ed, many of whom were the first in their families to go to college; the campus in Waukesha has an open-access mission. Twenty-one years later and after several different reorganizations by the UW system, my campus was ordered to close. With this announcement in March came the news of large-scale layoffs of almost everyone on the Waukesha campus, including 70 nonfaculty employees in a wide array of roles, in addition to faculty members who earned tenure through a rigorous evaluative process lasting at least six years for most.

What is saddest for me about losing my tenured job is that I used that “commitment” from the UW system to be committed back. Defying the stereotype of professors who, once they achieve tenure, become lazy and do less, I did more to honor that designation bestowed upon me. Creating a veterans’ organization on campus with its own resource center and establishing a successful honors program were just two highlights of my post-tenure career that allowed me to connect with students’ needs and nourish their growth.

The explanations often used to eliminate access institutions like my campus and all the hardworking, dedicated faculty and staff who work there involve enrollment numbers, which often fluctuate over time. UW Milwaukee chancellor Mone went from making statements in 2015 saying the campus “must strive to comport with AAUP principles and policies” on tenure to now offering in his letter to College of General Studies faculty that “tenure must be balanced with demand”; he compared UWM and other colleges like it to businesses, as opposed to UWM being an intellectual institution that values its workers, those who started on its main campus and those who joined later as a result of system mergers. Universities are increasingly becoming more like the corporate world, with those at the top as administrators earning huge salaries compared to those in the classroom making significantly less. At an earlier Board of Regents meeting this year, the board gave significant raises to Mone and UW system president Jay Rothman, who now both earn in the half a million dollar range, while College of General Studies professors who are being told UWM cannot afford to keep them make about $60,000 on average. (Rothman, not incidentally, is a former corporate lawyer who specialized in mergers and acquisitions.)

I wish I could reassure readers that what is happening in Wisconsin is staying in Wisconsin, but this shedding of previously protected tenured faculty with the amorphous “money and enrollment challenges” rationale as administrator positions and salaries continue to swell is happening elsewhere. Western Illinois University, as just one example, recently announced cuts of nearly 90 positions, including all nine of its library faculty (eight of whom are tenured or on the tenure track). My concern is that, ultimately, academic freedom will be compromised, as few will feel protected to speak out against their institutions and their problematic measures, for fear that their program may be next on the chopping block.

Meanwhile, all eyes are on Wisconsin governor Tony Evers, a former state school superintendent, who has prided himself on being the education governor attempting to rectify some of the contentious issues left by his predecessor, Walker. Will he be able to do something in his upcoming budget to reinvigorate the importance of tenure in the state, to live up to Wisconsin’s motto, “Forward”? Or will we all watch it slowly die before our eyes?