By PAUL RICH

Given the technological and economic transfiguration of America that is buffeting the labor market, and the prospect many Americans face of having to change jobs on a number of occasions to meet the challenge that those changes present, the idea that a job is for life and will be held without serious periodic review naturally raises eyebrows. The majority of Americans will have to retrain and learn new skills several times during their lives. So the modest suggestion that the time has come for university staff self-examination being put on a more rational basis does not seem outrageous.

The decision to re-examine academic tenure does not lead to simplistic choices between democracy and despotism. Change canbe made without going to wicked extremes. After all, if environmental-impact assessment to protect birds is widespread, a continuing assessment of teaching quality to protect students should be acceptable.

Why Reform Tenure?

There are lots of alternative models that would give faculty protection against arbitrary dismissal but satisfy the demand for review. The single greatest obstacle is the vocal group who would like to give the impression that anyone who wants to see a revision of tenure procedures is a survivor of red-scare days, a spiritual descendant of Wisconsin's Senator Joe McCarthy and bent on undermining the Bill of Rights.

That is for from the case. The critics of current tenure practices are trying to exercise their own civil liberties and right of discussion in the face of what seems a monolithic educational establishment that permits little democratic participation in its affairs. A large number of the critics of tenure, probably a majority, are primarily concerned that good teaching is not recei ving its due. They are not trying to tell people what to teach, but to get people to teach.

The North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research has put the problem succinctly: "The UNC [University of North Carolina] system should replace the familiar academic motto of 'publish or parish' with a new standard of "teach well or no tenure."' Reports by the Center and the John Locke Foundation on teaching policies at state universities followed the widely publicized fracas at UNC-Chapel Hill over the denial of

tenure to Professor Paul Ferguson, a complicated affair which led to speculation about whether tenure truly protects academic freedom and fosters original research or whether it shields professors from accountability, allows some of the senior staff to be part-time workers with fulltime salaries, or glorifies research at the expense of teaching.

Regardless of how one feels about Dr. Ferguson as an individual, his case highlights current issues in North Carolina higher education. Retention of the professor, the recipient of three teaching awards, was demanded in a petition signed by 3,700 students. Dr. Ferguson himself made what seemed a reasonable case: "There ought to be a place for people who want to teach undergraduates without doing research, if for no other reason than it leaves others who want to do research free to do research." And no less a figure than Ernest Boyer (the president of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching) frankly commented, "It's absolutely true that during the past 20 to 30 years the reward system has shifted dramatically to research and publication." If universities do not take seriously their own mandates and work out a responsible reward system that acknowledges teaching, we're  risking external intervention in one form or another.

Rights of Students and Parents

Those who want to help to reform tenure practices should prepare for the fray, and one way to do so is to give thought to the sloppy arguments by tenure proponents about rights. Given the constant interjection into the tenure debate of the issue of faculty rights, a special word should be included about the rights of students.

Students at American universities are not there because of choice, contrary to what educators sometimes claim. In American society, much more than in many other societies, universities have acquired a dominance over not Only the conventional "academic" disciplines but over most of the instruction offered at a post-secondary level. In contrast with countries such as Germany, where the vocational teaching sector has a real life of its own, the United States depends cm universities for a large portion of its job training. The merit of that can be debated, but the universality of higher education is the dc facto situation in the United States. Alternative approaches to vocational and technical education at the post-secondary level have never had the success that they have had elsewhere.

Therefore, the B.A. may be a medieval vestige of privilege, but it has increasingly become the driver's license for entry to the labor market. Faculty may pine for an ivied campus of Shakespeare enthusiasts, but student bodies are not composed of a small cadre of privileged who would be comfortable at Heidelberg or Oxford. Far more than their counterparts in other coflntries,the American campus serves a broad spectrum of young people, most of whom will not spend their lives in pursuit of footnotes. They have a legitimate interest in the practicality and quality of the teaching they receive.

Because American universities are more vocational than universities elsewhere, parents and students wonder how they measure the effectiveness of what teachers do in the classroom and what chances that graduates will have of getting a job. A big investment is involved. Moreover, people realize that we live in an era where the reaction time of sailboats would seem a more promising model for institutions than that of battleships. Are universities keeping pace?

This is not derogatory to the time-honored concept of a liberal arts education. There are plenty of places for someone to earn an flndergraJuate degree in the liberal arts and then pursue graduate study. But that is not the main focus of American universities and it is time to drap the pretense that it is. Long overdue is a frank acceptance of the strong vocational role of many colleges and universities. They never were, they are not, and they are not going to be liberal arts institutions, properly understood.

Those who are so reluctant to consider a refashioning of teaching employment practices should be asked to explain what has created this singular exception in academia to the celebrated spirit of free inquiry and to openness to change. A possible answer is that it is selfinterest which is protecting tenure agreements, not any lofty sentiments about free speech. The First Amendment applies to university staff just as much as it does to anyone. If somehow it does not apply to teachers, then it is high time to discover why. If it does apply to teachers, then we must look elsewhere than the free speech issue for the real justifications of tenure.

The silence in academia about tenure also reflects the schizoid position of American academic leaders regarding research and teaching: seldom has a problem been danced about for so many years and been the subject of so many studies without a successful resolution. The bald truth is that the huffing and puffing about faculty doing both research and teaching is because teaching is secretly regarded as inferior to research, but nobody wants to own up to the persistence of that prejudice. University presidents have to believe that their professors are doing serious research, even though the results are pitiful.

The University of the Americas System

At The University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico, where I am a Professor of International Relations, a system has been in operation for two years which suggests an alternative to tenure. (The University has for many years been a fully accredited member of the Southern States Association. It was founded as Mexico City College in 1940 and has always had American students as well as Latin American students.) With faculty cooperation, and with the help of faculty monitoring committees, the university has set up a point system. Depending on the professor's grade, a certain number of points must be earned yearly. These points are awarded for teaching, research and publications, and for community service. A professor can elect to earn the points over a three-year period and have them averaged on a yearly basis, which allows for long-term research projects.

A large number of professors earn most of their points by teaching. Others primarily acquire points by administration or authoring articles. The majority put together a package which includes several activities. An important aspect is that the student evaluations influence the number of points awarded for teaching, and hence good teaching gets recognition. Another noteworthy feature is that those who exceed their point quota are paid a bonus. Hence merit is rewarded and an energetic professor who successfully   publishes, holds offices in professional associations, and teaches can expect a sizeable check.

Not fulfilling the required number of points does not end a career, but it puts the professor on notice about his or her performance. Since the inception of the scheme, which was much debated before its inauguration, four faculty members have left whose departure could possibly be attributed to failing to come close to earning the points that their colleagues have earned. The long term effect on the university remains to be seen, but there is evidence that a number of teachers who were not carrying their weight have been jolted out of their lethargy.

Speaking personally, I like the plan because I have always felt that it was unfair that some members of a department should carry the work load for others. If I have a large number of theses to supervise and use my holidays and vacations for research and lesson preparation, I think there should be recognition of that fact. I am happy with the idea of friendly competition with colleagues as far as classroom reputation and writing are concerned.

In effect, such a system tenures everyone without laying down a "publish or perish" dictum and gives teaching an equal standing with research. Instead of waiting six years for a tenure decision, a new faculty member has job security within the perimeters that his colleagues have helped to establish. The University of the Americas plan does not compel a faculty member to do research or to teach a heavy load or to hit the conference trail or to supervise theses. What it does do is ask a professor to do something. A professor should be put on notice who is not contributing anywhere near what colleagues are contributing, not teaching a reasonable load, not taking students for thesis preparation, not doing anything in the way of community service. And in extreme cases the point system provides an objective standard for termination.

Conclusion

Whether The University of the Americas has an answer to the tenure question or not, something must be done about how tenure  rewards research and not  teaching.

What does academic tenure as it stands really say about our society and about academics? A professor is no more and no less deserving of protection from harassment for his or her beliefs than the short order cook, gas station attendant or police officer. In fact, he or she is at least supposedly better able to deal with assaults on personal freedom than those with less education. It's time that the tenure system was subject to searching scrutiny. Is it protecting human rights, or is it sometimes simply protecting laziness?

We are now in the midst of a great national debate about medical treatment. To the medical profession's credit, few doctors have said that this discussion was only for physicans. One would hope that professional educators would receive criticisms about tenure and mediocre teaching in a similarly open fashion. But then, hope springs eternal. CJ
 

Rich is a professor of international relations at the University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. This article is excerpted from Sacred Cow: Tenure and the Demise of Academic Accountability (John  Locke Foundation, 1994).

Published in: Carolina Journal, The John Locke Foundation Inc., Vol. 4, No. 3, December 1994 - January 1995, USA, 1994

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