Boardroom

An Alternate Universe for Faculty Promotion

BY FRANÇOIS FURSTENBERG I have a small but persistent fantasy about academic life, about an alternate review and promotion system for university faculty. Here’s what I imagine . . . You were lucky to be hired as an assistant professor into a tenure-track job. Now six years later, you’re coming up for tenure. You’d like…

Empty classroom with professor

Rising Above Second-Class Citizenship through a Teaching Track to Tenure

BY KRIS BOUDREAU AND MARK RICHMAN In her recent survey of a handful of research universities that have improved conditions for their teaching faculty—particularly those that provide job stability and paths for professional advancement—the Chronicle’s Becky Supiano suggests that while such a “teaching track” distinct from a tenure track can “elevate undergraduate instruction and the…

figure showing data related to policies on stopping the tenure clock for family care at four-year institutions

AAUP Report Offers Snapshot of Tenure Practices and Policies

BY HANS-JOERG TIEDE Today, we released the 2022 AAUP Survey of Tenure Practices, the first survey of its kind since 2004. The findings offer a snapshot of prevailing tenure practices and policies at four-year institutions with tenure systems. Among those findings, the survey found that tenure is highly prevalent throughout US higher education, with 87 percent…

black chalkboard with the word TENURE in chalk; a chalk imprint of an eraser appears in the lower-right corner

A Campus President Defends Tenure

BY ROBERT A. SCOTT At the recent National Conservative Conference, the author J. D. Vance, a Yale Law School graduate and former investment banker who is running for the US Senate from Ohio, quoted former president Richard Nixon’s salvo that “the professors are the enemy.” He joins a chorus of those challenging the authority and…

black computer screen with TARGETED THREAT in read amid repeating lines of the numbers one and zero in various patterns

The Real Threat of Tenure

BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE In recent years, right-wing lawmakers have mounted attacks on tenure in Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Kentucky. These efforts have been based on the claim that tenure unduly protects liberal professors who squelch the voices of conservative students. Tenure has also been cited as an obstacle to getting rid of underperforming faculty in…

I Wish I Had Written That

BY HANK REICHMAN This week, within a span of 24 hours, I read two newly published articles that so coincided with my recent thinking and writing (and, at least implicitly, with each other) that I immediately felt a bit jealous that I hadn’t written them.  Of course, there’s plenty of space for multiple voices arguing…

road sign next to grass and trees says "Welcome to Georgia. We're glad Georgia is on your mind." Sign has blue background an image of a peach.

Post-Tenure Review’s Expanding Impact in Georgia and Beyond 

BY MATTHEW BOEDY A decade ago a red flag about post-tenure review was waved in Texas. It was then that the University of Texas system put “more teeth” in its post-tenure review policy and Inside Higher Ed mused that “the step by UT—one of the largest public universities in the nation, with 5,268 tenured faculty…