Chasing Tenure

It has been nearly a year and a half since I wrote a blog post. I’ve been really busy at work and time just got away from me. In a future post, I’ll detail what it was that occupied my time. Plus, there are only 5 of you who read this blog and with such a long absence, that number has probably dropped to 1.

In the world of higher education there is this rather nebulous term "tenure" and most people, even some academics, aren't sure what it means. Generally speaking, when a person gets their terminal degree (PhD, EdD, DBA, etc.) and they get hired on at certain colleges or universities, the first question to arise is whether the job is "tenure track". It's an odd question given that the word "tenure" normally means something regarding the length of time someone has worked. Sort of like "during Tim’s 5-year tenure at the job, sales increased by 20%" That's not what is being referred to in the higher education sense. 

Generally speaking, a person is hired as an untenured assistant professor. In essence, they are on probation before they get a permanent contract (tenured). This period normally runs about 5 years and during that time people are expected to hit certain metrics regarding their scholarship, teaching and some form of department service. I’d say that scholarship, or rather research, accounts for about 90% of what matters. There will be handbooks saying that all count to some degree but in reality, it’s “publish or perish”. This scholarship will be some mixture of the quantity and quality of the research produced. In my field of economics, what counts is the number of peer-reviewed publications in journals and the quality of the outlet. 

Here’s a crude but rather effective example. At the places I’ve worked, to get tenure, the professor is expected to produce about 7 journal articles. That’s the quantity part. However, 2 of those must be in A-quality journals and the other 5 in B-quality journals. The places I’ve worked at don’t accept any C-quality journals. Where do these grades come from? Heck, some researchers do research on the quality of the journals! Keep in mind that this must happen in that 5-year probationary period, so you better be working on multiple projects at the same time. However, at a place like Harvard (which would never hire a slob like me) they expect the same 7 papers but they only accept  A-quality work. Yikes! But depending on the field, journal articles might not have any bearing at all. In the humanities, you generally have to write a book and get it accepted at an academic press. That’s also really tough to do. Needless to say, in that 5-year period, you better be publishing or you’re going to perish. If you are denied tenure, they’ll give you one more school year to find another job and then you’re fired. 

People ask why do we have tenure at all. Giving someone a lifetime contract seems silly. They could sit on their hands for the next 40 years and do nothing. That is true and some folks have done exactly that. However, the reason we have the tenure system is for something called academic freedom. As we enter the second presidency of Donald Trump in 2025, this is critically important. Let’s say that I’m a researcher and I discover that the world is round. However, the government and church say that this is not true. Without some form of protection, researchers would only be allowed to work on “approved” topics or to simply confirm what the government or church says. For instance, Trump and the GOP don’t believe in climate change. Without some form of tenure, I could be fired for investigating rising sea levels and the loss of polar ice caps. It’s a real threat and I’d  suggest you do a search on the term “assaults on academic tenure in Florida”. 

However, what I really wanted to talk about in this post is when people (especially people who share my skin tone) get bad advice on chasing tenure. 

I’ll relate a few stories which did happen during my time at various universities, but I’ll change the names to protect the identities of the people. The first incident happened when I was working at the University of Alabama. I had been granted tenure in 2004 because I had produced 9 journal articles (3 A-quality and 6 B-quality) during my tenure period. I was also serving in the capacity of an assistant dean in the business school. One of my jobs was to work towards retention of the black faculty. Down in our Marketing Department was a black woman professor named Len. Unlike me, Len didn’t have tenure. In fact, she was newly hired and trying to make her way up the ranks. My assistant dean job required me to check in periodically with Len and her department chair to make sure that she was doing the right things and was on track to get tenure. 

I would meet with Len occasionally and she always assured me that everything was fine. The Marketing Department had given her tons of money to start a “Sales Lab” which was state of the art. In this lab, they had cameras so that students could record themselves trying to sell or market products. The lab could record the reactions of potential clients in direct sales or business-to-business sales. The sales program in that department was taking off. In fact, the students in the program were winning national competitions in sales. All of this was due to the diligent efforts of Len. She was really a rock star of student-led sales instruction.

However, I would look over the promotion and tenure documents of that department and have serious questions. No where did it say that great student mentorship would get a potential faculty member tenure. Sure, teaching counted towards the process of being tenured, but it mostly revolved around the quantity and quality of peer-reviewed academic publications. I’d ask Len and her department chair about this but neither seemed too concerned. Len was getting millions of dollars in resources to run the lab and the university was soaking in the glory of having such a great program. 

I told Len that she needed to be working on her research and publishing papers. She ignored my advice. After all, year after year she was getting great reviews from her department regarding the work that she was doing. When Len presented her tenure portfolio to the tenured faculty, the faculty voted against her candidacy. Why? They said that she had done marvelous work with the sales lab, which they had taken into account, but her academic publications were severely lacking. 

She countered that running the sales lab was all consuming and they had not mentioned the publications. Their response was that they assumed that she was engaging in her scholarship and publishing, so they never needed to mention it. That was a damn lie. 

As I mentioned before, once a person is denied tenure, they are given an additional year to hang around as they search for a new job. It’s sometimes referred to as the terminal year. Len didn’t use that year to look for a new job. Instead, she sued. She felt that she had been treated unfairly and wanted to fight to be promoted to associate professor and be granted tenure. 

I was called to testify in her case. I said that both parties were at fault. It was the fault of the university to “assume” that Len was doing her research, which they knew that they’d use to decide if she were granted tenure. Never once did they see any evidence that she was engaging in academic scholarship yet, they gave her a ton of money to run that lab every year. I also faulted Len. She could not seriously sit there and say that she did not know how she was going to be evaluated for tenure. Why? I showed her the documents and constantly stressed to her the need to engage in some serious scholarship which could be published. 

In the end, Len won her case and was awarded tenure and promotion. The key was those annual reviews. The university never once told her that she was in trouble regarding tenure. Even though they assumed she was doing published work, they failed to tell her that she was not meeting the standards laid out in their own documents. They argued that they didn’t need to tell her since it was plainly written but you can’t tell people every year, in writing, that things are fine then in the last year say that everything is terrible.

It was interesting to me how these cases of bait and switch would happen to black faculty members so often. The few black faculty members  on any campus would be asked to mentor black students and be on so many committees and to go speak at public events. All of this stuff would suck up so much of their time. But when it came down to evaluating them for tenure and promotion, the assumption was that they were getting their scholarship done and published anyway. These extra burdens were never placed on the white professors although it would happen to women often. I would scream and yell at the black faculty members to never trust their departments. Refuse to do the “extra” work. Concentrate on the core stuff. I can not tell you how unpopular I was with the black faculty. It really hurt at times.

When I was at the University of Oklahoma, I was asked to lunch by a young untenured black guy from another department. He wanted to know what he needed to do to get tenure. I looked over the tenure documents from their department, which were a bit different from my home department of economics, but not so much so. We talked pleasantly and I told him about the quantity and quality of published papers I thought he’d need. He looked at me perplexed. He said he wanted to know what was really required to be tenured. What committees did he need to be on? Who did he need to befriend? In essence, what was the “secret sauce” that got people over the hurdle. I told him that having people “like” him was all fine but the best way to ensure success was to meet and exceed the written guidelines that these people had laid out. That guy never talked to me again. 

I was seen as some type of weirdo by not trusting my colleagues to treat me like one of the “good ole boys” who was willing to join their club. It was my numbers and not my friendships (especially since I mostly hated them all) which protected me in my chase for tenure and promotions.