Troubled Times for Tenure

By PRISCILLA PAINTON

Should a university have the right to get rid of a "grossly incompetent" teacher? Should a professor whose classroom performance does students a "disservice" be sent packing? Outside the ivory tower, few people would say no. But when the University of California, Berkeley, last year became the first school to draft rules for firing tenured teachers, some charged that this amounted to an assault on their intellectual freedom. "You'll never go broke overestimating how sensitive the tenure issue is to faculty," says Richard Chait, director of the National Center for Post-Secondary Governance and Finance at the University of Maryland. "It's like abortion or flag burning in another walk of life."

Berkeley's action is only one sign that the once sacrosanct institution is vulnerable these days. Last month, in a 9-to-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that a university could not refuse to open its tenure files to ) federal investigators when challenged on the grounds of race or sex discrimination. Meanwhile, some universities and politicians are questioning the whole notion of tenure, which at some schools can mean permanent employment after as little as three years on the job. A 1987 survey by the Department of Education found that during the preceding three years, 93% of U.S. colleges and universities had taken some action that "may have had the effect of reducing the proportion of faculty members on tenure." Arkansas legislators last year required all state campuses to review tenured teachers annually, partly to decide whether to retain them. Says Mike Gauldin, spokesman for Governor Bill Clinton: "This is how we're going to make sure our money is well spent."

What was once considered a lifetime job is no longer such a sure thing. Dismissals of faculty "for cause" -- ranging from sexual harassment and misappropriation to sheer ineptitude -- have risen from virtually zero in the '60s and '70s to about a dozen a year. For the first time in its 123-year history, for example, the University of Kansas is trying to fire a tenured teacher, anthropology Professor Dorothy Willner, 62, who is accused of failing to carry out her "academic responsibilities" and of behaving abusively toward her colleagues and superiors. Says Willner, who denied all the charges in 120 hours of hearings last fall: "Even if the allegations were true, I do not believe they would be grounds for dismissal of a tenured professor who is an active and recognized scholar."

Part of the reason for the current tenure debate is the 1986 federal law that eliminates mandatory retirement at age 70. The prospect of elderly -- and high-salaried -- professors hanging on until they drop at the lectern has some cost-conscious administrators worried. "With the uncapping of retirement, tenure becomes a guarantee of lifetime work," says James Vinson, president of the University of Evansville in Indiana. Many schools have begun to nudge older professors out the door with a variety of enticements. Johns Hopkins University decided three years ago to increase the basic pension payments of departing 65-year-olds by 20% to 30% -- a bonus that shrinks the longer they stay. Beloit College in Wisconsin has a program that eases professors into retirement while younger colleagues, with whom they are paired as mentors, are phased into full-time teaching positions.

Though tenure is most often defended in the name of "academic freedom," says Chait, its advocates are really trying to protect "economic security." What may preserve the system in the short term, however, is simple demographics. According to a study released last fall by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, there will be only eight candidates for every ten teaching positions in the arts and sciences during the decade starting in 1997. That could create a seller's market in which a dwindling pool of qualified professors may be able to hold out for higher salaries -- and firmer tenure guarantees.

With reporting by Susan Tifft/New York