ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 16, 1996 TAG: 9612160004
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PHILIP WALZER LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
Is tenure a vital perk allowing professors to engage in free inquiry, or a useless relic shielding aging incompetents?
The debate - fueled by state budget cuts and corporate downsizing - has been percolating at colleges and in legislatures across the country. Attempts to restrict tenure have evoked bitter protests.
Virginia educators and politicians say they have found a happy compromise. The idea, called ``post-tenure review,'' is to evaluate senior faculty members annually and hold out the threat of dismissal if the weakest ones don't show progress within a few years.
``In any work force, you want people to be productive,'' said Margaret Miller, associate director of the State Council of Higher Education. ``When they're not, it's time for them to do something else.''
Paul Metz, president of the Faculty Senate at Virginia Tech, said: ``It's a pretty sensible compromise. We all lose when tenure is abused or misunderstood as protection for incompetence.''
In 1993, Old Dominion University became the first state-supported school in Virginia to institute such a policy. Legislators liked the idea so much, they made it mandatory this year: The General Assembly told colleges they would not be eligible for faculty raises next month unless they adopted ``rigorous'' review policies for tenured professors.
Last month, the State Council of Higher Education approved all the colleges' policies. Unlike in other states, Virginia's policies ``were established with very little muss and fuss,'' Miller told council members. ``It has been a major accomplishment that there has been no disturbance about this issue.''
The details of the colleges' policies vary, but several follow ODU's approach: All faculty members who have tenure are evaluated annually. After two straight negative evaluations, the professor - with his chairman or dean - crafts a strategic plan to shore up his weaknesses. If he doesn't improve in two more years, the university can exact a range of punishments, including dismissal.
College officials say it's too early to judge the effect of the policies, since most schools only adopted them in the past year. At ODU, no professor has been fired under the 3-year-old policy, Provost Jo Ann Gora said. But she said she believes it has led six to 12 professors to either leave ODU or retire.
The big winners are the students, Gora said. Now they are less likely to get substandard education, and they have more power.
``One of the most important measures of teaching effectiveness is student evaluations,'' she said. ``If a faculty member consistently gets poor student evaluations, we know something is wrong. And now we can do something about it.''
The reactions of professors have ranged from support to trepidation.
Jay Paul, chairman of the English department at Christopher Newport University, is among the backers. ``There are people who could benefit from a little more motivating,'' he said. ``This may not be fashionable to say in academic circles, but I think we ought to be answerable for the quality of our work.''
But several faculty members fear the policies are the first step in dismantling the institution of tenure.
``What we have concern about is that it may be used to get rid of persons that the administration may not want around,'' said James Tromater, a University of Richmond psychology professor who is past president of the state conference of the American Association of University Professors, a staunch advocate of tenure.
At ODU, some professors are also worried. Sidney Roberts Jr., a mechanical engineering professor, fears the reviews could lead to the firing of professors in disciplines that lose favor with administrators: ``It would all be done in the name of efficiency, of moving into the 21st century, but it would be done on the backs of the liberty of the faculty to pursue their fields.''
State Sen. John Chichester, R-Fredericksburg and co-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who has championed post-tenure review, dismisses many of the professors' concerns.
``This has nothing to do with academic freedom,'' he said. ``That's an old cliche that in today's world is archaic. No university president wants to dismantle academic freedom that I've heard of.''
Colleges elsewhere have tried to get rid of tenure altogether. In 1994, Bennington College - an elite liberal arts school in Vermont - fired more than two dozen professors and switched to renewable contracts.
But Chichester doesn't foresee a move in Richmond to follow that path. Neither does Elizabeth McClanahan, chairwoman of the State Council of Higher Education. Post-tenure review, she said, is a ``reasonable compromise.''
Professors usually get tenure in their mid-30s to mid-40s for a record of strong research or teaching. Rarely are tenured professors fired, except in cases of ``moral turpitude,'' said Miller of the state council.
Colleges estimate that 50 tenured professors are dismissed nationwide every year - less than one-thousandth of 1 percent of the total, Miller said. In Virginia, she said, the average is probably no more than one a year.
Some Virginia schools have long been conducting annual evaluations of tenured faculty. But before the post-tenure review policies were established, Miller said, there usually was no set procedure leading to dismissal.
In their policies, schools generally give professors at least two years to improve their performance. ``There's adequate notice built in,'' said Elaine Witty, dean of the school of education at Norfolk State University. ``There are a lot of people who may be very good teachers who for various reasons stopped living up to their potential. A clause like that will give them an opportunity to make the kind of change they want to make anyway.''
Four universities - George Mason, the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and Virginia Military Institute - have not set any interval between the time a professor is judged inadequate and the time he must be disciplined if he doesn't improve. Another school, Clinch Valley College, allowed an eight-year maximum interval.
That didn't sit well with members of the state council last week. They recommended that the four schools set a time limit and that Clinch Valley shorten its time line.
Tenure has been a mainstay at U.S. colleges since the early part of the century. But lately it has been under increasing attack, as states watch the example of corporate downsizing and feel the pinch of budget cuts. Also feeding the debate is growing concern that tenured professors are not teaching enough classes at big research institutions.
The main defense of tenure has been to protect academic freedom and the expression of unpopular views - such as support of communism during the McCarthy era. ``Even fringe views are useful,'' Miller said. ``They force you to argue the rational reasons for the viewpoints you have.''
Is tenure still needed to safeguard free speech on campus?
David Breneman, dean of UVa's Curry School of Education, doesn't think so. ``I've never been persuaded of that'' rationale, he said. ``There will always be threats, but it seems to me the typical faculty member would have available a series of due-process challenges,'' such as grievance procedures.
But Robert O'Neil, a former president of UVa, cited two recent examples of Washington officials with unpopular opinions who were forced to leave their jobs and return to academia: Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders - criticized for her support of drug legalization and teaching students about masturbation - and U.S. House historian Christina Jeffrey - accused of anti-Semitism after she faulted a history program for not including Nazi viewpoints.
Without tenure, Elders and Jeffrey might have lost their university positions. ``Even if we were absolutely confident that there would never again be another Senator McCarthy, it seems to me the value of tenure as a guarantor of academic freedom is no less today,'' said O'Neil, who leads the American Association of University Professors' committee on tenure.
Tenure is also defended as a recruiting tool to lure bright graduates away from higher-paying corporate jobs. Many colleges say that if they abolished tenure, academic stars would go to other schools.
Not true anymore, said Breneman. ``As long as the academic market stays the way it is, I'm not sure why any institution has to offer much of anything.''
Breneman said tenure isn't ``about to end overnight, but the simple fact of the matter is, there's a major erosion of it going on underneath our eyes.'' The National Education Association reported last year that half of all college teachers are ineligible for tenure - because they are part-timers or are full-time teachers who are not in ``tenure-track'' jobs.
William Tierney, director of the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis at the University of Southern California, believes universities will continue adjusting the tenure process by instituting post-tenure reviews or extending the period before professors can receive tenure. Now a young professor must be at a school for six years before being considered.
``I think we will see tenure remain,'' Tierney said, ``but there will be creative arrangements led by faculty about how to support the idea of academic freedom and at the same time improve performance.''
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