By Nicolle Zellner
In the past few weeks, several media outlets have published articles about tenure and its expectations. Topics range from re-envisioning how metrics (e.g., citation rates, h-index, prizes, invited talks) should be used (if at all) to eliminating tenure altogether.
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| Credit: Jim Darling/2023 DU Provost Conference/Denver University |
Amber Dance reported in Nature that the North American tenure system has sometimes struggled to keep up with the goals of modern academia. Some universities and schools, however, are altering their tenure criteria; others are seeking to help faculty members to meet the criteria already in place. “There are campuses that are making those incremental shifts that are really impactful,” says Chavella Pittman, a sociologist at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, and a consultant on faculty development. My own institution, a liberal arts college, has recently polled the faculty to ask about alternate forms of scholarship (e.g., community-focused scholarship) and peer review that could be used to evaluate colleagues' scholarly development in the context of interim and tenure reviews, as well as promotion, merit, and bonus increase recommendations.
In fact, there is a global movement to reform how research is assessed, and it includes recognizing a wider range of research contributions. In July 2022, the European University Association and Science Europe laid out guiding principles for reform and established the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). Commitments to guide the reform of research assessment include:
- recognizing diversity in the contributions to, and careers in, research;
- basing research assessment primarily on qualitative evaluation;
- abandoning the inappropriate uses in research assessment of journal- and publication-based metrics;
- avoiding the use of rankings of research organizations in research assessment; and
- agreeing to allocate resources, raise awareness, and share results from reform experiments.
These kinds of catalysts - not panaceas - may help when an academic ladder is longer, especially for folks from historically marginalized communities. In the October issue of Physics Today, Rachel Ivie and Susan White, who have long collected, interpreted, and published data on graduation rates and employment factors in the community of physics broadly, report that race and ethnicity can affect how quickly a faculty member receives tenure. Interestingly, they found that it does not take longer for women to receive/earn tenure compared to men, nor was there a statistically significant difference in time to tenure between faculty members who identify as white and faculty members who identify as Hispanic/Latino. However, barriers in the tenure process have been found in qualitative research and statistical analyses of the small numbers of people in the intersectional groups that were studied led to a large standard error in the analysis.
Time and startup packages reflect a huge investment in an academic career, on both sides (faculty member, institution). So, when tenure doesn't work out - despite receiving federal grants, being recognized with professional society prizes and awards, and having success in the classroom - the news is devastating. As reported in the Physics Today article, tenure denials are uncommon, and statistics about them are scarce, but almost everyone knows about someone who was denied tenure. In many cases, though, reasons are vague or not provided. Others leave before going up for tenure at all.
At most top universities, tenure is evaluated in multiple areas: number of publications (and perhaps, quality/rank of journal), number of citations, quality of teaching evaluations, letters of recommendation, recognition in the community via receipt of prizes and invited talks, and success in being awarded grant money. An unwritten requirement is that a candidate be a "good fit" and service to the institution or community usually doesn't count for much. Studies have shown that each of the evaluation criteria is biased against women (see references 1-4 below). According to Meg Urry, a professor of astronomy at Yale University, past president of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), and past chairperson of the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA), though she doesn't have statistics, in the departments she's been in, it’s the women’s cases that get picked on.
Is there a better option? Urry calls the tenure system terrible. David Helfand, former chair of astronomy at Columbia University and a past president of the AAS, has himself steadfastly refused tenure stating that tenure does not equal excellence. In the Physics Today article, a physicist who was denied tenure says, "Tenure is necessary. Without it, the university system would crumble. Scientists would go to other sectors for higher-paying, less stressful jobs." And there are plenty of examples of this. In the same article, geochemist Maureen Feineman says that in the long run, she's been a much happier human than she would have been in a tenured position.
What do you think? Please comment below and/or anonymously submit your experiences of tenure denial and/or difficulties in positive reviews. We will publish the stories in a forthcoming series about tenure experiences.
Read more:
The Insular World of Academic Research: More community-focused scholarship could build public trust. What's standing in the way? Read about this at The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required).
Know Your Rights: Tenure Discrimination
The Future of Tenure (Rethinking a beleaguered institution., page 10)
Tenure's Broken Promise (It’s scarce, unevenly distributed, and limiting scholars’ careers., page 30)
References:
1. Gender Differences in Grant Submissions across Science and Engineering Fields at the NSF
2. Exploring Bias in Student Evaluations: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity
