Will Students And Professors Avoid Colleges That Do Not Respect Tenure?

A new bill has been proposed in Nebraska to eliminate tenure for public faculty in that state. Iowa, North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas and Florida are considering similar bills. The author, State Sen. Loren Lippincott, stated that the bill would help avoid indoctrinating students “with leftist ideology.”

This followed decisions by several colleges to fire tenured teachers. Manhattan College recently fired 19 tenured teachers in a cost-cutting mode. A drastic shift in the educational policies and philosophy of New College in Florida resulted in the firing of 5 tenured professors. Approximately 40 other professors left after the changes. Emporia State University eliminated tenure and fired 30 tenured teachers. One professor, Max McCoy criticized the administration’s implementation of the framework in a local newspaper, writing: “I may be fired for writing this” and was fired two days later. At the County College of Morris in New Jersey, six tenure-track faculty, all active in the faculty union including its president and three officers, were fired.

The Center for Public Integrity surveyed over 4000 professors in Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. They found that two-thirds would not recommend their state as a “desirable place for academic work.”

Tenure is not a guaranteed lifetime job. It creates a due process for removing a professor. One professor, Matthew Boedy, who recently got tenure, wondered, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, what that will mean in the future. “These twin rights – academic freedom and tenure – are important because they protect all professors from politically motivated firing. This is why higher education should not be treated as a partisan affair.”

For professors seeking jobs and students seeking colleges, states, and colleges will likely be divided into those that respect tenure and those that do not. It is to be seen how much tenure policies affect their choices in the future.