Academic Tenure and Retrenchment: the US experience

Abstract

It was clear to the authors that financial reasons can legitimate the dismissal of a tenured academic; in addition, as Professor Robert Carr, then Chairman of the AAUP Committee on Academic Freedom, acknowledges in the foreword to this work, academic profession itself readily concedes that a professor can be dismissed for 'adequate cause,' including such grounds as incompetence, neglect of duty, and gross personal misconduct [2]. A 1972 survey showed that 100% of public and private universities had such tenure plans [3]. A much more recent survey by the American Council of Education [4] shows that in 1979-80 64.4% of all university faculty enjoyed tenure, and that it is inching up a point or two every year. It was only 51% in 1969 and is expected to be 77% by 1986 [5]. Such averages need to be treated with some care: at the most prestigious institutions the figure may be much higher. It is, for example, already 78% at the University of California. Tenure plans which meet the general criteria cited by Byse vary widely in their explicitness from one institution to another. Their terms are generally set out in university statutes, by-laws or faculty handbooks. In recent years it has become more frequent for them also to be embodied in 'contracts' negotiated with the union representing the faculty, in those few universities-rarely among the more prestigious-which have embraced collective bargaining. As we shall see later, attempts are now being made in such institutions to go into considerable detail of the circumstances in which 'financial exigency' can be invoked. The details of the 'tenure plan' may cover such matters as: (1) how tenure is achieved, the length of probation and the criteria to be satisfied; (2) what procedures have to be adopted if it is to be refused; (3) the nature of 'adequate cause'; (4) the procedures for termination: hearings, notice, appeals. Great importance is attached to full and public process, involving consideration, and preferably determination, by other faculty members rather than by the administration. In the long history of contention about such matters, these procedural protections have been viewed as more important than the spelling out of 'adequate cause'. It is generally accepted, however, that 'adequacy' means 'related to professional performance', as 299