Tenure: Incentivize Faculty

Abstract

In his Education Forum “Tenure and the future of the university” (29 May, p. [1147][1]), D. Clawson makes salient points about the damaging effects of a permanent untenured faculty underclass, but he understates the role that many tenured and tenure-track faculty play in supporting this disturbing trend. When unprotected faculty teach and tenured faculty focus on research and departmental decision-making, students are less likely to be prioritized. This occurs despite national calls for greater scientific literacy and a broadening of participation in science. Tenured and tenure-track faculty as well as university administrators need an incentive to meet student needs and to value those faculty who provide teaching services. A simple solution would be to tie a university's overhead rate on federal grants to the percentage of teaching services provided by tenured and tenure-track faculty. In such a system, a department delivering 75% of its teaching services with non–tenure-track faculty would receive only 25% of the normal overhead payment on the grants of its faculty. Such a system would give both tenured and tenure-track faculty and administrators a financial incentive to extend tenure to more of their colleagues and to reevaluate departmental decisions to farm out large introductory courses to non–tenure-track faculty. The balance of funds could be placed in a national fund reserved for professional development and research for non–tenure-track faculty, fulfilling a serious need, as these faculty generally have no access to the regular research funds needed to remain active in research and to escape the academic underclass. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1172995