What is tenure? Tenure, typically used in place of life tenure, is the guarantee an employee will not be terminated without just cause. In the case of a university professor, it protects the employee from being terminated due to disagreements with administration or unique political and teaching perspectives. In addition, it can protect them from pressures to make immoral choices in grading. Supposedly, the major benefit to universities is they can pay less for the world-class researchers who teach us because tenure is such a major benefit of employment. Sounds nice.

Well, there are also some major negatives to tenure. It is becoming more and more common for universities to increase the number of non-tenured positions to supplement the instructional work force. This in and of itself is great. However, non-tenured “lecturers” are often paid less than their tenured “professor” counterparts. This is not because they are less able instructors [often they are even better], but due only to their relative importance in research and their abundance on the job market. A more important negative byproduct of the tenure system involves the creation of many unmotivated, uncaring, unproductive professors. This is not a universal law, but every student, at one point in time, has been sitting in a lecture before an unprepared person who expressed a lack of care for student success.

Tenure is a form of extrapolation, and those of us who have taken statistics courses know how risky that can be. It is not safe to assume a professor’s performance after tenure will be consistent with pre-tenure levels.

Other nations, such as Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe, operate without tenure all together.

Our nation was founded on merit, not entitlement, and in all other industries, because education is an industry, this philosophy dominates. We have the right to pursue employment … we are not entitled [have the guarantee of] to employment.

Tom Rees is a senior in economics.