I read with equal parts fascination and disappointment Tom Rees’ Op-Ed essay, “Tenure great for faculty, not students, university.” I would like to address a few points that require thoughtful articulation. I believe that most of the difference in orientation and articulation will come as a result of my undergraduate work being completed at a smaller “undergraduate-oriented” institution. I came to Iowa State for graduate work and have experienced a working closeness with faculty not afforded to undergraduates.

Mr. Rees and I share common ground in orienting toward the university as a place for teaching. Most terminal academic degrees have “doctor” as an honorific. This is not to indicate that one is qualified to dispense medical information — indeed, the physicians took this title from the academics to differentiate themselves from untrained sawbones — but comes from docre, “to teach.” There are, traditionally, many employment options for someone with as much training as required for a terminal degree, but teaching — via classroom interaction, publication, training and mentoring, or conference proceedings — is an integral part of the discipline. Indeed, unless classified research is being done, open and unfettered publication is the normal state of operation. Make no mistake about it: Teaching occurs and is not just limited to direct instruction to students.

Iowa State University is a “Research Intensive” institution. Therefore, while “teaching” is a component of tenure, it does not weigh equally in the pre-tenure portfolio as the “publication” and “service” elements of the tenure triangle. The new budget model, too, brings an emphasis to departmental self-sufficiency not before seen at Iowa State. The ways that a department may bring money into itself — to pay for equipment, facilities, space and so forth — are multi-fold: increased enrollment and collection of tuition; increased “computer use” or “technology” fees; and faculty and staff grantsmanship. These elements do not in themselves directly award pedagogical innovation nearly as much as sponsored research projects — hence, there is a very real pressure upon pre-tenure faculty to become self-supporting under the budget model, lest a department suffer a fiscal shortfall.

While Mr. Rees has suggested otherwise, tenure is awarded — and sparingly so — to individuals who have earned it through years of concerted effort with demonstrable results. This is diametrically opposed to the notion of “entitlement” that Mr. Rees suggests. Tenure is granted to faculty in recognition of their expertise within their disciplines. It allows the intellectual and academic freedom to explore other research interests, develop programs and participate within the university as a fully functioning member without fear of unjust dismissal. The component that Mr. Rees clearly missed in his treatment of the tenure process are the years of missed earnings and ritualized humiliation one endures while engaged in a terminal degree program, the bureaucratic, philosophical and inter-personal gauntlet that must be run to find a good “fit” for employment as an associate professor, the fickle nature of state budgets that may no longer choose to support a state institution, and finally, the headlong rush toward publication, service and teaching goals that are to be met to qualify for tenure appointment.

I mentioned earlier the notion of “intellectual freedom.” This intellectual freedom may, to the uninitiated, seem to promote slovenly and reckless behavior. However, social psychology tells us that the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior; while there are no guarantees of continued achievement, receipt of tenure is a good indication that a faculty member is academically accomplished and able to maintain a research stream at a world-class level. Professionalism, conscientiousness for one’s peers and self-respect drive the decision to continue working in a capacity useful to one’s department, university and the academic discipline. The tenure process severely and ruthlessly tests these, and while it is quite possible for a faculty member’s “post-tenure” publication portfolio to slow in comparison his or her “pre-tenure” headlong rush, this permits a vacuum of time and intellectual effort that is typically filled with other endeavors.

Comparing academic work environments here with those of Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe is a straw man of the flimsiest kind. In this country, tenure affords faculty something that these other places take as part of the social contract: flexibility. We in the United States have a perverse view of “work-life” balance, in that the edges are indistinct and typically bleed into one another. It is precisely this harried and philosophically flat lifestyle that saps creativity and performance from our workplace, and Iowa State University is, as Mr. Rees points out, a workplace. These other regions prefer working for 35 hours a week and permitting a six-week holiday every year to unwind and relax and think. This is opposed to our endless progression of 50-hour weeks filled with the drudgery of meetings and other unwelcome and unfulfilling intrusions. The former allows for leisure in its truest sense — reflection and quiet contemplation — while the latter leaves us bereft of these rights. We consume rather than contemplate, relax rather than reflect — hardly the stage for heavy intellectual lifting.

Through permitting faculty intellectual freedom to pursue their interests under the banner of the institution, tenure permits faculty to find their own “voice” when engaged in research of their own choosing and pace. Tenure permits quiet contemplation and reflection, which in turn allows larger bodies of work to be completed with careful, cautious and precise analysis. Finally, tenure permits faculty the intellectual space to — in keeping with the root of “faculty” — facilitate learning, inquiry and discovery.

I fail to see how these post-tenure freedoms do not serve students and the university equally well as the faculty receiving them.

Chris Pilson a Graduate Student in Psychology at Iowa State University