Similar to efforts in years’ past, Iowa Sen. Brad Zaun has introduced legislation that, if passed, would end tenure at Iowa’s regent institutions.

Zaun, who resurfaces the issue of tenure on a nearly annual basis, has spoken openly about his discontent about the higher education practice. As of last week, the proposal was approved by a Senate subcommittee with the support of Sen. Jerry Behn, R-Boone.

Tenure allows for an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only under extraordinary circumstances. For many professors, tenure allows for academic freedom and is a hiring philosophy adopted by many colleges and universities across the nation.

If this bill were to be passed by the Iowa legislator, it would be a disaster.

By ridding the hiring practice from Iowa’s public institutions, it would result in a financial strain due to a loss of research funding and result in the inability to raise salaries to a competitive rate with other schools.

According to an annual governance report on faculty tenure for 2017-18, there are a total of 979 tenured faculty members with 383 on the tenure track. This is a decrease of 41 tenured employees from the 2015-16 academic year, despite there being a difference of just 6 employees between the academic years.

The University of Northern Iowa has the highest rate of tenure employees — 53 percent of faculty members having obtained the prestigious position.

In previous interviews, Zaun has said that he opposes the hiring of tenured professors because he doesn’t think that “bad professors should have a lifetime position guaranteed at colleges.”

Yet, in many cases, it’s not the bad professors who are securing a lifetime position. While the ISD Editorial Board believes there should always be a checks-and-balances system for the process of reviewing and selecting tenured professors, a bill to eliminate the position entirely cannot be chalked up to a fear of one or two bad professors.

Currently, all tenure-eligible faculty hired as an assistant professor at Iowa State have to undergo a preliminary peer review in the third year of a seven-year probationary period.

This seven-year period allows for what should be a sufficient time for the faculty member in question to demonstrate their qualifications and ability to achieve what will become a lifetime role. It also guarantees security not just for the faculty in question, but all the university.

And for an institution like Iowa State, which for years has ranked as one of the lowest in terms of paying faculty members in its higher education peer group, security is essential.

“We exist in a competitive environment to hire the very best faculty,” Iowa State President Wendy Wintersteen said during an Education Appropriations subcommittee meeting Tuesday. “That means we have to have competitive salaries. We have to have competitive facilities. We have to have availability for them to work with undergraduate and graduate students, to engage in public-private partnerships.”

If Zaun’s bill to eliminate tenure passes, Iowa’s universities will suffer and so will Iowa.