Academic Job Security Threatened As Anti-Tenure Wave Sweeps U.S.

SIDEBAR: For Further Information .. Academic Job Security FLEXIBILITY WANTED: University of Minnesota regent Patricia Spence cites budgetary uncertainty. Colleges and universities all over the United States are making changes-both major and minor-to the tenure system. Some have abolished it, opting for multiyear contracts with faculty, while others have adopted new codes that make it easier to fire tenured faculty members. Like other academic employees, scientists are feeling the constraints

Written byRobert Finn

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SIDEBAR: For Further Information .. Academic Job Security

"It's the largest anti-tenure wave in 25 years," notes Jordan E. Kurland, associate general secretary of the Washington, D.C.-based American Association of University Professors (AAUP). "The climate is stormy."

According to Matthew Finkin, Albert J. Harno Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of the new book The Case for Tenure (Ithaca, N.Y., ILR Press, 1996), no fewer than 23 state legislatures have considered or are considering changes in tenure at their public institutions.

A November 1995 survey of college and university provosts conducted by Cathy Trower, a research associate at the University of Maryland, College Park, under the auspices of the Washington, D.C.-based American Association for Higher Education (AAHE)-found that 69 percent of the 280 institutions responding reported changes to traditional tenure policies. (See list on page 8 for information on obtaining this report and other material ...

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