Renewing and Terminating Faculty Appointments
One of the most difficult tasks of an academic administrator is to decide whether to renew the appointment of a probationary faculty member. The Association has a firm policy on this subject entitled "Statement of Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments" (for which see Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1990, pp. 48-51, which is a revision of the statement in the Redbook, pp. 15-20, supplemented by pp. 22-23 and 28 of the same source). Probationary faculty should be advised at an early date of standards and procedures affecting evaluations for renewal and tenure; there should be periodic review of the current status of such faculty members, including "the opportunity to submit material" bearing on his or her case; decisions not to re-appoint should be delivered in writing and requests by faculty members to be informed in writing of the reasons for non-reappointment should be honored; an opportunity should be provided "to request reconsideration by the independent faculty body to review allegations of academic freedom violations, of discrimination, or of inadequate consideration, if one of these reasons is given for desiring reconsideration. An advisory letter from the Washington officer asserts, however, that the AAUP desires to permit institutions "within the limits of academic freedom, the utmost latitude in determining who will be retained for tenure appointments," and strongly opposes "tenure by default." (See the AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1964, p. 85.)
The AAUP's "Standards for Notice of Nonreappointment" (see the Redbook, p. 31) remain (1) not later than March 1 of the first academic year of service; (2) not later than December 15 of the second year; and (3) "at least twelve months before the expiration of an appointment after two or more years in the institution."
Dismissal proceedings (see also the discussion of financial exigency in the section above dealing with the work of Committee T) are covered in a joint statement of the Association of American Colleges and the AAUP (see the Redbook, pp. 11-14), and in the AAUP's "Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure" (Ibid, pp. 25-28). They are summarized below, but interested parties should consult the full texts.
1. Institutions should have "formulated their own definition of adequate cause for dismissal, bearing in mind the 1940 Statement."
2. Such cases must be "related, directly and substantially, to the fitness of faculty members in their professional capacities as teachers or researchers."
3. Attempts should be made by the "appropriate administrative officers" and, if necessary, by an elected faculty committee, to resolve the problems.
4. If formal charges are to be brought, they should be stated "with reasonable particularity."
5. The faculty member notified by the president of his or her impending dismissal is entitled, upon request, to a formal hearing by a faculty body "not previously concerned with the case;" meanwhile, suspensions should be imposed (with pay) "only if immediate harm to the faculty member or others is threatened by continuance."
6. Hearings should be conducted according to set procedures in the Redbook, pp. 26-27.
7. The decision of the hearing body should be given due weight by the president and the governing board.
8. According to a joint subcommittee of Committees A and N, "after the board's ruling, a faculty member ... should be given the right to proceed to arbitration," particularly in collective bargaining circumstances, in which case "an outside arbitrator ... may make a binding decision." (See the Redbook, pp. 65-68.)
ACADEMIC FREEDOM, TENURE AND DUE PROCESS
The section of this devoted to the work of Committee A deals with the defense of academic freedom and tenure by this agency of the Association.
Academic Freedom
On the occasion of his receipt of the AAUP's Alexander Meiklejohn Award for outstanding contributions to academic freedom, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, President of the University of Notre Dame, declared "that academic freedom does not live by rhetoric alone. ... it must be won daily, and exercised daily and responsibly by each one of us. ... academic freedom is not so much freedom from somebody or something, as freedom to do something." Professors therefore have an obligation to use their special freedom, "with courage and ... wisdom." (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1970, pp. 149-152. Informative are three anthologies on academic freedom edited by Walter Metzger: [1] The American Concept of Academic Freedom Information: A Collection of Essays and Reports; [2] Professors on Guard: The First AAUP Investigations; and [3] The Constitutional Status of Academic Freedom. All three volumes were published at Salem, N.H. by Ayer Co. in 1977.)
Tenure
An article, "In Defense of Academic Tenure," by Fritz Machlup (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1964, pp. 112-124), delivered as his presidential address, discussed advantages and disadvantages of the tenure system. General Secretary Bertram H. Davis affirmed the proposition that the problems which critics asserted were inherent in the tenure system "are defects rather of its administration than of the system itself." (AAUP Bulletin, Winter 1969, p. 427.) Higher Education institutions that have an AAUP-approved tenure system are much more likely to have high quality productive faculty than those that do not.
Due Process
If academic freedom is protected by tenure, tenure must them be protected by academic due process, which involves an adherence to certain procedures which must be followed prior to termination of an academic appointment. Fairness, which is the key element of these procedures, requires adequate notice and an opportunity for a hearing, a denial of which is a denial of due process. (AAUP Bulletin, Winter 1963, pp. 318-319.) Hearing committees reviewing contested faculty grievance, non-reappointment, and dismissal cases should always "be elected by their faculty colleagues." (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1988, p. 51.)
Due process on campus is derived more from academic common law than from statutes or leading court decisions. Procedures for insuring academic freedom were mentioned in the AAUP's 1915 "Declaration of Principles" and in the 1925 "Conference Statement" endorsed by the AAUP and the Association of American colleges, as well as in the 1940 AAUP-AAC "Statement of Principles," which introduced the burden of proof concept upon the administration in cases involving tenured faculty members, and upon the teacher in cases dealing with probationary teachers. An American Civil Liberties Union publication entitled "Academic Due Process" issued in 1954 was the first comprehensive statement treating the subject. This pamphlet helped to inspire a 1958 AAUP "Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings" which appears in the Redbook (pp. 11-14), and which related primarily to proceedings involving tenured professors or faculty members dismissed for cause during a term appointment. Separate "Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments were covered by a 1971 statement, published in the Redbook (pp. 15-20). And due process was also an integral component of the Association's "Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure," the 1982 revision is found in the Redbook (pp. 21-30).
Due process is a system of procedures designed to insure a "clear, orderly, fair" means of reaching a decision. It is neither identical with nor a variant of legal due process. The latter derives from constitutional, statutory, or customary legal guarantees and tends to be rather rigid; the former stems from academic freedom and is necessarily flexible and informal.
Every AAUP chapter should insure that academic due process is available on campus for both faculty members (whether tenured or not) and students. And chapter leaders should be alert to threats to academic freedom.
Threats to Tenure
The role of tenure in preserving academic freedom is well known if not always well understood in the academic world. On this subject, an article entitled "The Significance of Tenure to the Quality of a First-Rate University" by former President Kingman Brewster, Jr., of Yale University is worth perusal. "If teaching," wrote Brewster,
is to be more than the retailing or the known, and if research is to seek real breakthroughs in the explanation of man and the cosmos, then teachers must be scholars, and scholarship must be more than the refinement of the inherited store of knowledge. If scholarship is to question assumptions and to take the risk of testing new hypotheses, then it cannot be held to a timetable which demand proof of pay-out to satisfy some review committee....
Boldness would suffer if the research and scholarship of a mature faculty were to be subject to periodic scorekeeping, on pain of dismissal if they did not score well. The what should be a venture in creative discovery would for almost everyone degenerate in to a safe-sided devotion to riskless footnote gathering. Authentication would replace discovery as the goal. The results might not startle the world, but they would be impressive in quantitative terms and invulnerable to devastating attack....
At its best the university expects a person literally to make a lifetime investment in his special way of looking at the human and natural experience, in the hope that he will contribute something of permanence to the understanding of some corner of the universe....
I have not been able to devise, not have I heard of, any regime of periodic review with the sanction of dismissal which would not have a disastrous effect. It would both dampen the willingness to take long-term intellectual risks and inhibit if not corrupt the free and spirited exchanges upon which the vitality of a community of scholars depends. This, not the aberrational external interference, is the threat to the freedom of the academic community which tenure seeks to mitigate. (AAUP Bulletin, Winter 1972, pp. 381-383. See also the section entitled "Battleground 'Tenure'," part of the 1974 AAUP presidential address of Walter Adams, published in Ibid., Summer 1974, pp. 122-123, and remarks by former AAUP president David Fellman in Ibid., November 1977, pp. 324-325.)
There is a multi-faceted challenge to tenure which one may encounter at higher education institutions all over the United States. Articles in mass circulation periodicals, such as "Tenure Protects Academic Goof-offs" (USA Today, Feb. 15, 1990, p. 15A), reinforce widespread prejudices against the academic tenure system. (See also "Getting off Tenure Track," Newsweek, Jan. 31, 1983, p. 50, and "Troubled Times for Tenure," Time, Feb. 26, 1990, p. 72.) Hence, as revealed in a New York Times educational supplement on August 18, 1985, "an increasing number of colleges and universities" were backing away from tenure and were instead experimenting "with a variety of hiring managements," including increasing the pre-tenure probationary period, expanding the use of part-time adjunct instructors, employing professors only with renewable short-term contracts, and enlarging the number of temporary appointments. This trend shows no sign of diminishing. It has been discussed in the context of AAUP policy in the section on Committee W, above.
The Locus of Tenure
Certain aspects of tenure remain to be examined. One is the question: where is the proper location of tenure? Although the 1940 Statement is silent on the specific issue, the history of tenure contracts are made and ratified at the institutional level, rights and obligations under those contracts are also institution-wide in application, and terminations of tenured professors are to be in conformity with the institutional due process requirements. (See Redbook, pp. 3-4 and 23-28.)
Indeed, there is judicial precedent for the view that "Tenure is held in the institution and not in one's program or specialty." The key to this affirmation is the so-called "suitable position" rule, found in the AAUP's "1982 Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure" (Redbook, p. 24), which holds that "Before terminating an appointment because of financial exigency, the institution, with faculty participation, will make every effort to place the faculty member concerned in another suitable position within institution." (For elucidation see the AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1976, p. 14.)
However, tenure is not necessarily portable in multi-campus systems. (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1986, p. 20a.)
In recent years some boards and administrators have endeavored to reduce the locus of tenure to the holder's department or academic program. This erosion of tenure rights should be resisted, and where it has already taken place it should be reversed. The argument for flexibility in the face of fluctuating fads and fashions of student curricular interests is not compelling. As Committee A has declared: "Were tenure to be so limited it would be no tenure at all; faculty members would labor under the constant and dispiriting risk of summary termination at an administrator's discretion when it points to an asserted need to reallocate resources. (Academe, July-Aug. 1985, pp. 8a-10a.)
Termination of Tenure for "Curricular" Reasons
Virtually the same objection applies to policies allowing the dismissal of tenured faculty members for "curricular" reasons. Rarely, except in cases of institution-wide financial exigency, should tenured professors not accused of infractions within the classification of "cause" have their service involuntarily ended and only then according to AAUP-delineated procedures. Nor would the countenancing of impossible infractions of tenure contracts by a faculty majority alter the issue. For, as an AAUP-spokesman asserted many years ago: "Principles of academic freedom and tenure are ... intended to protect individual rights, ... even against the action of a majority of a teacher's colleagues." (Ibid.)
Tenure Quotas
Some administrators have sought to limit the numbers of tenured professors on their campuses and to manipulate the tenure selection process through the use of so-called "tenure quotas." The AAUP has explicitly condemned "policies which establish a fixed maximum percentage of faculty members in nontenured service, and then releasing them because of a numerical limit on tenured positions prohibits their retention, has the effect of nullifying probation." Also "inimical to the principles of academic freedom which tenure serves, is the policy ... of withholding tenure from admittedly qualified candidates who have completed the maximum probationary period but retaining them in an kind of holding pattern, ... more vulnerable than their tenured colleagues to termination." (Redbook, pp. 37-39.)
"Term Tenure"
A primary obligation of the Association is to those "standards of academic freedom and tenure which it has been chiefly responsible for promulgating over half a century." Nor does it countenance policies or procedures which do not conform to AAUP standards merely because a faculty might have acquiesced in those rules. This includes any five-year contract system or so-called term tenure. (Academe, April 1980, p. 149.)
On Tenure in General
On the entire subject of academic tenure at the college level, the best authority is probably still the 276-page volume entitled Faculty Tenure, issued in 1973 by the Commission on Academic Tenure in Higher Education, and published at San Francisco by Jossey-Bass. The commission's recommendation, however, to include "ranges" or "limits" on tenure of no more than on-half to two-thirds of an institutional faculty is strongly opposed by the AAUP. For a cogent analysis of this volume see "Reviewing Tenure" by W.J. Kilgore, AAUP Bulletin, Autumn 1973, pp. 339-345, and "Tenure: A Summary Explanation and 'Defense'" by William Van Alstyne, Ibid., Autumn 1971, pp. 328-333. Stimulating is The Constitutional Status of Academic Tenure (Salem, N.H., Ayer Co. 1977), a collection of writings on the subject.
The Rights of Probationary Faculty
One occasionally encounters criticism that the tenure system provides a monopoly of most of the available rights, privileges, and power for senior faculty leaving little for probationary faculty. Hence, the argument goes, junior faculty would benefit more without a tenure system. But the AAUP has maintained that probationary faculty have many rights, including the right (1) to the same academic freedoms as other members of the faculty; (2) to be heard on matters of institutional policy; (3) to have the terms of their appointments explicitly stated in writing; (4) to an evaluation by their academic colleagues before being given notice--which must be timely--of nonreappointment; (5) to a decision on tenure within a reasonable period; (6) to academic due process; and (7) to be considered as officers of their institutions. These and other rights have been "largely secured for probationary faculty members by the AAUP." (AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1969, pp. 123-124.) For a detailed elucidation of the Association's position on tenure and promotion rights of probationary faculty members, especially in the light of the Roth and Sindermann decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, see analyses by William Van Styne in Ibid., Autumn 1972, pp. 267-278, and 367.
Academic Freedom of Students
The AAUP has not confined its protective presence to professors. In 1960 the Council created a Committee on Faculty Responsibility for the Academic Freedom of Students, which prepared several draft statements on the subject, two of which were published. Eventually sponsorship of the AAUP's position was enlarged to include the Association of American Colleges, the United States Student Association, and other groups, and in 1967 the AAUP followed with a policy document entitled "Joint Statement on Rights and Freedom of Students," designed to "enumerate the essential provisions for student freedom to learn," which included access to higher education, freedom of inquiry and expression, freedom of association, and protections for student participation in institutional government, work on student publication, and citizenship rights. Also covered in the statement were student records, improper academic evaluations, and improper disclosures; and procedural standards for disciplinary proceedings were provided. In a separate section of the "1982 Recommended Institutional Regulations" additional protections for graduate or teaching assistants were included. (Redbook, pp. 29, 153-158; AAUP Bulletin, Sept. 1964, pp. 254-257 and Dec. 1965, pp. 447-449. See Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1988, pp. 3-4, for a brief reference to an AAUP amicus brief presented to a U.S. appeals court in which sharp limitations on the roles of academic administrations in grading students are asserted as constitutionally required.)
Evaluations of Professors
The 1940 Statement stipulates that academic freedom "carries with it duties correlative with rights." In order to determine whether these duties are being adequately performed, some form of evaluation is needed. Institutional policies relating to tenure, pay, and promotion usually emphasize expectations regarding teaching, scholarship, and service, but little attention was paid in AAUP literature for many years to measuring the worth of individual scholarship or service. The assumption appears to have been that the former is adequately assessed in peer reviews and the latter, generally quite visible, is hard to misconstrue. With respect to measuring the effectiveness of teaching, however, there has been considerable debate, and on this subject the AAUP has established a policy. (On the subject of evaluation of professors, see also the discussion of higher education reform in the section above dealing with the work of Committee T.)
Evaluations of Professors by Students
During the 1960's amid widespread discussion of how to achieve higher education "reform," proponents of change advocated much greater student influence on academic decision-making. In the AAUP Bulletin one critic of "poor or outdated, but tenured" professors wrote approvingly of increased student demands for "a voice in deciding what to do with such inevitable problems of the job security system .... Witness the rise in published editions of faculty evaluations by students." Only if "meaningful student participation in academic governance," leading to the realignment of "the reward system for faculty so that ... the student advisor is as highly rewarded as the researcher," was speedily introduced into colleges and universities, this observed warned, could chaos be avoided on the campuses; otherwise, "militancy and violence [would] become the order of the day." (AAUP Bulletin, March, 1969, pp. 25-26.)
Out of the AAUP's Committee on College and University Teaching, Research, and Publication came comments supportive of student ratings of professors' teaching, with suggestions for specific mechanisms for conducting such evaluations. (AAUP Bulletin, Dec. 1969, pp. 439-44.) The literature on the subject grew apace, with such books as Student Evaluation of Instruction by Kenneth O. Doyle, Jr., (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath Co., 1975) obtaining highly favorable notices in the AAUP Bulletin (Nov. 1977, pp. 329-330). An entire issue of Academe (Oct. 1979) focused on the subject of student evaluations. One contributor, a former president of the Association, asserted that there was "a substantial amount of evidence to the effect that favorable evaluations of teachers by students are unreliable," for experiments had "proved that students prefer vague discussions to rigorous arguments, and favor the learning of routine procedures over analysis of basic concepts." Two other authors labeled student ratings of faculty "demeaning, arbitrary, and demoralizing," bound to lower academic standards and corrupt learning. Another writer agreed, calling the current student evaluation movement "an ugly force toward mediocrity" at best, and at worst "the nastiest kind of tool for intimidation." (Ibid., Feb. 1980, p. 59.)
"Students know," Steven Cahn argued, "if teachers are likable, but not if they are knowledgeable; they know if lectures are enjoyable, but not if they are reliable." Hence they are incompetent to judge the worth of teaching. Moreover, to invite students to participate in the rewards process for professors is to expose the latter to intimidation. Teachers, who are "expected to question students' pet beliefs, expose their prejudices, challenge them with demanding assignments, and evaluate their work rigorously, ... cannot educate those they fear." No professor should be put in a position that encourages propitiating students in returns for their favor. "A teacher's authority must be respected and protected." (Academe, May-June 1982, pp. 13-14.) Cahn also wrote (ibid., Nov.-Dec. 1982, p. 28) "that to invite students to participate formally in the evaluation of their teachers constitutes a serious threat to academic freedom." (For references to recently published materials supporting Cahn's position, see his article "Faculty Members Should Be Evaluated by Their Peers, Not by Their Students" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 14, 1987, pp. B2-B3. For a student's reasoned response, see ibid., Nov. 4, 1987, p. B2.)
As another critic of "overemphasis" on student evaluations maintained, these instruments, evidencing "the notion that half of all faculty members are below-average," are convenient weapons for administrators "with manipulative abilities" to employ against professors, and are "contributing to an erosion of good teaching and good scholarship, to a loss of respect for teachers, and to a weakening of the faculty position in campus government." (Academe, July-Aug. 1988, pp. 44.)
Not so, was the verdict of a psychology professor who had devoted years of close attention to the subject. "Student ratings," he declared, "are highly valid as indices of achievement of attitudinal and motivational goals of education. They are reasonably valid as indices of achievement of cognitive goals. Judgments of the appropriateness of content, goals, and level of achievement are probably more competently made by peers." (Ibid., Oct. 1979, pp. 377, 383, and 390.)
Another supporter of student evaluations believed that as honest and accurate indices of student perceptions, such instruments, intelligently employed "solely for information relating to effectiveness in reaching the students," were vital tools in making faculty personnel decisions. (Ibid., May-June 1987, pp. 19-22.) Indeed, a historian wrote, such evaluations "must be utilized to judge teaching effectiveness, ... at the conclusion of every semester, not on an infrequent basis." (Ibid., July-Aug. 1987, p. 10.)
In rebuttal to this recommendation, however, Robert Glassman warned that "with the overuse of student course evaluations, we are in a destructively competitive bazaar, ... under constant temptation to dilute course material and set conditions for invidious comparisons with other professors." (Ibid., July-Aug. 1988, p. 44.)
The AAUP has officially accepted student evaluations as legitimate sources of data on professors' teaching performance. (Redbook, pp. 168-169.) But the Association's "Statement on Teaching Evaluation," adopted in 1975, insists that institutional expectations of the teachers must be made clear, that adequate "conditions and support necessary to excellent teaching" must be furnished, that evaluations of teaching should include "a primary though not exclusive role" for faculty members, and that any evaluation instruments "should include (1) an accurate factual description of what an individual does as teacher, (2) various measures of the effectiveness of these efforts, and (3) fair consideration of the relation between these efforts and the institution's and department's expectations and support." Assessing instructional effectiveness, the statement avers, can include efforts to measure the degree of student learning, reports "from trained observers, faculty colleagues, and students" on teaching performance, classroom visitation, self-evaluation, and outside opinions. "Student perceptions," the statement continues, "are a prime source of information ... [which] can provide continuing insights ...," and can be obtained informally or through questionnaires directed to both students and alumni, but "faculty members should obtain student opinion." Moreover, it is important that data be obtained "over a range of teaching assignments and over a period of time." And it should be understood that distinguished teaching "is integral with scholarship, has a way of getting outside classroom confines, and may exemplify the highest meaning of service." (Redbook, pp. 167-170, and AAUP Bulletin, Aug. 1975, pp. 200-202.)
"Assessment" of Faculty Performance
Implicit in the above policy statement is the assumption that formal institutional evaluations of teaching may include all professors, non-tenured and tenured alike. This notwithstanding, Committee A, "while recognizing the legitimacy of ongoing evaluation of all faculty members by faculty peers," strongly opposed any "formal institutional procedure for periodic review of the performance of faculty members who have been granted indefinite tenure." (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1983, p. 12a.) A large majority of the participants at a 1983 conference of members of the American Council on Education and the AAUP agreed, in many different ways--for merit salary increases, promotions, and institutional academic awards, as well as by external granting agencies, publishers, reviewers, nominating committees, and bestowers of prices and invitations to speak, serve, or otherwise participate in a prestigious activity. Professors were evaluated by students, colleagues, administrators, juries, scholars, and other referees. To add "an overlay of a formal system of periodic evaluation on existing procedures would incur unacceptable costs," including jeopardizing academic freedom. "No system of faculty evaluation should be permitted to weaken or undermine ... academic tenure and the protections of academic freedom it provides." Hence decisions resulting from evaluations of faculty performance "should not be used as a ground to dismiss tenured faculty," or as a basis for "other disciplinary sanctions," the imposition of which were governed by such established procedures as those enumerated in the 1940 Statement of Principles and the 1958 Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings. In a formal statement of Association policy, the Council endorsed these conclusions. (Ibid., Nov.-Dec. 1983, pp. 1a-14a.)
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