What Every PhD Student Should Know About Tenure

Just a few days ago, I ran into a colleague in the midst of an academic job search. He was excited for an upcoming interview—his first and, he hoped, not lone opportunity to secure an assistant professorship. As I inwardly marveled at the stress he must be experiencing, attempting to simultaneously finish his dissertation and find employment, he asked how my new job was going. I recently started a new graduate assistantship in my university’s office of faculty affairs, which coordinates, among other things, the appointment, promotion, and tenure process.

I foolishly launched into long explanation of how much I had learned about tenure in a short period of time. This explanation culminated in two conclusions: 1) finding an academic job is just the beginning of an arduous journey and 2) achieving tenure can be tremendously difficult. I laughed and said the idea of a tenure-track professorship seemed even less attractive to me than it did before. I’m sure my colleague found these conclusions less humorous, even if they did not completely catch him by surprise.

Nevertheless, it dawned on me that many PhD students may not have thorough understanding of the tenure process. There has been a great deal of chatter recently about the overproduction of PhDs and the stiff competition for academic jobs, especially in the humanities. However, I have heard little mention of changes to tenure and how they may affect PhD students. My office organizes orientation for faculty members, and it is not uncommon for new hires to be completely clueless about tenure. Given that an unfortunately high number of assistant professors never achieve tenure (30% at my university, and the percentage is higher for women and minorities), it is worth considering the points below if you are studying to become an academic. (Caveat: most of these points are based upon knowledge of public research universities, and it should be noted that there is great diversity in how tenure is viewed, pursued, and reviewed.)

1. Tenure is intricately linked to the political economy of higher education. This means, firstly, that the entire enterprise is currently under siege for producing inefficiencies, inhibiting institutional flexibility, and inappropriately shielding faculty from accountability. Many institutions are not replacing outgoing tenured faculty with new tenure-track hires. Instead, they are turning to non-tenure-track instructors, or adjuncts, who can be cheaper (if they are not full-time employees or afforded benefits) and allow departments to respond to rapidly changing market circumstances. At my university, the share of credit hours delivered by non-tenure-track instructors (46%) now exceeds the share delivered by tenured and tenure-track faculty (41%). The implications of this phenomenon (what I sometimes unfairly call adjunctivitis) are numerous, but merit a separate discussion.

Secondly, speaking of the market, tenure (and the faculty rewards system in general) is shifting to favor faculty activities that generate revenue. Such activities include not only winning lucrative grants, but also engaging in entrepreneurship, or commercializing research. Certain disciplines heavily involved in technology transfer are automatically at an advantage. I was recently in a meeting in which it was emphatically underscored that entrepreneurship needed to be better integrated into the tenure process, as we were “way behind our peers.” This emphasis helps explain, in part, the hiring of contractual instructors, making it possible for tenured faculty to focus on research and raising questions about the place of undergraduate education in the faculty rewards system. 

What it means for you: Tenure, as it has been understood for many decades, may look very different by the time you are up for review. 

2. Tenure is a multi-dimensional, multi-level process. It is multi-dimensional because it traditionally requires that a candidate excel in the teaching-research-service triad. Of these three dimensions, research is unquestionably the most important. We’re all familiar with the “publish or perish” cliché, but this pressure on faculty must be qualified. It should be clear to tenure review committees that an assistant professor seeking promotion has a research agenda they can pursue into the future. Furthermore, it is expected that a candidate is not merely publishing regularly, but also publishing in top tier journals. In the humanities, there is the unwritten rule that assistant professors have at least one published book manuscript in order to be promoted. This has recently been made difficult because, in an era of steadily declining government appropriations to higher education, some university presses are downsizing and closing. Teaching is the second most important dimension, typically assessed through a statement of teaching philosophy, student evaluations, graduate student advising record (if applicable), and syllabi. Service is the final and least important dimension, encompassing public or community engagement at some institutions.

The tenure review process includes at minimum two levels. Often, the first level is the unit or department level, which marks the first step in the construction of a candidate’s collection of documents providing evidence of teaching, research, and service—usually referred to as a casebook or dossier. If the department-level tenure committee recommends promotion, the dossier is passed along with their feedback to the next level. At some institutions, the school or college dean reviews the dossier and, if she/he approves of the recommendation for promotion, will forward it to the university-level tenure committee. The final decision to award an assistant professor tenure rests in the hands of the president, provost, and/or board of regents.

What it means for you: If you land an assistant professorship, you would be wise—from a self-interested perspective—to focus on research above teaching and service, while bearing in mind that your performance will be assessed at multiple levels based upon the needs and interests of the institution. 

3. Tenure is not a formulaic process and can be a moving target. Some new hires believe that if they follow a formula, making certain to publish constantly and bring in revenue, their future is secure. However, there are no guarantees. In addition to considering how a faculty member fits within the context of the institution, each committee also solicits letters from external reviewers. External reviewers are tenured faculty in a candidate’s field that are deemed qualified to comment on the strength of the candidate’s research contributions. A dossier is strengthened if external reviewers are affiliated with prestigious institutions. The good news is that candidates are usually able to recommend a few people as external reviewers, but they cannot be mentors, advisors, or research collaborators. Letters from external reviewers are just one of many wild cards in a process that sits on the border of objectivity and subjectivity. 

All institutions have what is commonly referred to as a tenure clock. This represents the number of years that pass before an assistant professor must be reviewed for promotion. The traditional tenure clock is 6 to 7 years. However, extensions of 1 to 2 years can be granted for care of a dependent, illness, childbirth, or adoption. Within that 6 to 9 year period of time, institutions can undergo substantial transformation. This is particularly true of “striving” colleges or universities, which are committing enormous resources to raising their prestige. Research on striving institutions has found that many junior faculty are confused by tenure expectations. Policies and procedures lag behind institutional change, with the result that faculty find the ground beneath them shifting as they work to secure their future. In other words, tenure can be somewhat like attempting to build the foundations of a career on quick sand.

What it means for you: Be prepared for nearly a decade of competition, adaptation, and strategic thinking.

After considering these points, you may say, “So what? I don’t care if I’m tenured.” Unfortunately, the system is designed such that, if you want to have any respect or privileges on a university campus, you must be on the tenure track. If you are not recommended for promotion to associate professor, you are not able to remain an assistant professor indefinitely. Typically, you are given a one year contract within which to find employment elsewhere with few, if any, opportunities to appeal the decision.

Many of these points may be obsolete in short order, since the academic profession is rapidly changing with the entire higher education landscape. It is possible that they will be completely irrelevant if, as some observers predict and others applaud, tenure stands to completely disappear as higher education goes the way of the market. Even though it is a stress-inducing, arduous journey—one that I plan to avoid—I sincerely hope that tenure is still in the picture for coming cohorts of PhD students. It is the bedrock of academic freedom, instrumental to democracy, and the engine of a nation's critical conscience at a moment in history when we need it most.