State legislators in Kentucky are the latest lining up to attack higher education and gut the protections of tenure. A late addition to the Kentucky Senate’s budget legislation would allow public universities to dismiss tenured faculty due to program changes or elimination. Following other tenure attacks in Wisconsin and Tennessee, we see a clear assault on tenure. In today’s post, I want to address the problems with the Kentucky proposal and why we need tenure in higher education.

Chris McDaniel, a Republican State Senator, claims that his proposal keeps academic freedom by only allowing tenure dismissals in the case of program changes.

McDaniel also claims that university presidents supported his proposal, yet he refused to name who he discussed it with and no one would publicly support the proposal.

Needless to say, I am dubious if McDaniel spoke to anyone other than the usual think tanks and ideologues who have been trying to gut tenure across the county.

Numerous higher education faculty leaders expressed serious reservations about the tenure proposal noting the dire consequences for faculty recruitment and retention, especially given the already lagging salaries in the state.

As Wisconsin learned before, other higher education institutions will poach faculty in part based on the weakening of tenure in the state. As public institutions struggle to retain their best faculty, this proposal will only make those efforts more difficult.

However, beyond the recruitment problems presented by attacking tenure, there are serious detrimental consequences for higher education if tenure is weakened.

It may be helpful to remember why we have tenure.

First, my usual disclaimer when discussing tenure, tenure is not a job for life and you can be fired for cause. Many legislators seem continually confused by this point so let me say it again.

TENURE FACULTY CAN BE FIRED FOR CAUSE. 

So why do we have tenure? Pretty simply, as a faculty member, my teaching and research should be focused on my expertise not fear of reprisal from forces inside or outside of the university.

If I am worried that my program might be closed or my job may be in jeopardy, will I focus on my data and results or the potential political fallout?

And before you think this threat is overblown, look at what happened in Wisconsin in 2016.

Two Wisconsin state legislators threatened to withhold funding from the University of Wisconsin because of a course on “the problem of whiteness.”

Too often, weakening tenure protections opens up assaults on teaching and research that severely hampers higher education institutions and faculty.

So let’s go back to the Kentucky example now.

What happens if the sociology department at the University of Kentucky decides to offer a course on race similar to the University of Wisconsin? This course is taught using the effective teaching practices, has sufficient enrollment to justify offering, and tenured faculty have research expertise on the subject.

But legislators decide they don’t like the topic of the course for ideological reasons.

They withhold funding from the sociology department. Without funding or tenure protections, the University lays off the faculty who was going to teach the course.

With this tenure faculty member now gone, the legislature restores funding and the sociology department can remain.

Or can it? Because now the legislature has effectively cut off areas of inquiry which guts the core of higher education.

We simply can’t allow state legislators to dictate teaching and research based on ideology.

Doing so weakens not only higher education, but our society at large.

Tenure can be frustrating, expensive, and often inefficient.

Yet, as Winston Churchill might say, “tenure is the worst form of higher education governance, except for all the others.”