I Don’t Need Your Stinkin’ Tenure
I wrote this because I was sick of non-academics throwing around the word “tenure” without knowing what it really meant.
As a professor you have three or more underpaid jobs, no ability to pick where you live, objectionable co-workers and even worse students. Why anyone wants to be one is something we should ask more often, and the typical answer will be “tenure.”
In the academic community, tenure means everything. If you get it, it’s your most special day, your Christmas-wedding-birthday-bat-mitzvah-baptism all rolled up into one. Perhaps for this reason, people on the outside imagine tenure as being job security so unlimited that profs are banging students at Club Med instead of grading papers.[1]
It’s neither of those things. Three points, to begin with:
1) Getting tenure is completely fucking arbitrary. Completely. If you’re an academic, it means nothing about how awesome your work is, or how admirable you are, or whether you deserved it, or anything. Get over it.
2) Despite tenure being arbitrary and meaningless, it still takes a shitload of work to even be considered for it. If you’re not an academic, DO NOT assume you could handle it.
3) If you’re a lecturer, adjunct, grad student, etc. you don’t have tenure and can’t ever get it; ergo, the university will dick you around as much as humanly possible. Not having tenure means your life is (although this sounds impossible) even shittier than if you were tenure-track.
Re: the “unfirable” part. This is not at all true. If the cause is budget-related, the university can fire whoever it likes — and more! Even as I write this, universities are figuring out that they can (e.g.) change your title so they can pay you half as much, dissolve your entire department, “furlough” your job into non-existence…basically, make your life so miserable they hope you’ll quit, kind of like forcing someone to break up with you. Yes, even if you have tenure.
Technically, though, you can’t fire tenured people because of anything they’ve said. It was only ever meant as a protection of free speech (it’s not working, by the way, but whatever). You may have already spotted the logical flip side here: if tenure means they can’t fire you for anything you’ve said….when you don’t have tenure or aren’t eligible for it…the university can fire you for something you say.
Yep, that’s right. If you’re waiting for tenure or can’t get it at all (remember, 70% of faculty can’t), the university can fire your ass for any reason it likes.[2] This is why most people I know describe the tenure-getting process – which lasts for several years, by the way – as “trying not to get fired.” And please note, it’s never actually called “getting fired” by the admin. It’s “choosing not to renew your position,” which can happen at various points (depending on your contract) from every few years to every year. If you’re non-tenurable, the question of whether you actually have a job occurs yearly, or even every semester, and always at the last minute. It’s a fun exercise in existential nausea.
Anyway, if you’re gunning for tenure and your chair doesn’t like your interpretation of Locke (or your taste in Mozart arias or your shirts) they can hold that against you. If you announce you hate Girl Scouts and the Dean’s niece happens to be one, it might bite you in the ass come tenure-time. If the Provost just plain doesn’t like you, (s)he can vote against you, no questions asked.[3]
Endless reviews give the illusion of accountability, and the university is happy to give you a list of suggestions. But make no mistake, this is not a checklist. Even if you do everything they ask, they can still deny you tenure. Which is why it really is a completely arbitrary process.
I’m sure a lot of people – okay, people with tenure – won’t want to admit how stupidly haphazard it all is.[4] Yeah, well, senior profs also bristle when anyone notes how much easier getting tenure used to be, which is obviously true.[5] So they can suck it.
And they’re not the real problem. The real problem is that the higher-ups making the ultimate decision have no idea what they’re voting on. Your department (which theoretically knows what it’s talking about) makes an initial vote. But then some Deans decide, then the Chancellor, then finally the Provost. These guys and gals don’t know you from Adam, and often work in a completely different field than you do. But they’ve got tenure, gosh darn it, so they know what tenure-worthy looks like.[6]
And believe me, they don’t have to listen to your department. I’ve lost count of cases where the department has unanimously voted their person up for tenure, then the Provost or Dean (feeling they know best) has denied it. I’ve seen people who’ve written multiple books get denied tenure, and people with near-criminal[7]) records get tenure.
The only way to get through it is the patented STFU[8] technique. It can’t guarantee results – nothing can – but at least it’s easy: just keep your mouth as shut as possible, thus minimizing your chances of pissing anyone off . After seven years or so (way to mispend your youth) you either get tenure or you don’t. If you don’t they’ve basically fired your ass and you’re never gonna work in their university again, gringo. Time to start looking for another job.[9]
If you succeed, you’re supposed to be thrilled enough to kiss the ring of the person who made the final decision. What really happens is that after an anxious year of insomnia and self-medication, the newly-tenured prof has a mid-life crisis. It’s virtually impossible to get tenure before 35, and it’s more likely that you’re forty-ish. A great time to realize that tenure’s the only thing you’ve gotten. No family, no life, no fun. But you have tenure, dammit.
It’s true that some tenured profs just stop working – but not in the way people think. Tenured people still have to do research and show up to class. Hell, their performance might even improve with their newfound freedom. But they avoid service, becoming the asshole colleagues everybody hates. They duck early out of every meeting. They’re suddenly booked for the majority of the day. The basically get their payback for all the ridiculously long hours they put in pre-tenure.
On the one hand it’s totally understandable that you’d ditch your third job as soon as possible. On the other hand, there’s really no excuse for being an asshole. The non-assholes make the traumatic discovery that life isn’t going to get any easier, because they are now qualified to be on every committee, teach needy graduate students, and and edit books while still writing them. Three cheers for tenure!
Frankly, I’ve always thought the whole thing was overrated. There’s nothing that would make me want to give up my right to have an opinion. But you probably could have guessed that already.
[1] Not true. Most profs aren’t imaginative enough to head to Club Med for their indiscretions.
[2] No, really. Universities have fought tooth and nail against letting standards of due process apply to tenure decisions. Only federally-protected categories (such as women and minorities) have successfully sued for tenure, and that usually requires some really obvious evidence — like your chair publicly stating, on record, that women make the worst professors ever.
[3] Although firing you means hiring someone else, and the hassle might give them pause. I wouldn’t hold my breath on altruistic concerns playing into it, though.
[4] Cf. my brilliant essay on meritocracy earlier in the book.
[5] The number of unstated requirements for tenure just keep increasing with ever year. Also, there was a “footnote revolution” around 1990, meaning you had to cite evidence for everything you said, which made book-writing a lot more difficult. Also meaning that pre-1990 books are almost readable, for God’s sake. I think that was the real problem.
[6] It’s like art, I guess, you just know when you see it.
[7] “Criminal” as in, if the university hadn’t persuaded the wronged parties to use its own arbitration and charges had been brought, these sleazeballs wouldn’t stand a chance. So FYI anyone reading this, don’t ever use university mediation for sexual harassment.
[8] Shut The Fuck Up.
[9] And since you clearly don’t know when to give up, it will undoubtedly be an academic job. You’ll be competing with all the newly-minted, less-tired PhDs on the market, and you’ll have to start the tenure process all over again if you get one. Good luck with that.