University Daily Kansan
Friday, August 31, 1973
2
Professors Debate Tenure Question
By ERIC MEYER
Kausan Staff Reporter
Leaders of opposing sides in the faculty tenure debate expressed concern yesterday about reports to be issued Tuesday by four universities investigating the alleged problem.
"I'm quite concerned that the faculty has not been given input into the committee hearing," Frances Ingemann, professor of linguistics and a leading tenure proponent, said yesterday. "The committees have been responsible for managing the faculty when most of the faculty was away."
Ingemann said the question either should be placed before the Faculty Senate or asked in the Senate.
“Tenture is the number one issue on campus this fall,” said Arthur Katz, dean of the School of Social Welfare. “We’re coming close to a point where it’s hard to recruit new faculty members because we can’t handle the same kind of tenure possibilities.”
TENURE IS a form of job security for senior faculty members. After a six-year probationary period, faculty members must meet the university's nonnuttess if the committees grant tenure, the faculty member is secure in his teaching position unless the University can show cause for his removal. If tenure is not approved, the member is dismissed after one more year.
"It had come to our attention last spring that we were approaching a figure of two-thirds of our faculty being tenured," Chancellor Emeritus Raymond Nichols said yesterday. "All of the national studies told us that we should be concerned about tenure at that point. So the four committees were appointed."
And the percentage of faculty members
with tenure will increase. Katz said.
"If salaries get better, as the regents have promised, we'll have even less turnover and the tenure percentage ought to rise," he said. "We cannot let the University get tenured in." It's conceivable that even more be tenured in the near future."
SOME EXTREMELY well qualified faculty members have been forced to leave because they could not attain tenure, Katz said.
Katz said three instructors in the School of Social Welfare were refused tenure even though both he and the school's promotions and tenure committee strongly had recommended the instructors be given tenure.
"All three are valuable teachers, highly rated by their students, highly valued by their colleagues in the school, who we had gone to great pains to locate and who had done a great deal of community-service acts," he said.
However, Nichols denied that the administration ordered a cutback in tenure
"There was no concerted effort to restrict the award of tenure," he said. "I'm not really sure we're tenured in it. I came to a point where some attention to the situation was needed. Once you get completely tenured in it's too late."
"I DON'T SEE that as any danger," she said. "There are always people retiring or leaving for other reasons. So there will be enough openings for new people."
Ingemann, on the other hand, said tenure wouldn't be a problem.
Ingemann is vice president of the KU chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). AAUP strongly supports the tenure concept.
"The tenure is necessary because it shifts the burden of proof from the individual to the institution," she said. "During the probationary period when a faculty member works on contract, he must prove himself worthy of a contract renewal. When he becomes tenured, he is assured of his tenure; however, university can prove he should be removed."
Nichols agreed that tenure was important.
"Faculty members hold tenure as a very precious thing," he said. "It represents job security and, perhaps first in importance, academic freedom."
HOWEVER, Katz said, the importance of tenure had decreased.
"Historically, the idea of tenure has played an important part in America," he said. "First, it provided economic security for faculty members, and that was hard to come by. Second, it strengthened the notion of educational freedom.
"But those values are not as important today as they used to be. A person can no longer be raised on a whim. Courts protect him from capricious and arbitrary action."
Katz said contracts would be sufficient. But, Ingemann said the University had no obligation to renew a contract that had expired.
"Unions have seniority systems and so does Civil Service," she said. "If tenure were abolished, immediate unionization of teachers would result."
WHEN A FACULTY member is concerned about the quality of instruction drops, program staff must
"Professors are human," she said. "If someone is always checking up on their work, they can't concentrate; they get paranoid."
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Katz said tenure should be made optional. During his sixth year, he said, a faculty member should be allowed to choose between going through the tenure process or ignoring tenure and continuing on a contract.
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"The faculty member who chooses not to try for tenure could ask for a multi-year contract, depending on what the University deems appropriate. Katz said. "We won't have to drop people just because there don't happen to be tenure openings."
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