Tha Latest Assault on Tenure (and its Casualty)

[mahagonny]

https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Latest-Assault-on-Tenure/248058

Dr. James Patterson started his career in the history department at Centenary University in New Jersey in 2001, earned tenure there in 2007, and was promoted to full professor in 2013. They've laid him off, using a new provision about 'near-exigency' which allows them to terminate faculty before being in full-blown exigency, as I understand it. He's 61 years old and won't get another full time teaching job, he says. His students implored the university to reconsider but the termination held. The article states that the AAUP had a hand in loosening the requirements back in 2013.

After emptying out his office he got an email from a colleague. 'It's eerily quiet and sad here...the the students have not been told what happened and many are angry and the faculty are wondering who is next. But it's even sadder not to see you on campus. I wish I could figure out how to right this wrong.'

[Clarino1]

Georgetown College in Kentucky did the same thing in 2015, terminating 5 tenured faculty in order to (the administration said) get the college's finances in order.  The administration did not declare financial exigency.  Originally, 7 tenured faculty were terminated, 2 middle-aged white males, one older white male, two older white women, one younger white woman and one asian woman.  The 2 middle-aged white males were eventually retained, but the others were terminated, even though all were members of "protected" categories.  Only minimal recourse was available, and the younger faculty members will probably not ever teach in their fields again.  No effort was made to find employment in the College for those 5, even though there were vacant positions they could have filled.  Now Georgetown College says it is going to "right-size" several more faculty positions away, although the administration put forward the pious hope that retirements and normal attrition would take care of the problem.  A warning to all--tenure means nothing any more.

[mahagonny]

I respectfully disagree. Tenure means plenty, although it is not 100% irrevocable.

Table from the article:

Colleges That Have Invoked 'Near Exigency' to Lay Off Faculty, Since 2009
Institution   Location   Year   Number of Tenured Faculty Laid Off   Outcome
Florida State University   Tallahassee, Fla.   2009-10   21 originally identified   Rescinded
Clark Atlanta University   Atlanta, Ga.   2009   54 total faculty (number of tenured unknown)   Court of appeals sided with faculty
National Louis University   Chicago, Ill.   2012   16   Completed
University of Southern Maine   Portland, Me.   2014-15   20-30   Completed
College of Saint Rose   Albany, N.Y.   2015   14   Completed
Hiram College   Hiram, Ohio   2018   2   Completed
Simpson College   Indianola, Iowa   2018   2   Completed
St. Cloud State University   St. Cloud, Minn.   2019-20   8    In progress (layoffs effective end of academic year)
University of St. Thomas   Houston, Tex.   2019-20   2   In progress (layoffs effective end of academic year)
Centenary University   Hackettstown, N.J.   2019-20   4   Layoffs effective end of academic year, but affected faculty aren't teaching this semester)
Linfield College   McMinnville, Ore.   2020   Up to 25 tenured and tenure-track faculty (number of tenured unknown)   In progress

Number of tenured professors in USA today is not decreasing, going by what I've been hearing. It's growing. Not easy to find the number in five minutes of googling. Most of the hits will be about contingent faculty numbers increasing. It's true, there's a lot of press about the growth of the "precariat." Tenured faculty, some of them, have complained about the amount of attention given to 'the plight of the adjunct' but then some of these same folks use that controversy to build protection and support for the privileges of tenure.

Poor guy, this Dr. Patterson. For some reason the tear-jerker article doesn't mention that he was making $178K/year a few years ago when serving as provost. If he really misses the students that much, there's adjunct work around.

[TreadingLife]

To be fair, tenure means nothing at institutions that have had to close their doors permanently either. 

The reality is that some schools cannot survive, and that some schools need to substantially reorganize to lower costs in order to hope to survive. Should schools just keep increasing tuition faster than the rate of inflation without looking inward at their organization and costs? I think we owe it to the students to control costs as best possible, and that can mean restructuring a bloated system full of entitled people who shout "tenure" while students are drowning in debt, or can't even afford college in the first place. 

[tuxthepenguin]

Georgetown College in Kentucky did the same thing in 2015, terminating 5 tenured faculty in order to (the administration said) get the college's finances in order.  The administration did not declare financial exigency.  Originally, 7 tenured faculty were terminated, 2 middle-aged white males, one older white male, two older white women, one younger white woman and one asian woman.  The 2 middle-aged white males were eventually retained, but the others were terminated, even though all were members of "protected" categories.  Only minimal recourse was available, and the younger faculty members will probably not ever teach in their fields again.  No effort was made to find employment in the College for those 5, even though there were vacant positions they could have filled.  Now Georgetown College says it is going to "right-size" several more faculty positions away, although the administration put forward the pious hope that retirements and normal attrition would take care of the problem.  A warning to all--tenure means nothing any more.

Tenure doesn't protect faculty against an institution's financial problems. That's been true in all the years I've been in this business. It's more pronounced now as the strong economy and demographic issues are hitting small colleges hard, but it's never protected anyone for as long as I can remember. Tenure means there are some reasons you can't be fired, and that you're guaranteed a certain process will be followed before they can get rid of you, but it's never been a job for life. Most tenured faculty aren't fired, but that doesn't mean they can't be fired, they just happen to work at stable institutions.

[mahagonny]

Georgetown College in Kentucky did the same thing in 2015, terminating 5 tenured faculty in order to (the administration said) get the college's finances in order.  The administration did not declare financial exigency.  Originally, 7 tenured faculty were terminated, 2 middle-aged white males, one older white male, two older white women, one younger white woman and one asian woman.  The 2 middle-aged white males were eventually retained, but the others were terminated, even though all were members of "protected" categories.  Only minimal recourse was available, and the younger faculty members will probably not ever teach in their fields again.  No effort was made to find employment in the College for those 5, even though there were vacant positions they could have filled.  Now Georgetown College says it is going to "right-size" several more faculty positions away, although the administration put forward the pious hope that retirements and normal attrition would take care of the problem.  A warning to all--tenure means nothing any more.

Tenure doesn't protect faculty against an institution's financial problems. That's been true in all the years I've been in this business. It's more pronounced now as the strong economy and demographic issues are hitting small colleges hard, but it's never protected anyone for as long as I can remember. Tenure means there are some reasons you can't be fired, and that you're guaranteed a certain process will be followed before they can get rid of you, but it's never been a job for life. Most tenured faculty aren't fired, but that doesn't mean they can't be fired, they just happen to work at stable institutions.

Dr. Patterson does not seem to accept this thought process. If he did, he wouldn't have enlisted his students to plea for him to be kept on the faculty. I think people like him should leave the students out of it. The system has been generous to him. If he doesn't have enough savings to live on by now, he's probably bad with money. Sure, the students find him charming and erudite, like so many in his field. Did he tell them what his salary is, as a former high-ranking administrator? Or did he just tear up and say 'I'm losing my job!?"