how safe are you once you get your tenure position?

[Vid]

Folks,

I have a quick question. What causes a tenured prof (associate prof) to get fired or lose his job? how safe are you once you get your tenure position?

Thank you.

[downer]

One of the main risks these days is your college closing or being merged with another.

[EdnaMode]

A colleague's wife, who was a tenured full prof at another institution, just lost her job because they got rid of her entire department, they're not even teaching out the majors and minors currently enrolled.

[Parasaurolophus]

Doing something really bad, like assaulting a student or colleague. Total dereliction of duty.

[Hibush]

Research misconduct has led to dismissal (or "early retirement"). Sexual misconduct also leads to a quiet change of career. Tenure provides the due process for accusations in each case, but does not protect against termination if the violation is serious enough.

Tenure also does not provide protection if a department is eliminated. The institution can make that kind of programmatic change. Administrators tend not do that to because it makes retention of the rest of the faculty much more difficult.

[Wahoo Redux]

One of the main risks these days is your college closing or being merged with another.

We are not closing or merging----at least not yet----but we are retracting and retrenching. Our union has saved several tenured people from being laid-off by citing the handbook.  The admin tried for a force majeure clause in our last contract, which the union also shot down. 

Here, if a program closes (usually for low enrollment that does not cover costs) and the administrators can make the argument that a subject is no longer supported by classroom attendance, and the faculty in question is not qualified to be transferred to another department or teach something outside their immediate discipline, they are potentially toast.

[clean]

Things that do not protect you, even if you have tenure:
Financial Exigency (look at all of the university firings after Hurricane Katrina)
Closing a department or major
committing a crime (even if unrelated to your job at the university), particularly a felony, but not necessarily limited to that.
Dereliction of duty.  ( We have a Post Tenure Review process that is formal that all of us undergo every 5 years.  IF the committee finds your performance is wanting, then you have 2 years to correct the deficiencies and failing that, tenure is rescinded (as is your job))

Otherwise, stay out of politics that are unrelated to your courses.  As I teach Finance, I have no opinions on Roe V Wade, for instance.  I dont discuss history, unless it is a stock's price history!  I dont discuss political campaigns or candidates.  I CAN discuss the impact of tax policies, but only to the extent that I stick to the FACTS and avoid policy implications (or "should we" discussions).    Plenty of Higher Education  stories that relate to faculty that made comments in class that are irrelevant to class, and have faced discipline, which could include termination!

It does offer a lot more protection, but it is not 'a job for life' with no checks and balances, forever and ever. 

[lightning]

At my university, you can get re-assigned to another academic unit, if your own unit gets closed down. However, that's all theory. For the entire time that I have been here, a unit has never been shut down. It's really hard to shut down a unit. An admin can't just snap their fingers and shut down an academic unit.

Also, at my place, they can try to fire you for cause, but due process for tenured folks make it very difficult to fire someone for cause. However, it's still possible, if there are enough people that have the stomach for trying to fire a tenured faculty member.

The only way for me to lose my tenured professorship is for the entire university to shut down, and that's simply not going to happen in my lifetime, at least at my place. I have a feeling that my situation is still the norm. Tenured profs losing their job is still the exception, despite the gloom-and-doom stories, which more often than not are wielded by administrators who use gloom-and-doom to justify their cut-cut-cut agendas and to scare tenured faculty into making concessions.

[kaysixteen]

Esp considering how easily (and nowadays often eagerly) students can misconstrue professor remarks, why should your expression of political views cause revocation of tenure?   I am not talking about browbeating classes with regularized political commentary, but merely a statement or two now and again that would allow a keen observer to glean for whom one recently voted, well...?

[Ruralguy]

Well, its better that people think I might be an idiot based on interpolated ideas of my views on things than have them prove (to their mind)
my idiocy based on my statements regarding political stances. Another way of stating this is why piss off half of the class, faculty, or whatever for idle views that have nothing to do with the class?  Now, if you are teaching a class on those subjects, it might be harder to distance oneself from specific viewpoints.

[Vid]

Yes, I heard a story of a colleague in R1 University who did illegal things via one's office and immediately got terminated.

Also heard of a tenured faculty in a good R1 University who did resign from his job but apparently had a third-degree felony case.

But merging departments or shutting down a unit really looks scary to me! I do not feel it will happen in my university but if you are going through this...I am so sorry!

Great points...Thank you, folks.

[Hibush]

Otherwise, stay out of politics that are unrelated to your courses.  As I teach Finance, I have no opinions on Roe V Wade, for instance.  I dont discuss history, unless it is a stock's price history!  I dont discuss political campaigns or candidates.  I CAN discuss the impact of tax policies, but only to the extent that I stick to the FACTS and avoid policy implications (or "should we" discussions).    Plenty of Higher Education  stories that relate to faculty that made comments in class that are irrelevant to class, and have faced discipline, which could include termination!

Thankfully that is not the case at my place. The main difference is that we believe everything ends up being related to your scholarship somehow. Such a boundary would not only be artificial but a gross attempt to suppress academic freedom (even for non-tenured faculty). We have vigorous discussions, multidisciplinary if you will, on topics of the day. Recently it is immigration policy, and everyone has an angle for how it affects their domain. I learn a lot! (Not in Florida, obvs.)

[financeguy]

Don't state that anything is genetic regardless of how relevant to your field. Any scholarship indicating that any racial or gender differences are anything other than the results of social bias will likely get you tossed.

[jerseyjay]

I think it is important to distinguish getting fired from being made redundant, even if the end result may seem the same, i.e., not having a job.

For a tenured professor to be fired, it usually means not carrying out the duties of the job or following school policies (e.g., not showing up to class for a month, refusing to turn in grades, etc) or something criminal (violence towards a student, stealing from the department, running a business out of your office). I am not sure how common this is.

Being made redundant is something else. I know people who have been laid off when their department closed, when their university closed, or when their entire program closed. This seems to be more common now than before.

[clean]

Is Florida, for one, not issuing tenure track contracts any longer?  (or was that only a discussion by the Gov, or something that didnt get passed)?  That is not a far cry from reinstating mandatory retirement or some other clock to say you are tenured only for X years. 

My state (not Florida) had long decreed that Tenure has no monetary value.  (Im sure that was in response to someone trying to sue because it was either not granted, or for losses when it was lost, for whatever reason... therefore, there can be no damages suffered).