Success on the Tenure Track: Five Keys to Faculty Job Satisfaction

3. Tenure

* Tenure * Cathy Ann Trower The Tenure Debate It seems some things never change, and one of those is that there has always been a debate^^1 around tenure—a debate that, simplistically stated, has pitted academic freedom and the attraction of talent to the professoriate against institutional flexibility and the prevention of complacency. What has changed is the nature of the discourse as new realities are affecting academe in many ways unanticipated by the American Association of University Professors in its 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure and further codified in its 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure (AAUP 2001a and 2001b). The twenty-first century has brought sweeping advances in technology and corresponding pressures on university presses, increased demand for collaboration and interdisciplinary research, and changing faculty demographics (e.g., more women and racial/ethnic minorities—addressed in chapter 1; and more dual-career faculty members—addressed in chapter 5). At the same time, the percentage of tenured and tenure-track faculty has dropped precipitously (see chapter 1), in part because of pressures on university finances. Publish or Perish The old adage about publishing or perishing still rings all too true for junior faculty despite the fact that publishing the all-important monograph, especially in the humanities, has become increasingly difficult. “The academic monograph is widely and only half-jokingly referred to as the ‘holy grail’ or the gold standard of the tenure process. Most tenure-track assistant professors have to publish one in order to gain promotion and job security. ThePage 38 competition to publish a book is thus just as intense as the competition to get a tenure-track job. Indeed, the two competitions increasingly bleed into one another, as many take to heart the rule of thumb that it takes a book just to get a job” (Donoghue 2008, p. 42). In 2004, in response to “widespread anxiety in the profession about ever-rising demand for research productivity and shrinking humanities lists by academic publishers, worries that forms of scholarship other than single-authored books were not being recognized, and fears that a generation of junior scholars would have a significantly reduced chance of being tenured” (MLA Report 2006, p. 3), the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association (MLA) created a task force to look into trends in publication requirements for tenure and promotion in U.S. English and foreign language departments. Primary relevant findings from the MLA study include the following. • The demands placed on candidates for tenure, especially demands for publication, have been expanding in kind and increasing in quantity. Over 62 percent of all departments report that publication has increased in importance in tenure decisions over the last 10 years. The percentage of departments ranking scholarship of primary importance (over teaching) has more than doubled since the last comparable survey, conducted by Thomas Wilcox in 1968: from 35.4 percent to 75.7 percent (p. 4). • Junior faculty members are meeting these ever-growing demands even though this is a time when universities have lowered or eliminated subsidies for scholarly presses and libraries have dramatically reduced their purchases of books in the humanities. And despite a worsening climate for book publication, the monograph has become increasingly important in comparison with other forms of publication. Indeed, 88.9 percent of departments in Carnegie doctorate-granting, 44.4 percent in Carnegie master’s, and 48 percent in Carnegie baccalaureate institutions now rank publication of a monograph “very important” or “important” for tenure. The status of the monograph as a gold standard is confirmed by the expectation in almost one-third of all departments surveyed (32.9 percent) of progress toward completion of a second book for tenure. This expectation is even higher in doctorate-granting institutions, where 49.8 percent of departments now demand progress toward a second book (p. 4). • While publication expectations for tenure and promotion have increased, the value that departments place on scholarly activity outside monograph publication remains within a fairly restricted range. Refereed journalPage 39 articles continue to be valued in tenure evaluations; only 1.6 percent of responding departments rated refereed journal articles “not important” in tenure and promotion decisions. Other activities were more widely devalued. Translations were rated “not important” by 30.4 percent of departments (including 31.3 percent of foreign language departments), as were textbooks by 28.9 percent of departments, bibliographic scholarship by 28.8 percent of departments, scholarly editions by 20 percent of departments, and editing...