When I was a shiny new scientist, I worked for a company. It was my dream job, or so I thought. It was a place where scientists were proud to work. But a new company leader wanted something different. He wanted to be able to say he did something new. Projects that could have made plenty of money were cut, research was halted, people were laid off, and incentives were offered for resigning. The older scientists weren’t ready to retire. They had kids in college and getting married. They weren’t 65 and couldn’t go on Medicare. They needed a job. I applied to resign but was turned down. I was too young. They only wanted to get rid of the older people. I saw my future there. It wasn’t secure. I had no real research project and nothing to focus on. I did have a new baby. What nightmare! I left to be a professor, a job that offered tenure, which I got. The company never was as innovative as it had been. Ironically, a person responsible for the short-sighted cuts in new products went on to be an “expert” in “education reform.’“

Here in the US, colleges have run like well-built machines, having a profound impact on the United States.

The US has so many small, private colleges in part because they were seen as a way to make your town in the middle of nowhere seem smart and cultural. Many of these small schools catered to the middle class and their students, being not too rigorous and having plenty of sports and things like fraternities. Those who found education to their liking and wanted more challenge could always go on the graduate school. Believe it or not, this proved very successful to the United States. Colleges were expanded and well-funded in 1958 as part of National Defense following the launch of Sputnik. (That link leads to a great essay on the dismantling of higher education funding and the motivation behind it.) The United States was on a roll.  Even students who only wanted to go to college for sports and “mating opportunities'” were nurtured and went on to help make the U.S. an intellectual powerhouse. It was patriotic to be smart, informed, and a college supporter. You didn’t have to have a college education to be these things. You could attend college events.

Autonomy was a highlight of the US college system. “It turns out that autonomy is enormously important for a healthy and dynamic system of higher education. Universities operate best as emergent institutions, in which initiative bubbles up from below – as faculty pursue research opportunities, departments develop programmes, and administrators start institutes and centres to take advantage of possibilities in the environment. …top-down policymaking tends to stifle the entrepreneurial activities of the faculty…” 

This autonomy, driven by the professors, resulted in world class research. The US has more Nobel prizes than any other country and is home to over half of the world’s top educational institutions.

Tenure gives the professors the autonomy they need to be both secure and creative. It helped grow the college and university system. It remains a benefit to attract and retain the best faculty. It creates people with a vested interest in their college and the quality of the education it offers. In general, good students become professors and the notion that they would “slack off” because of tenure shows a lack of understanding of teaching and of being a motivated learner. 

Tenure creates stability, even in unstable times. Tenure is a benefit and with the benefit, comes cost savings for the college. Nearly every tenure track job pays less than what the person would earn in a non-academic job.  I personally took half the salary of my industry job to seek a tenure stable life where I could do my research without having a higher up decide I needed to move on to something new.  Being able to follow my own curiosity and that of my students was part of my “pay.”

A perk of tenure is being able to see a research or creative project through.

It makes sense that happy teachers make happy students. Positive interactions between faculty and students leads to student success. It’s hard to imagine a positive that would come from not having a tenured faculty, secure and creative and invested in their college. As with my former employer, not investing in and supporting the personnel won’t achieve anything but mediocracy or maybe even failure.

“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist … Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” —John Steinbeck