Re-imagining Tenure
Gordon Gee, President of Ohio State University, is proposing a fundamental restructuring of tenure that would redirect emphasis from publishing and earning grants towards rewarding good teaching:
Gee says the traditional formula that rewards publishing in scholarly journals over excellence in teaching and other contributions is outdated and too often favors the quantity of a professor’s output over quality.
“Someone should gain recognition at the university for writing the great American novel or for discovering the cure for cancer,” he told The Associated Press. “In a very complex world, you can no longer expect everyone to be great at everything.”
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“The universities of the 21st century are going to be the smokestacks of the century,” Gee said, referring to the heavy industry that once dominated the American economy. “The notion of the large, massive public university that can exist in isolated splendor is dead.”
I’m on the fence about tenure. The idea of extending the practice as a cove for airing controversial ideas with protection against reprisals makes sense. But in my limited experience, I’ve never seen tenure used in this manner. The assumption is, I think, that after publishing their volumes of literary criticism or ethnographic studies, tenured professors will still have enough energy and passion for their work that they would take advantage of the protections of tenure to explore newer, progressive ideas, but in my experience I’ve mostly witnessed tired professors retreat into their offices and spend less time on campus. Granted, this may have been symptomatic of my choice of schools.
Has anyone discussed limited tenure, perhaps in a form similar to extended fellowships?
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