Higher Ed Utah

(Brian Maffly, Salt Lake Tribune) — A Provo lawmaker who believes the tenure system has outlived its usefulness in higher education is pushing new legislation to ban lifetime employment protection for college professors.

If HB322 becomes law, Utah would become the first state to ban an institution that has been a part of campus life for at least 70 years. Higher education officials plan to fight the proposal, arguing that it would render the Beehive State “an academic pariah.”

Tenure “is not about protecting faculty, it’s about quality,” said Brad Cook, provost of Southern Utah University, the small Cedar City school that relies heavily on tenured scholars.

But Rep. Christopher Herrod, R-Provo, who unsuccessfully sponsored a similar bill last year, said then that tenure makes it hard for institutions to shed incompetent or lazy professors, without doing much to promote academic freedom.

“We are an at-will state. What’s the matter with being evaluated every year like everyone else? I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory answer,” Herrod said Friday after reintroducing the measure. “There’s nothing the matter with leading out on this. [The private Brigham Young University] has done away with tenure, and they seem to be doing just fine.”

HB322 would bar six of Utah’s eight public colleges and universities from offering tenure to new hires. In response to the vocal resistance that killed the proposal in committee last session, Herrod’s new measure exempts Utah State University and the University of Utah, which need tenure to compete nationally for research teams. That doesn’t satisfy his critics.

“We don’t think that improves the bill. Utah’s national reputation will be damaged in a significant way,” said David Buhler, associate commissioner of higher education. By making distinctions between schools with and without tenure, such a law would give second-class status to some schools. And the bill would increase schools’ hiring costs and undermine educational quality, top academic officials say.

“It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what tenure is and is not. Well under half of Utah professors are tenured or on tenure track,” Buhler said. “By the time someone has earned it they have proved themselves to be a top performing faculty member. It’s used to weed out people who aren’t working out.” More…