Tenure, that well-established institution that is now preeminent at major colleges like Dartmouth, began only in the mid-1920s as a statement by an obscure academic organization. The history of the system that evolved from that statement has been a story of varying popularity that, after decades of ascendancy, is now witnessing a quiet roll-back.
The American Association of University Professors first called for lifetime professorships with the 1925 Conference Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure. That statement declared, "After the expiration of a probationary period, teachers or investigators should have permanent or continuous tenure ... their service should be terminated only for adequate cause, except in the case of retirement for age, or under extraordinary circumstances because of financial exigencies."
Though Dartmouth's current policy was not adopted until the late 1940s under College President John Sloan Dickey, an informal system of tenure appointments was in place in the 1920s during president Ernest Martin Hopkins' presidency.
Currently, after six years of teaching, a Dartmouth professor is eligible for tenure. The professor's department makes a recommendation to the Committee Advisory to the President -- consisting of the College president, the dean of faculty and two faculty members each from the humanities, science and social science divisions -- which then makes a recommendation to the Board of Trustees.
"The CAP's recommendation can be adopted or not adopted by the Board of Trustees," though they rarely deny tenure, history professor Jere Daniell said.
Professors are examined with regards to their community service, teaching and publishing, retired history professor David Roberts said, adding that "community service really doesn't play a role."
Dartmouth's current system was "fully in place and rationalized by the early '70s," Daniell said.
Though few modifications have in fact been made since then, most notably the elimination eight years ago of mandatory retirement at age 70, and a greater focus on student recommendations, Daniell said.
Though some institutions and individuals -- notably Harvard professor Dick Chait -- have recently decried the restrictions and unfairness of the system, tenure has remained integral to academia for decades.
The fear of reprisals for political beliefs that surged among academics during the Red Scares and McCarthyism of the 1950s was a major impetus for many schools -- including Dartmouth -- to formalize the tenure system, Daniell said.
"Generally speaking ... much of the original reasons for the tenure system are outdated," Jackson Hole Higher Education Group founder William Massy said.
Massy, formerly professor emeritus of education and business administration at Stanford University, is highly regarded in the field of academic productivity and the role of faculty at institutions.
"Academic freedom is pretty well-ensured," Massy said. "I'd just as soon not have the tenure system."
Many academic institutions, attempting to get around the restrictions and costs imposed by tenure, are in record numbers hiring adjunct or part-time professors who do not qualify for tenure.
Massy said, however, that "there's a lot of full-time, non-tenure-line people now," and about half of all faculty are not eligible for tenure in the country's university system.
Many colleges have also sought more creative solutions to removing tenured professors such as post-tenure review [see related article, page 6], though some institutions have faced legal challenges as a result of opting out of tenure.
Some schools have sought to eliminate entire departments in order to remove tenured professors and the costs associated with lifetime salaries.
The Dartmouth Medical School, using a subtler approach, eliminated its tenure system over the past decade. Theirs "was a gradual process which involved not eliminating the tenure of people who had it," but rather not giving tenure to newly hired professors, Daniell said, adding that fewer professional or graduate schools have tenure programs than undergraduate institutions.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher went so far as to eliminate tenure entirely in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Under her plan, which sent ripples of resentment throughout British academic circles, then tenured professors retained their status, though any promotion would rescind their tenure.
Such drastic measures are unlikely in the United States, Massy said, because the political uproar would be quite large. The Department of Education does not have the authority to mandate any changes on a national scale, so any change in the public university system would have to come from state legislators, which he said are unlikely to take action against tenure.
Since the beginnings of the tenure system, debate has existed on the familiar topic of striking a balance between tenure candidates' quality of research and quality of teaching.
Daniell credits the Dartmouth system of student reviews of candidates with keeping tenure to its original goal of better teachers: "You could be the best scholar in the world, and you're not going to get tenure."
Roberts -- the former president of the College's long-defunct chapter of the AAUP -- said that many institutions focus too much on the scholarship requirements of tenure.
Not even Dartmouth was immune from the problem, he said, with the rise of the "publish or perish" mantra in the 1940s and '50s. This came about "because everyone wanted to be as good as Harvard and Yale," he said.
"Why do they really want them to publish?" Roberts asked, adding that "teaching to me is 90 percent of what [professors] do."
