on post-tenure review
Music: Ramona Falls: Prophet (2012)
As I tweeted some weeks ago, the University of Texas Board of Regents approved stricter guidelines and rule on on post-tenure review at my employer. I noted then that these rules only formalized what has already been in practice for some years (presumably before I arrived here): tenured professors should be reviewed annually regarding their performance. Although the process differs from one college to the next, all professors undergo annual review in their departments. We file reports every year on our service, teaching, and publications. These reports form the basis of annual evaluations, written by a department committee, which then go into one's file. What the Regents passed makes sure this process is mandatory for tenured professors (it is already mandatory for tenure-track junior faculty), however, it has always been so in my college.
What is different about the new rules is that they appear to wrest power from departments, putting it in the hands of colleges (and under the purview of the university administration). The rules do this by adopting a universal ranking system (from "exceeds expectations" to "unsatisfactory"). I believe my department also already used such a ranking system. Nevertheless, the new policy only raised a few eyebrows because it would appear to threaten department self-governance, and I've overheard many a long-time employee doubt that many administrators would actually change current practice. The university has been governed so long "from a distance," with departments having relative autonomy. Just from what I know as a seven-year employee, I don't see the new rules changing much of how we govern ourselves (the system in place is already a tight ship, is working, and there doesn't seem any incentive to change that except by making it "formal").
The only other difference, and I suppose this is really the "big deal" from an outside perspective, is that the rules do make it easier to fire someone more quickly. As I understand it, if you were routinely performing unsatisfactorily as a faculty member, it would take---more or less---about six years to show you the door. Now it only takes two years of "unsatisfactory" ratings to start the "evaluation" process that can lead to dismissal. But there is no specified time table for the "evaluation" process. I am not an optimist about trends in higher education, don't get me wrong, but I am not personally threatened---and I do not think my colleagues are threatened---by the formalization of the process. In an even-handed column on Inside Higher Ed, Kaustuv Basu interviews a number of thoughtful commentators here at the university who do not seem especially alarmed by the rules per se which, again, seem only to make formal what has been occurring here for quite some time. The "big deal" is from the outside; one professor remarked that the move will be "read" as an attack on tenure freedoms and may hamper retention and recruitment. It's the perception that things have changed, or are changing, that is key here.
If there's anything to worry about as someone who is here in a flagship school that just announced a formalized policy on post-tenure review, it's the outside. Although I do think my university administration does things that are not nice to faculty and employees (and while I find the "star system" model of reward odious and counterproductive for community---most of the people I know would give up a little raise to make sure everyone gets something, as opposed to rewarding a few at the expense of many), my experience is that the people running the various processes of evaluation mean well and intend good. That danger is not---are not---us, but rather, politicians.
The gesture of formalizing these post-tenure rules---despite the fact we already observed them---is political. This political dimension is what is dangerous and troublesome, and it is also at the level of the political that people are really arguing over the policy. What does it mean to announce to the "outside" that you are adopting "stricter" policies on reviewing faculty, if those policies are not, in the final analysis, all that more strict? What it means is that the regents wanted to respond to those "critics" in the wider community who believe the professoriate is lazy, is not accountable, and so on. In this respect the announcement is of a piece with the controversy over teacher evaluations and "net worth" (students taught versus salary), the house bill that required all course syllabae be posted to the Internet (which we already did), and so forth. The alarmed reactions are not to actual changes that are occurring, but to the framing of public relations.
The danger, then, is the possibility that the university comes to resemble its PR, a slow drift toward incremental change over time. I am uncertain if the risks taken here---to announce radical change to deflate political pressure---is the best rhetorical strategy. Moreover, as someone in the IHE piece points out, the symbolism of playing visibility politics with policy can affect other institutions with a less willful (or more disempowered) faculty. A flagship university is a symbolic machine at its PR does have rhetorical effects that affect material changes at peer and aspiring institutions.
With these worries in mind, I have been pleased with our president's often critical, public responses to the political subtext of the regent's decisions (for example, the most recent one). I suppose he cannot be more forceful and must strike a balance. Still, a careful reading of his recent addresses reveals someone with rhetorical skill is helping him respond to the cultural battles that are besieging the university. I think if he was not critical and did not "strike" back at all, then I would be more worried.