Tenure as a Labor Protection

Abstract

As legislative bans on faculty tenure proliferate, so too have defenses of tenure that emphasize its ability to protect academic freedom. This Article argues that, instead, tenure should be debated—and defended—as a labor protection and equity initiative to help diversify the professoriate. Tenure provides job security to workers whose exit options are surprisingly poor relative to their high threshold investments and ongoing financial costs. These considerations are especially compelling with respect to faculty from traditionally marginalized communities who face heightened barriers to entry and weightier service burdens. Calls to diversify the professoriate that do not take employment terms seriously are thus severely misguided.

The Article advances this labor theory of tenure in three ways. First, it draws on available statistics regarding educational debt, salary levels and disparities, and job mobility to show that academia is a remarkably risky career path for all but the most privileged persons. Second, it mobilizes quantitative and qualitative analysis of marginalized faculty experiences to show that academia’s riskiness is exacerbated for these individuals. And third, it reveals that, contrary to received wisdom, the historical popularization of tenure as an employment practice was driven by labor considerations—recruitment and retention—rather than the protection of academic freedom. By clarifying the stakes in the debate over tenure and advocating for a labor theory of tenure, this Article lays the groundwork for future analysis that can better accommodate growing calls to diversify faculty ranks.

[14 Mar 2023] An earlier version of this article was posted under the title "Securing Jobs, Advancing Equity: Tenure's Invisible Labor."

Keywords: Faculty tenure, at-will employment, academia, labor security, academic freedom

JEL Classification: K31