Post-Tenure Review
By 
Well now I don’t feel bad about not getting tenure.
The bill would require public university presidents and faculty members to undergo a performance evaluation at least once every four years. It gives schools the ability to fire employees who fail to meet “performance and productivity” standards, and applies to all public universities and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. Critics of the bill — many of them university professors — have said they worry the bill could put tenure promotion and the jobs of tenured faculty at risk in Kentucky, and say it could make recruiting new university faculty to the state more difficult. The bill passed 30-7 in the Senate, with six Democrats and Sen. Rick Girdler, R-Somerset, voting against it. Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, D-Louisville, spoke against the bill. An assistant professor at the University of Louisville, Chambers Armstrong said there are already existing evaluation systems at universities, and allowing governing boards to set those standards threatens academic freedom with “no guard rails.” “The reason that this is a big deal is because these boards are inherently political organizations that are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the members of this body,” Chambers Armstrong said. “All of our board members that I know of are wonderful, well-acting folks, but there are no guard rails in this legislation that require that the policies or procedures that they set actually be tied to an employee’s employment contract or to their work obligations.”
An amendment proposed by Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, would have added specifics related to employee’s job criteria to the evaluations. Many professors were in favor of the amendment and said it added protections to tenure, but the amendment didn’t pass. Chambers Armstrong said this “leaves open the door that this can be used to ill intent.” “I hope that no one will abuse this system or this law, but the way it’s written, there is a huge, gaping hole that threatens the very foundation of free thought in the Commonwealth, and for that reason, I will vote no,” Chambers Armstrong said. Tipton has repeatedly said the bill is “not about tenure,” but about giving universities the ability to remove under-performing employees. Tipton introduced similar legislation last year, but the bill did not pass out of the House Education Committee.
Two moments of howling understatement: “have said they worry the bill could put tenure promotion and the jobs of tenured faculty at risk in Kentucky,” and “leaves open the door that this can be used to ill intent.” The point of course is to destroy tenure protections at Kentucky public institutions, which is to say that “ill intent” is wholly and entirely the motivating purpose behind the law.
As a non-tenured academic (Senior Lecturer, dontchaknow) I’m not sure how this affects me. A lot depends on how norms develop and on how much attention the governing boards actually pay to academic performance. On paper, I am arguably now more secure (I have a three year rolling contract, which is to say I can only be fired three years in advance, which is to say go ahead and fire me and watch my effort level as I play out the string) than a tenured faculty member who faces what amounts to a review every four years. That said, I’m pretty sure the university could find a way to fire me quickly if it really wanted to so… who knows?
This is why I say to folks that they should stay away from academia. Red States are all trending this direction and there aren’t enough Blue State jobs to have anything more than a glimmer of a hope of making a career. Find something else to do with yourself and (more important for this audience) please don’t advise students to pursue careers in academia without also being as clear as possible about the bleakness of their professional prospects.
Photo Credit: By Mobilus In Mobili – https://www.flickr.com/photos/mobili/23892062134/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=132975028