Folks:

The posting below looks at some of the arguments for and against post tenure review. . It is from Chapter 2: Post-Tenure Faculty Review Practices: Context and Framework by Christine M. Licat, in Post-Tenure Faculty Review and Renewal II: Reporting Results and Shaping Policy. Christine M. Licata, Rochester Institute of Technology/National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and Betsy E. Brown, University of North Carolina System, editors. Published in association with the American Association for Higher Education Anker Publishing Company, Inc. Bolton, Massachusetts. Copyright © 2004 by Anker Publishing Company, Inc. [www.ankerpub.com] ISBN 1-882982-75-4. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu

UP NEXT: Today's College Students

Tomorrow's Academic Careers

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POST-TENURE FACULTY REVIEW PRACTICES: CONTEXT AND FRAMEWORK

Christine M. Licata

Summative and Formative Consequences

The intended purpose and necessity of post-tenure review are still debated. Those outside the academy tend to see the post-tenure review process more in summative terms-as a means to make the academy more accountable, adaptable, and responsive to change. Internal stakeholders, however, view it quite differently. The optimists see it as a powerful means to enhance performance and continue professional development. The pessimists see it as an unnecessary evaluation and accountability overkill. An underlying fear often expressed by faculty is that some administrators will use these reviews capriciously to get rid of outspoken or non-conforming faculty.

Faculty groups who value developmental peer review also remain suspicious about the effect of consequential reviews on tenure policy and tradition. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), in its 1999 statement on post-tenure review, suggests performance review can be improved and supports developmental reviews intended for faculty growth. AAUP contends, however, that normal collegiate review processes and policy provisions already in place can handle the infrequent situations of underperformance (or nonperformance) and additional disciplinary monitoring is redundant. AAUP argues that summative reviews are particularly objectionable because they substitute "managerial" accountability for professional responsibility. As a result, AAUP cautions that these reviews will alter and diminish due process protections inherent in academic freedom, leaving the door open to the easing of prevailing standards for dismissal-moving that standard from incompetence to un! satisfactory performance (AAUP, 1999).

Some academics see distinct opportunity in the post-tenure review movement because it has jettisoned issues of tenured faculty review and renewal onto higher education's radar screen. And in so doing it has raised attention about the need for professional refreshment at mid- and late-career stages. When directed primarily toward professional development, post-tenure review is seen as a means for faculty to rethink their career plans, challenge their assumptions, and transform their priorities to make them "more resilient and self-renewing·[and] aligned with the central missions of our colleges and universities, enabling our institutions to lead in a society where the priorities and needs are changing in an environment of growing constraints (Rice, 1996, p. 20).

What Rice (1996) envisioned for the "new American scholar" was the possibility that faculty could become "complete" scholars with a "sense of choices and options across the life span of a career, and have the capability of responding to shifting institutional and societal needs" (p. 22).

The Associated New American Colleges' Faculty Work Group refers to this same revisioning of the relationship between faculty and their institutions as development of a new academic compact (Terenzio & Associates, 2002). This work relationship responds to career stage, individual talent, and institutional need. The work plan is individualized with an eye toward greater synchronization between the individual and the organization.

How these invitations to rethink academic life can coexist with demands for performance accountability needs to be considered carefully. There is a very close connection between these ideas and what post-tenure review can offer: Post-tenure review may actually be a means and a formal opportunity to convert such propositions about individualized work plans, faculty development, differentiated workloads/unit evaluation and expanded constructs for service, into action. The tie that binds both initiatives is the same: maintaining institutional and individual vitality and viability. (Licata, 2002, p. 170)

On the other hand, strong pressure to use post-tenure review as a way to save tenure worries some proponents. As Richard Edwards (1997) conveys:

Some of us who have advocated post-tenure review have argued that is might help save the tenure system·our thought was that by introducing a more effective self-policing system, especially one designed to prevent egregious derelictions of duty, we would deprive tenure opponents of their most telling, if highly unrepresentative, examples of abuse. I am still persuaded that this argument is true, as I am that post-tenure review would bring other important benefits as well. Now, however, post-tenure review has been pressed into immediate service as an emergency substitute-or is it just a precursor?-for calls to abolish tenure. (p. 27)

Despite the fact that post-tenure review policies are now firmly in place across American higher education, there really has been no concerted discussion about how the results of these reviews might best be tracked and reported. Communicating effectively and sensitively about results is an important component of any policy initiative. Some faculty and administrators fear that if the results from the reviews do not match what external constituents originally imagined or intended, tenure may be back on the chopping block. Or worse, that further intrusion into academic work will occur. Others fear that remaining silent about results will reap the same outcome. Most agree that reporting results are needed; company parts, though, on what data to collect and how much to report.