Is It Tenure That Saps Money On Kansas Campuses?

In late January, the Kansas Board of Regents unanimously approved a policy that immediately went into effect and will stay in effect through the calendar year, permitting the state’s six public colleges and universities to suspend or terminate tenured employees, bypassing the previous policy that required schools to declare financial exigency before making cuts to tenured faculty. Each campus will have the discretion to develop a new protocol, subject to the Board of Regents’ approval. According to a board spokesman, the rationale for the policy is to allow the universities to develop “a framework for reductions in staffing due to pandemic-related financial difficulties” and “to give state university CEOs flexibility to navigate their institutions through these financial challenges.”

Kansas’s public universities, like so many institutions, public and private, are reeling from state budget cuts and the financial fall-out of reduced enrollment and under-occupied dormitories. The six four-year universities in Kansas saw enrollment decline by 2,677 full-time students, or 4%.

Kansas is not alone in facing difficult choices: Furloughs, layoffs, and termination of faculty are widespread. Ithaca College recently approved a plan to eliminate 116 faculty members. The University of Akron terminated 100 full-time faculty. The University of Texas–San Antonio cut 12 vacant faculty positions and dismissed 69 adjuncts. Within the last several days, Becker College announced extreme financial distress, followed by John Carroll University’s announcement of a new policy on faculty terminations. And there are more such reports.

The unanswered question about the plan of the Kansas Board of Regents to slash tenure protections, however, is whether it really is a response to the immediate fiscal crisis or if it reflects frustration over the tenure system. If the latter is the case, the regents ought to put it on the table, transparently, as part of a long-overdue, comprehensive strategic review of policies. It is arguable that it would be wholesome for higher education to overhaul, perhaps even phase out the tenure system, and replace it with a system of long-term contracts when warranted. Or not – but it is a highly legitimate issue to explore.

At a glance, tenure would appear to be a likely target for fiscal reform, since it is a lifetime employment contract, normally subject to termination only for gross malfeasance or misbehavior or for financial exigency. It is a seven-figure commitment. Institutions that break a tenure usually do so after extensive hearings, and such cases not infrequently make their way into the judicial system.

In total, between 2012 and 2018, gross instructional spending at the six Kansas public institutions rose by 6%, while gross administrative spending increased by 9%. Full-time instructional and non-instructional staff are growing at a similar rate of 8%, but the hierarchy of spending is reversed. After adjusting for inflation, the salary outlays (projected annual expenditure for salaries) of instructional staff increased by $25,762,530, while non-instructional staff outlays swelled by $62,722,686.

Digging deeper, an analysis of spending by faculty rank reveals a shift away from senior professors toward less experienced instructors. The number of full professors increased by 6%, while their salary outlays only rose by 3% ($3,883,504). Meanwhile, the number of assistant professors grew 21%, with the salary outlays rising by 24% ($14,558,896), and the number of lecturers almost doubled in size, with a 91% increase in positions and a salary outlay increase of 124% ($7,608,152).

Far greater increases are evident in spending on full-time, non-instructional staff. The salary outlays for management grew by 21% ($22,607,055), and 27% ($12,465,319) for business and financial operations staff. Staff positions for these two categories rose 19% and 22%, respectively.

The tenure system is, to be sure, increasingly controversial. On the one hand, given the rather modest salaries at many institutions, it compensates professors with job security and builds faculty stability, crucial for academic excellence and enduring alumni relations. Critics of tenure have noted, however, that academic freedom is better guarded now by First Amendment and contract law than by the tenure system. Paradoxically, the tenure system might even inhibit free expression, in that young faculty under consideration for tenure will be reluctant to express any sociopolitical views out of step with campus orthodoxies. There are dark and ugly observations even among tenured faculty that it is too often a shield for incompetence. It can make it hard for an institution to cost-effectively terminate under-performing programs. It can inhibit institutional agility, crucial for the future. These are serious concerns, meriting an extensive, careful review.

But the numbers suggest that before reviewing the merits of the tenure system, the Kansas regents need to undertake a search-and-eliminate mission for administrative bloat. The mission of a university, after all, is teaching and learning, not bureaucracy. Only after prioritizing academic funding is it time to look at tenure.