Legal requirement for Post Tenure Review

"To better understand the extent and nature of PTR policies at AAU universities, the AAU Tenure Committee contracted AAU Universities requesting information about any such policies they might have, and inviting comments from member presidents and chancellors on PTR. The responses to this request indicated that member institutions differ widely with respect to PTR policies."

"On the other hand, if designed and implemented by the faculty in a form that properly safeguards academic freedom and tenure and the principle of peer review, and if funded at a meaningful level, it may offer a way of evaluating tenured faculty which supports professional development as well as professional responsibility."

"This article provides a bibliography on actual institutional and faculty decisions on tenure since the mid-1970s."

"Maintaining excellence in an academic institution requires continuous development of its most critical resource: its permanent tenured faculty. This necessitates a constructive developmental program of post-tenure review. A central focus of this development is enhancing the relationship between faculty and students in teaching and learning and between the faculty member, his or her department, and the institution. Only in the continuous fostering of growth and development in the area of the scholarship of teaching will an institution sustain its vitality, maintain the interest of its diverse students, and assure the survival of both in an ever-changing world."

"The basic impetus for SB 149 was a desire by state policymakers to have greater accountability in higher education, specifically with regard to tenured faculty at public institutions. Nearly all institutions had some process of review for tenured faculty already inplace well before SB 149."

"The system of tenure that dominates American higher education has long been a source of controversy. Tenure has been attacked for entrenching a lazy professoriate and, on the other hand, has been defended as crucial for the defense of open intellectual inquiry. The controversy has sharpened in recent years, largely due to the abolishment of mandatory retirement in 1994, which has heightened concerns about the productivity of older professors who received tenure long ago, and also as a result of widespread concern over the steadily increasing cost of higher education."

"Successful resolution of the tenure debate depends upon a more nuanced understanding of what tenure is, and under what circumstances its use is most appropriate."