Rethinking The Academy:

An Alternative to Tenure


In many ways, tenure is under fire from both radical members of the academy, and from those outside it, including especially politicians who do not understand the way the academy functions.

It may be necessary to redesign and rethink the concept of tenure as a result of these internal and external pressures; doing so gives academics an opportunity to recast the entire structure of the academy. Most of us will not have the luxury of 1-1 loads and a heavy research expectation. Instead, students, parents, administrators, and legislators alike will demand that we "produce product," language borrowed from the world of business: unless the academy is responsive to these pressures, change will be forced from outside. The probable result will be both a heavier class load and larger sections, changes that may seriously impact the quality of our teaching.

One possibility is to build the concept of the project into the existing course structure: here, faculty members would design and implement projects with their students (and with assistance from appropriate staff members) as part of the classwork. This option does not privilege projects over teaching, but sees them as a valuable pedagogical tool in which students learn from doing. In the case of graduate students who need to find their place in the academic system, the project system can help them become visible members of the profession while not increasing their already heavy workload.

An even more radical solution: faculty members could be given release time in which a project would count in place of a publication. Instead, they would be encouraged to work on a project which could, if necessary, become the basis of the publication that they need for promotion and tenure purposes.

By giving projects the same weight as publications in tenure and promotion decisions, we can balance doing with publishing and publish only when we have interesting and necessary things to say.


How to Navigate This Essay Without Getting Lost


Back to the Table of Contents


Last Modified: August 2, 1996

Copyright © 1996 by Keith Dorwick