BRANDON KOHLMAN

Tenure at the University of Saskatchewan is outdated and serves no purpose as the threats to professors’ careers that made the system necessary no longer exist.

Everyone has had a professor who couldn’t teach to save their life. Chances are, if the professor has been at the university for a long time, they have tenure. The question to ask is, how did this professor — who is clearly incompetent at a large portion of their job — become tenured in the first place?

The tenure process was originally intended to reward professors for their commitment to the university, meaning that if professors were given security in their career, they would have no reason to leave.

However, if the university is adequately compensating a professor for their work, then it can be assumed that they would not leave to work elsewhere, other than for personal reasons. In fact, removing the tenure system would allow professors greater freedom later in their careers, accommodating for major life events and allowing a professor to leave the U of S if they so choose.

Tenure was also designed to allow academic freedom, meaning that a professor could have the right to inquire about any issue or situation without fear of termination for seeking discovery. In this way, tenure is a benefit to professors as it makes it more difficult to release the professor even if their research is morally questionable.

However, this is no longer needed with today’s world. In the age of information, students and professors alike are encouraged to seek new knowledge regularly. Therefore when researching, professors today are able to explore freely without fear of termination for simply inventing new ideas.

One thing most people don’t realize is that tenured professors can still be fired with a valid cause. In the event of a professor’s research being deemed unethical or if their teaching skills are particularly bad, tenure will not protect them from potential discipline and termination. If tenure still allows for professors to be released from the university, then why have the tenure system at all?

According to records on the U of S website, as of the 2011–12 school year 67 per cent of faculty at the U of S held tenure. What purpose does the tenure system serve if tenure is given out to just over two-thirds of the faculty at the university? If tenure is so prestigious, surely it would be reserved for a smaller portion of the U of S faculty.

To replace tenure, a new contract system could be put in place to benefit both the university and the professors it employs. With this contract system, the university and a given professor could negotiate the terms of their employment, including items such as benefits, sabbatical, expected research outcomes and salary.

A contract may be offered for a term no shorter than two years and no longer than five, as this allows the university enough time to reasonably plan ahead while not binding it to the professor and vice versa.

After the contract has expired, the university weighs the professor’s contributions to the university and decides whether or not they are best serving it and its students.

If the professor in question is not fulfilling their responsibilities to students and the university, the institution simply has to wait for the contract to reach its end to release the ineffective professor. If done properly, the contract system could better benefit the university.

While this contract system would result in higher faculty turnover and more administrative work for the university, the best professors would still be rewarded for their good work and students would benefit greatly, resulting in more interest in the U of S among prospective students.

A new system may not be perfect but it would certainly be better than the system that is in place now, which so often leaves students without adequate professors to properly teach the material they will need in the years to come.

It is time for an updated process nevertheless. Tenure is no longer necessary and should be changed to suit the needs of both students and professors today.

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Image: Lesia Karalash