Oklahoma. Texas. Kentucky. Kansas. 

These are just some of the states where tenure is being weakened. I wanted to step back this week and highlight what’s playing out and why it matters. 

In simple terms, tenure is meant to protect faculty members from reprisal for what they teach or research. The number of tenured faculty has been declining for years. Data from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) — which promotes academic freedom and shared governance — show that fewer than one-third of faculty had tenure or were tenure-track in 2023, compared to more than half in 1987.

In an episode of the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “College Matters” podcast, Deepa Das Acevedo, an associate law professor at Emory University, argued that tenure is one of the few things that makes becoming a professor a “somewhat sensible” career choice. Without it, people are spending a lot of time and money to pursue a job they are unlikely to land, and where they’ll earn less than they could with the same credential in another industry. 

Yet, defenders of tenure have struggled to make a case for it in ways that resonate across the aisle, she said. 

“Arguments for tenure that rest on the idea that tenure protects or at least makes possible academic freedom are, I think, fundamentally disadvantaged in the current political climate,” she said. “Dismantling academic freedom is the end goal. It’s not an unfortunate consequence.”

📚 Read more: Academic freedom is under attack. How have Pittsburgh higher ed leaders responded? (via our partner Pittsburgh’s Public Source)

Across the country, we’re seeing universities making it easier to fire tenured faculty (such as in Kentucky and at the University of Texas system) or imposing post-tenure review (like in Florida and Kansas.) And some universities have found ways to disrupt the process: At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last year, trustees slow-walked the granting of tenure to eligible professors.

📚 Read more: What does ‘contumacious’ mean? The history behind new tenure policies in Mississippi (via our partner Mississippi Today) 

Oklahoma is perhaps the most extreme example: In February Gov. J. Kevin Stitt signed an executive order phasing out tenure entirely and directing colleges to employ faculty on renewable contracts “tied to teaching effectiveness, student completion, job placement, and economic alignment.” No taxpayer-funded job should be exempt from regular performance reviews, he told the regents.

These moves come as faculty are under significant scrutiny for what they teach, and as lawmakers in many states are pushing universities to prove their value. 

📚 Read more: UVA professors raise safety concerns amidst growing online scrutiny and records requests (via our partner Charlottesville Tomorrow)

📚 Read more: Departing UNC-Chapel Hill faculty chair reflects on higher education’s past, future (via our partner WUNC) 

Todd Wolfson, president of the AAUP, told me in an email that while today’s attacks on tenure are often framed around culture-war issues, they build on the long-standing trend of universities shifting to a contingent workforce “that is cheaper and easier to control” and away from stable, tenure-track roles. 

The decline in tenure-track positions stems from decades of public disinvestment, corporatization, and administrative restructuring, Wolfson said. 

“The long-term erosion of tenure created the conditions for these attacks, and these attacks now threaten to accelerate that erosion even further,” he said. 

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From Chicago: The most affordable loan repayment option, the SAVE plan, ends July 1.

That affects than a quarter of a million student loan borrowers in Illinois, to give just one example. Mary Norkol, at our partner WBEZ Chicago, breaks down what borrowers should know, and how to find a new plan soon.

From Ohio: Ohio’s college campuses are aging. They need new roofs, elevators, and heating and cooling systems. Their needs were laid bare in the latest capital budget, writes Amy Morona at our partner Signal Ohio.

State lawmakers earmarked more than $560 million for the Ohio Department of Higher Education in this budget. That include new elevators at Youngstown State, $800,000 to repair Northeast Ohio Medical University’s leaking roofs, and $6 million to Cleveland State for ongoing improvements to its HVAC, plumbing and electrical systems.

They’re far from alone. Colleges around the country have a deferred maintenance backlog of nearly $5 trillion, Amy writes.

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