Post-tenure review is a concept that has sparked much discussion and debate over the past few months in academic circles both in Texas and nationwide.
It's a plan by which tenured faculty would be subject to regular reviews, and their tenure could be revoked. It's a plan which would hopefully put an end to unacceptable performance by professors.
Today marks the close of the 75th Texas legislative session and the deadline for the House and Senate to deliver a revised, final version of a bill requiring post-tenure review to Gov. George W. Bush.
At the close of the business day Friday, the bill was still not ready for delivery. Its chances of being completed and presented for gubernatorial approval against the clock look slim, and that is a shame. Post-tenure review is a needed step in public education.
Tenured professors inhabit warm, cozy places in the halls of learning. Some are dynamic educators who deserve their job guarantee, but others seem concealed behind legions of graduate assistants and mountains of publications.
They're the professors who you'd expect to see teaching in the classroom roughly as often as you'd expect to see a stripper performing a burlesque in the lobby of E. Cullen.
They are the "towers of learning" which post-tenure review would aim to topple.
It sounds like a great idea, but some faculty complain, suggesting that such reviews might limit faculty freedom. Professors might not question the administration or give controversial lectures because they would fear being thrown off their tenured pedestals by some academic Gestapo.
What kind of institutions have we made? Universities are meant to be centers of learning and revolutionary thought. That thought has sometimes been good, sometimes bad, but it's thought that breeds freedom.
We can all hope that those with the freedom to revoke tenure would not do so rashly, so that questioning superiors or delivering a provocative lecture wouldn't be grounds for punishment. We can hope that innovation and thought would not be perceived as dangerous or as a failure.
Such a program is a means of remaining the best educational center we can be. Post-tenure review shouldn't be a threat, but a promise.
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