It was a Friday night, and I had just sat through one too many promotion-and-tenure meetings. After 12 years on the tenure track, having played the game well enough to be promoted to full, I was simply fed up with the system. I typed a single statement in my “Updates” on Facebook: “Friends on the Tenure Track: I feel as though our futures hinge on: (1) the amount of research we produce that nobody will ever read, (2) the extent to which our students like us, and (3) the number of committees we chair that will never do anything.” I asked my husband, “Before I click ‘post,’ is this too controversial?” He shrugged, and I hit the enter key, and waited.
Although I was not surprised that the comment generated some controversy (particularly for me, whose posts might not always involve cats but are generally benign), I was surprised to see comments of the if-she-feels-that-way-she-should-retire-or-get-another-job sort. I was intrigued with my colleagues’ responses, primarily because I was fairly certain that all of my assertions could be backed by evidence. I decided to take a closer look at what is known about effectiveness and outcomes in the areas of teaching, research, and service.
Teaching: Although many professors love teaching, not many love teaching evaluations or think they are a good measure of quality. These perceptions are backed by research. A meta-analysis on end-of-course evaluations found no significant correlation between those evaluations and student learning. In fact, the meta-analysis overturned decades of previous studies upholding the use of this type of evaluation. Considering the strong evidence from other studies that gender, race, and other elements unrelated to teaching effectiveness have a significant impact on these ratings, there can be no justification for retaining their use in any decisions affecting a professor’s career.
Research: Current reward systems are based on both quality and quantity of research. Unfortunately, at least one study found that the average academic article is read by about 10 people, and half of these articles are never read at all. Ninety percent are never cited. Even the Journal Impact Factor, a measure for ranking technical journals by how often they are cited, has been shown to be misleading and misunderstood. Further, women and minority faculty members often lack the mentoring that would help them publish in prestigious journals and obtain competitive grants, leaving them at a disadvantage. It is difficult to understand and justify a system that continues to value the publication of academic journal articles and books as the gold standard in research, over which career-ending decisions are made.
Service: Anyone who has served on multiple university committees may find it challenging to defend the wider value of internal university service. There is not much evidence to be found regarding the impact of any type of service, including national, elected leadership positions — the standard by which promotion-and-tenure decisions are often made. Research shows that among associate professors, minority and female faculty members are consistently asked to perform more service, perceived as the least important of the three areas considered for tenure, than their white and/or male peers, thus disadvantaging them further.
Academic careers, then, are often determined by so-called evidence that is flimsy at best, from teaching evaluations that are unrelated to student learning, to professional writing that is rarely if ever read, to service that is difficult if not impossible to evaluate. Further, the bias introduced by factors such as race and gender in each of these areas is unacceptable. I suggest three alternative approaches to evaluating a candidate for tenure.
1. Invest in ways to measure teaching effectiveness through student learning. We live in an era of testing and accountability, so why not make it work for us? Our disciplines have experts in measurement, so let’s use them. Another pathway is to invest in the development of instruments such as the Tripod assessment, a system of student feedback used in grade-school education that has been tied to educator effectiveness and is used across the country. We need to ask the right questions in the right way.
2. Reconsider measurements of research effectiveness. Instead of a single standard across all disciplines, consider what scholarship actually makes a difference in each field. For example, in my field of teacher education, “engaged scholarship” should be included in any professor’s evaluation. Such work is conducted in partnership with the community, integrates teaching, research, and service, and can be measured by impact on the community served. Other ways to measure research effectiveness could include citations, contributions to larger projects, or impact on various lay and professional communities. Offering multiple options opens the door to cross-disciplinary collaboration and innovation.
3. Judge impact. Service can be reimagined as the outcome from combining research with teaching, or the overall impact of a professor’s work. Service should focus on measurable accomplishments, such as distributing teaching materials, developing service projects, spearheading community growth and development, or bringing expertise to outsiders. These types of service are often minimized by promotion-and-tenure committees automatically, without considering their scope or overall impact.
Let’s not waste any more time and effort perpetuating a system that appears flawed in nearly every way. Let’s not let any more committed, effective, engaged professors go because their contributions didn’t fit into our narrow system of what counts as scholarship or national reputation. It’s past time to overturn a system created nearly 80 years ago and determine what true impact means in today’s world of higher education. By remaining silent, those of us who are full professors and those of us in leadership positions are perpetuating this system of bias and doing harm to those who are affected by it.
Leah Wasburn-Moses is a professor in the College of Education, Health and Society at Miami University.
