Professors who have earned tenure are evaluated differently at Virginia's public colleges and universities, General Assembly investigators reported last week.
The merits and flaws of tenure -- the coveted status that gives near-permanent job security to faculty members who meet certain guidelines -- have been debated for years. However, the focus of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission's study was not on tenure's pros and cons, but the specific methods that Virginia higher education institutions use to evaluate tenured professors during their career.
The University uses an approach similar to that used at James Madison University to evaluate professors --reviewing a professor's tenure only after an unsatisfactory annual job evaluation.
Professors at the University must submit yearly reviews of their work, said Gertrude Fraser, vice provost for faculty advancement. However, a formal post-tenure review process is not used unless the annual reviews indicate the faculty member is performing unsatisfactorily or other concerns are raised.
"Basically, once you go through the process to earn tenure, there are some very specific conditions on which tenure can be taken away from a professor," Fraser said. "If there is a question about the professor's scholarship, teaching or service activities that come out of the annual reviews, the formal review process comes into play."
At the College of William & Mary, a more systematic approach is used -- evaluating tenured professors on six-year cycles regardless of their job performance. The University of Virginia at Wise and Richard Bland College also conduct regular reviews.
In the General Assembly, some delegates said using different methods to evaluate tenure could be beneficial.
"I think that it's actually a good thing that schools have different methods," said Del. Robert Bell, R-Albemarle, who serves on the House Education Committee. "The school should try and figure out their mission and then craft tenure and promotion guidelines based on what that mission is supposed to be."
Bell said that because schools have different focuses, it is logical to use different criteria to evaluate professors.
"Community colleges see themselves primarily as teaching institutions, so it makes sense to have the emphasis on teaching in their evaluations," Bell said. "At research institutions like Virginia Tech and U.Va., research would be a large part of the evaluation of teachers."
At the University, tenure is evaluated by criteria Fraser termed "three legs of the stool": teaching, scholarship and service. In the College, scholarship is the primary criteria on which professors are evaluated.
"Depending on what the institutional mission is, different schools at the University might have different criteria," Fraser said.
Tenure as a system came up for debate last year in the General Assembly when a bill, sponsored by Del. David Albo, R-Fairfax, was introduced to eliminate tenure for new faculty at higher education institutions. The bill did not pass.
"We said this is a terrible idea," Bell said. "It's not that tenure is the only way to set up a university, but we wouldn't be competitive if other schools offered tenure with a comparable salary, and ours did not."
Other General Assembly members had different concerns about tenure and tenure review.
"Del. Wardrup and I feel that tenure needs to be reformed -- it doesn't need to be done away with," said Jack Hilgers, legislative assistant to Del. Leo C. Wardrup, R-Virginia Beach, and former Board of Visitors member at Old Dominion University. "There should be some kind of mechanism in place where people can be secure in their jobs, but they shouldn't be so secure they feel they can do whatever they want."
Fraser said she values tenure because it protects instructors and professors from the political winds and desires of a university.
"It is an American approach," Fraser said. "It offers academic autonomy"
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