Rethinking Tenure for the Next Generation

by E Wayne Ross on September 8, 2009

The Chronicle Review: Rethinking Tenure for the Next Generation

Is higher education in the same position as health careā€”ripe for reform by the federal government? Both sectors certainly face similar challenges to the established protocol: higher costs, diminished resources, uneven access, inconsistent quality, inadequate means of defining and evaluating results, greater demands, and expensive technology.

We must voluntarily initiate substantial changes. One central piece of the puzzle concerns the tenure system, hatched in another era by a