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In multiple states where Republicans targeted tenure and diversity, equity and inclusion this year, tenure survived while DEI was curtailed.
That doesn’t mean tenure is safe. It’s been eroded for decades, including through posttenure-review policies that higher education leaders enact outside of statehouses, and by institutions offering fewer tenured positions.
The American Association of University Professors says 68 percent of U.S. faculty members held contingent appointments in fall 2021, compared to about 47 percent in 1987.
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“It’s not like we’ve seen this constant decrease in the number of institutions with a tenure system,” said Glenn Colby, senior researcher at AAUP. “It’s more that the institutions are relying more and more on faculty working contingent positions and graduate assistants and so forth.”
Colby noted that his own reports might understate tenure’s decline by, for instance, considering Georgia public universities to still have tenure despite the University System of Georgia’s controversial posttenure-review policy. On the other hand, many institutions are improving employment conditions for those in contingent roles, including through multiyear contracts, he said.
Tenure’s defenders can include seemingly strange bedfellows.
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