Tenure: Blessing to Education

            Everyday I walked into my high school chemistry class, I knew exactly what to expect. Besides the occasional test day, all of Ms. Smith’s (a pseudo name to protect her identity) classes were comprised of the same exact routine: she would sit by her desk, reading word for word off the Powerpoint slides being projected onto a screen at the front of the class. I wondered how a teacher that was never available after school and rarely helpful when someone went to her for extra help was able to stay as an educator in my school. I soon discovered my answer: tenure.

            Specifically in the past decade, the institution of tenure in academic organizations throughout the nation has come under severe public scrutiny. While both proponents and opponents of tenure fight against one another, a serious question emerges: does tenure affect the quality of education? Since any academic institution’s first priority is the education of its students, this question becomes the central focus of the heated discussion. Unfortunately, the few unqualified, tenured teachers – like Ms. Smith – are unjustly used by the media and opponents of tenure to soil the entire establishment. Both the true intentions of tenure and its consequences reveal how important it has become in the United States to preserve and promote academic quality. Despite the controversy surrounding the topic, the facts show that tenure in academic institutions throughout America improves the quality of education by promoting academic freedom and ensuring stability throughout educational establishments. Moreover, the arguments of tenure’s critics are either based on stereotypes and thus, factually incorrect, or too insignificant in importance when compared to the benefits of tenure.

            First, tenure promotes instructive liberty for educators who want to teach in a manner that is unique to the norm. Tenure critic O’Toole argues that tenure causes school districts to weed out the creative instructors because administrators know that the normal way of instruction works and so they grant tenure to non-creative teachers; in reality, tenure has the opposite effect (O’Toole 84). Since tenure is given to a teacher after a probationary period, a time in which the educator’s qualities as an instructor are evaluated rigorously, the effectiveness of a teacher’s methods are truly discovered before it comes time to decide whether to grant him/her tenure. Therefore, tenure neither retains conservative teachers nor removes creative ones. Moreover, after a teacher is granted tenure, he or she is able to experiment with different forms of instruction because his/her job is secure. Thus, tenure provides faculty with a “wide autonomy in pedagogy, research, and institutional governance” (Carroll 1). This experimentation leads to a better teaching quality because a teacher can entertain students while educating them, and consequently, find a method of teaching that works better to achieve the common end: effective education. Contrary to what critics like O’Toole argue, tenure’s ability to grant faculty greater instructive freedom allows for a betterment of educational quality.