News from the Ohio legislature:
Under a previous version of the two-year budget plan, board of trustees at every Ohio college would have had to create a policy for post-tenure reviews at least every five years to help “ensure accountability”
The legislature declined to make a decision on the post-tenure review issues. This year.
I have mixed feelings on post-tenure review. Tenure is in place to prevent undue influence on the independent research conducted by academics. A noble and warranted justification. However, as an economist trained to identify the incentives in policies, tenure comes with a downside: once guaranteed a permanent job, the incentives to be productive decrease. As much as we would like to rely on the intrinsic motivation of intellectuals to continue to produce basic knowledge regardless of the external incentives, that simply is unrealistic. Passions and motivations ebb and flow through a lifetime.
Here at Ohio State, while we don't have post-tenure review, we have annual merit based compensation. At the department level (in my department we have 21 faculty members) the annual state approved raise pool (typically in the 2% range) is reallocated based on annual performance reviews.* We pool the 2% into a lump sum and then divide the lump sum based on performance--and as department chair, I get the thrill of dividing up the tiny pie--and yes, it is possible to get a 0% raise in a particular year based on lack of performance. So there is an incentive, albeit low as dictated by the state, to perform both pre- and post- tenure**. Pre-tenure faculty members have the added incentive that their future depends on demonstrating performance to their colleagues in order to get tenure
Personally, I don't think I would protest too, too much at a post-tenure review system that maintains the decision authority at the department level (we don't want those damned sociologists deciding the future of economists!), and provides for opportunities for recovery. Perhaps a system with a 5-year review post-tenure and a more frequent review (2-year?) based on a performance improvement plan if the 5-year review is negative, and a trigger mechanism for withdrawal of tenure based on repeated non-performance.
But really, I need to think about this more as to this point I have taken tenure for granted. And it sounds like this isn't going away any time soon.
*...which makes the title of the article highly misleading: "Tenured professors won't get performance reviews under new Ohio budget plan."
**Other states differ with some having lock-step raises which creates even less incentive to perform.
