Faculty “tenure” bill prompts much needed conversation about KY higher ed | Opinion

As a college professor, I listened to the House Education Committee’s discussion last month of House Bill 228 with interest and even relief. The bill proposes changes in the procedures for evaluating faculty “performance and productivity” and for dismissing faculty deemed derelict in their duties.

Where I work at the University of Kentucky, there are already well thought-out procedures for faculty evaluation and dismissal. Performance and productivity is often evaluated through an elaborate annual or biennial process according to teaching and research standards that vary according to each area of study. Faculty members fear that, under this bill, the decision as to what constitutes “performance and productivity” would be made by people lacking the qualifications to make such discipline-specific determinations. Faculty also worry that the bill would give the university president unimpeded authority to terminate faculty, thereby circumventing the current system that is comparable to that of checks and balances.

Many faculty worry that this legislation, while perhaps making the university administration more efficient, would weaken the quality of both their research and their pedagogy. With so many of my colleagues alarmed, why, you might ask, would I be relieved by the committee’s discussion?

I was relieved because the committee decided to discuss the bill rather than bring it to a vote, because our representatives recognized the need to collect more information and hear more voices before taking action. Above all, I was relieved because, as someone who teaches undergraduates about higher education debates, I see that misperceptions about the university are rampant. The only way to correct these misperceptions is to have more conversations about higher education in general.

I offer what follows in the spirit of wanting to deepen the conversation. Though much could be said about this deceptively simple bill, I will limit my comments to the problem of “productivity” — a word that gives faculty pause.

Generally thought of as a good thing and something one seeks to maximize in the business world, in the world of higher education productivity can be an impediment to learning. Faculty suspect that the public perceives them as unproductive because much of what they produce is hard, if not impossible, to quantify. It’s hard to measure a student’s delight in their grasping of a concept or passage that has left them perplexed for days or weeks. This kind of learning takes time. Time is also required to cultivate the trust and respect needed to have constructive disagreements around difficult topics. You cannot rush this process. And, yet, the future of our democracy depends on it, and the college classroom is uniquely designed to foster it. If productivity means packing more students into larger and larger classrooms where they remain strangers to one another and to their professors, then the quality of a college education will suffer...and so, too, will our democracy.

Faculty hear in the word “productivity” a pressure to publish more and more. Such pressure can have negative consequences for the quality of the research. It can reward research that conforms to prevailing ways of thinking rather than arduous original work that aspires to show us new ways to think. Most concerning is the way the productivity mantra at a research university can pressure faculty to spend more time holed up in the lab or library and less time with their students.

I worry that the emphasis on productivity could even, surprisingly, hurt our ability to prepare our undergraduates for the workforce. Ten years ago, a much-discussed Gallup-Purdue poll on college, work and well-being suggested as much: “[I]f graduates recalled having a professor who cared about them as a person, made them excited about learning, and encouraged them to pursue their dreams, their odds of being engaged at work more than doubled, as did their odds of thriving in all aspects of their well-being.” In other words, taking the time to care about, excite and encourage our students —a process that cannot be rushed and may seem unproductive from afar — might in the end improve the workplace readiness of Kentucky’s youth.

All of this is by way of saying that discussions of higher education take time. I’m grateful to the House Education Committee for their invitation to us all to continue this conversation.

Leon Sachs is an Associate Professor of French Studies at the University of Kentucky. These opinions are his own and don’t reflect those of UK.

This story was originally published February 6, 2024 at 3:53 PM.