I’ve asked before why do we tenure? and even why do we call it tenure? But I’d never gotten as far as a recent study which looks at the impact of tenure on academic risk-taking (what would now, in many circles, be called innovation).
From Brogaard, Engelberg, and Van Wesep’s abstract (2016):
Using a sample of all academics that pass through top 50 economics and finance departments between 1996 and 2014, we study whether the granting of tenure leads faculty to pursue riskier ideas. We use the extreme tails of ex-post citations as our measure of risk and find that both the number of publications and the portion that are “home runs” peak at tenure and fall steadily for a decade thereafter. Similar patterns holds for elite (top 10) institutions, for faculty with longer tenure cycles, and for promotion to Full Professorship. We find the opposite pattern among poorly-cited publications: their numbers steadily rise after tenure. The decline in both the quantity and quality of publications points to tenure incentivizing less effort in publishing rather than more risk-taking. [emphasis mine]
I have long considered the primary advantage of “tenure” in my current position to be academic freedom. The American Association of University Professors explains: teachers “should also have freedom in the classroom to discuss their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce controversial matter that has no relation to their subject. Institutions may place limitations on academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution, though these limitations should be stated clearly in writing at the time of the teacher’s appointment.” Serving in a high school rather than in a college or university, I have still considered tenure to be the protecting element, allowing me the freedom to develop radically new curriculum, attempt novel instructional practices, and delve into topics in my discipline that others may not cover.
And yet, returning to Brogaard, Engelberg, and Van Wesep:
We believe that the most likely explanation [for the decrease in publishing quality and quantity] is that the granting of tenure is the removal of an incentive to work hard, and effort responds to incentives. This should not be surprising. We also, however, find that faculty do not appear to increase their risk-taking after becoming tenured. The rate of publications of bombs, which are in the bottom 10% of citations in a given year, increases substantially, which is consistent with greater risktaking, but the rate of publication of home runs falls, which is not. Instead, these facts seem most consistent with a reduction in effort toward quality. [emphasis mine]
Thus, it seems that if an institution values educational innovation, tenure not only does not increase academic risk-taking but decreases it. And so I’m left with the original question, why do we offer tenure?1
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And recall, ours is not a true tenure but rather a multi-year contract, as opposed to the year-to-year employment offered non-tenured employees. ↩︎