New Texas Bill Would End Tenure For College Faculty

The assault on college tenure advanced last week with a bill filed in the Texas Senate that would prohibit that state’s public higher education institutions from offering tenure or “any type of permanent employment status” starting on Sept. 1, 2023.

Senate Bill 18 was filed by State Sen. Brandon Creighton, who is chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education. Were it to become law, the bill’s ban on tenure would not apply to faculty who are employed by public colleges and universities in Texas and have tenure before Sept. 1.

This bill also would permit the Board of Regents to establish “an alternate system of tiered employment status for faculty members provided that the system clearly defines each position and requires each faculty member to undergo an annual performance evaluation.” What such an alternative tier of employment would look like is not clear.

Creighton’s bill would make good on a priority that Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has been championing for some time. Last year, Patrick announced his intent to end tenure in public universities and curtail the teaching of critical race theory.

College leaders in Texas have argued that ending tenure would make it difficult for them to recruit and retain top-notch faculty, but those appeals appear to have had little impact on Patrick and other conservative lawmakers.

In a news release Friday, Creighton called tenure “a costly perk that is detrimental to innovative research and quality instruction and if abused, used as an attack against the brand of the university itself.”

“At a time when colleges and universities have unprecedented endowments, bloated administrative costs and ballooning tuition it is time for lawmakers to reevaluate an outdated practice that guarantees lifetime employment at taxpayer expense,” he added.

While anti-tenure bills have become a popular cause among Republican legislators in several states over the years, they have not gained sufficient traction to become law in the majority of cases. However, this year may prove to be a watershed moment in the anti-tenure moment.

The North Dakota legislature is considering a particularly bad “tenure with repsonsibilities” act. HB 1446 would create a four-year pilot program for tenured faculty at Bismarck State College and Dickinson State University giving the presidents of those universities the authority to review any tenured faculty member “at any time the president deems a review is in the institution’s best interest.” What makes that bill even more alarming is that the President of Dickinson State University helped draft it.

Of course, Florida is not about to be left behind in the rush to curtail tenure. House Bill 999, introduced by Republican Rep. Alex Andrade on Feb. 21, is a stunningly ill-advised bill that would – along with mandating several other big-government intrusions into university operations – give governing boards the power to review the tenure status of college faculty anytime they please.

But for a lack of nuance or subtlety, Texas Senate Bill 18 is now the clear winner among this year’s dreadful anti-tenure legislation. No post-tenure review, no reforms, no process improvements for it. It would accomplish what many conservative politicians have wanted all along – the complete elimination of college tenure.