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One of the most compelling reasons Universities offer tenure is that it provides them with a huge amount of cheap and disposable labor. Graduate students and associate professors work for next to nothing in hopes of achieving tenure, which is the economic engine that makes the University business model work. If the school has to pay all of those people a proper wage, the business model would be disrupted.
As a result, it makes sense for a University to offer tenure to a relatively small portion of their staff in order to ensure it can staff the rest. It's not unlike huge bonuses offered to top performers, which motivates everyone and not just the ones that receive it.
> I must admit that this description of academic freedom sounds pretty powerful and awesome. But are professors the only people in the “truth” business? Almost certainly not. (The postmodernist professors even deny that there is such a thing as objective truth, but let’s ignore that.) There are certainly other professions that have some claim on the pursuit of truth. Detectives try to figure out who committed a particular crime. Investigative reporters certainly see themselves as in pursuit of truth. But I have yet to see a tenure announcement for an investigative reporter on the local news.
Detectives and investigative reporters don't have tenure because their methods are often much more straightforward, easier to evaluate, and less controversial than academic discussion.
And while universities are designed to encourage diversity of thought, diversity of thought within a police department could be dangerous. Most newspapers are also supposed to be somewhat ideologically homogenous.
> If Alchian’s theory is correct, then one would expect it to be more likely that people get tenure in not-for-profit institutions than for-profit firms. Also, one would expect it to be more likely that tenure is awarded in publicly-funded institutions than in privately-funded institutions.
That's also consistent with the academic freedom hypothesis, if you believe not-for-profit and/or publicly-funded universities care more about academic freedom.
And that isn't counting the fact that private, for-profit institutiions might emphasize different things that may affect this analysis.
For example, although he controls for the presence of graduate degrees, he doesn't control for the extent to which universities emphasize graduate education, which could affect this analysis.
Why would not-for-profit or publicly-funded institutions be more likely to favor academic freedom? I frequently hear arguments that private universities only care about profit or something to that effect, but isn't profit tied to educational quality? And to the extent academic freedom is valuable, wouldn't it tend to increase educational quality? If educational quality is something that people desire in the marketplace, aren't for-profit universities compelled by the forces of competition to achieve it?
> wouldn't it tend to increase educational quality
Not necessarily. Reducing academic freedom might actually *increase* educational quality by allowing false or disputed beliefs to be taught as fact.
(Also, how do people measure educational quality? Is the average applicants judgement even reliable?)
Besides, many universities exist to do research and debate new ideas as well as teach. Academic freedom benefits those other purposes at least as much as it does education.
Universities that are good at those other things also tend to be not-for-profit or publicly funded, presumably because a lot of students, researchers, and professors who care about those other purposes inherently dislike for-profit institutions. If that's the case, for-profit institutions would benefit less than not-for-profit institutions from increased academic freedom.
Being against academic freedom is often politically controversial, which may explain why tenure is more common at publicly-funded institutions. It might also have to do with culture inside the public sector.
And being good at research probably wouldn't matter as much to for-profit colleges, because it's already harder for them to attract good students/faculty. There also aren't any very prestigious for-profit universities, so for-profit university students probably care less about the prestige associated with research/debate.
> Not necessarily. Reducing academic freedom might actually *increase* educational quality by allowing false or disputed beliefs to be taught as fact.
Increase educational quality to whom?
> Also, how do people measure educational quality? Is the average applicants judgement even reliable?
On this point, I will quote Alchian at length:
"A criticism of this substitution of competition for tenure is that students and parents can't tell good teaching from bad teaching. There are ways of discerning good from bad; they can also tell the difference between hard and easy, interesting or dull. Would one say that students who go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or the California Institute of Technology do so without knowledge of the best engineering schools? If the students can't tell good from bad teaching, one has to wonder how they manage to choose among colleges."
I would also add the following question. If educational quality and academic freedom are independent, how is it that people are able to identify the degree to which there is academic freedom, but not educational quality?
> Besides, many universities exist to do research and debate new ideas as well as teach. Academic freedom benefits those other purposes at least as much as it does education.
You seem to take a more narrow vision of educational quality than I do. I would include the research environment and the presence of debate as part of educational quality, not just classroom teaching.
> Universities that are good at those other things also tend to be not-for-profit or publicly funded, presumably because a lot of students, researchers, and professors who care about those other purposes inherently dislike for-profit institutions.
It is not at all clear to me that people who favor academic freedom dislike for-profit institutions. It is true that professors seem more likely to dislike markets, but seems like selecting on the dependent variable to me. What I mean is that the observation of the people who are professors and the people who are not is an observation of an equilibrium outcome. It could be that some people who value academic freedom would have become professors, but the cost of tenure in terms of foregone salary is higher than the value they place on tenure. People with better outside options are also probably likely to be more pro-market.
> And being good at research probably wouldn't matter as much to for-profit colleges, because it's already harder for them to attract good students/faculty. There also aren't any very prestigious for-profit universities, so for-profit university students probably care less about the prestige associated with research/debate.
I'm not sure I understand this point. Prestige and academic freedom might be related, but it is not clear that they are. As it relates to tenure, professors also have a way of limited academic freedom. They can deny people tenure because they don't like their research agenda. This is easier to do at a place of high prestige because one can claim that this research simply didn't meet the high standards of the institution when in reality it is designed to have a chilling effect on research topics.
Future employers maybe? That sub-point was mainly just speculation, but the main point was the effects of academic freedom on the value of a degree probably isn't huge for most for-profit universities (and might be negligible). That would mean for-profit universities would use tenure less if tenure has something to do with academic freedom.
> one has to wonder how they manage to choose among colleges.
Expected future wages/opportunities, costs, culture and amenities probably matter a lot. The first is related to educational quality, but is not the same as educational quality; it's primarily affected by reputation (which is linked to a lot of stuff), and also related to other things like selectivity and connections of the university.
> how is it that people are able to identify the degree to which there is academic freedom, but not educational quality?
Most applicants can't identify academic freedom, but can identify things that academic freedom leads to: eg. prestige, and maybe influence of research and a few famous/controversial public intellectuals (eg. John Mearsheimer, Jordan Peterson).
> You seem to take a more narrow vision of educational quality than I do. I would include the research environment and the presence of debate as part of educational quality, not just classroom teaching.
Either way, I don't think students would value academic freedom's impact on the average for-profit university's degree enough for the universities to implement it to the same extent not-for-profit universities do.
> It is not at all clear to me that people who favor academic freedom dislike for-profit institutions
This is anecdotal, but I think most people in general dislike for-profit corporations, reducing their prestige.
> Prestige and academic freedom might be related, but it is not clear that they are.
I think the would be, or else there would be universities with high prestige and little academic freedom.
> As it relates to tenure, professors also have a way of limited academic freedom. They can deny people tenure because they don't like their research agenda. This is easier to do at a place of high prestige because one can claim that this research simply didn't meet the high standards of the institution when in reality it is designed to have a chilling effect on research topics.
Yes, it's not perfect, but tenure still has the effect of increasing academic freedom for experienced researchers, does it not?
Also, what do you think motivates not-for-profit and/or publicly funded universities?
A very interesting take. I'm still mulling it through, but I did think about this issue (slightly) differently (given I'm not sure what property right mean in this context). Corporations (and for profit universities are that in the end) need to be flexible in responding to financial circumstances. So tenure is impossible for them to offer and why at-will termination is prevalent. The metric most for profit schools will be judged is outcome for students - which does not necessarily imply much higher education quality. We know that universities are important for networking and signal effects - so this leads to jobs. Thus a professor that can get people jobs is valuable - not necessarily the one that teaches how to determine OLS bias.
Regarding research (at non-profits) one issue is how do you measure quality. It's definitely not based on teaching quality in most places since it barely features in tenure decisions. Thus, it is research output. However, research output matters in so far as it brings paying students and donations. So one way would be for professors to specialize in bringing in donations (not only grants, but for example getting Ken Griffin to put money in the school). This all has been outsourced to administrators, in part because academics don't want to do that. So the main value from academics is then research. Now that's a risky proposition to have your career rely on. If you don't publish, you're fired basically. Tenure is that protection mechanism from the employee side. Since an employee's direct value cannot be measured in any meaningful way (beyond publications), and especially in the short run (some research becomes valuable in the future), I need to guarantee myself a job. Furthermore, regarding measuring via publications, we also know there is a university fixed effect - whether simply brand increases publications or how many resources it has (physical laboratories). So just publishing might also not be fully indicative of researcher quality.
Pushing for tenure also generates distortions - since you must publish in a short span of time, your research will more likely be 'safer' or at least that's what we were encouraged to focus on. So this significantly limits the topics covered and restricts certain difficult questions that for example are lacking data but need answers. Moreover, usually best research is done at a younger age - which especially true for parents for example.
Overall, I might be agreeing with the property right idea if by that you're implying that tenure is simply part of the total compensation package.
And apologies if my comment sounds a bit disjointed - still mulling through all the implications.
"At the Antitrust and Beyond Conference at the @StiglerCenter, @martincschmalz says that he was offered tenure if he retracted his research on monopoly industry leaned on the university administration (he declines to name the university)."
One of the most compelling reasons Universities offer tenure is that it provides them with a huge amount of cheap and disposable labor. Graduate students and associate professors work for next to nothing in hopes of achieving tenure, which is the economic engine that makes the University business model work. If the school has to pay all of those people a proper wage, the business model would be disrupted.
As a result, it makes sense for a University to offer tenure to a relatively small portion of their staff in order to ensure it can staff the rest. It's not unlike huge bonuses offered to top performers, which motivates everyone and not just the ones that receive it.
> I must admit that this description of academic freedom sounds pretty powerful and awesome. But are professors the only people in the “truth” business? Almost certainly not. (The postmodernist professors even deny that there is such a thing as objective truth, but let’s ignore that.) There are certainly other professions that have some claim on the pursuit of truth. Detectives try to figure out who committed a particular crime. Investigative reporters certainly see themselves as in pursuit of truth. But I have yet to see a tenure announcement for an investigative reporter on the local news.
Detectives and investigative reporters don't have tenure because their methods are often much more straightforward, easier to evaluate, and less controversial than academic discussion.
And while universities are designed to encourage diversity of thought, diversity of thought within a police department could be dangerous. Most newspapers are also supposed to be somewhat ideologically homogenous.
That idea also contradicts the history of tenure, assuming this study is correct: https://doi.org/10.2307/4609390
> If Alchian’s theory is correct, then one would expect it to be more likely that people get tenure in not-for-profit institutions than for-profit firms. Also, one would expect it to be more likely that tenure is awarded in publicly-funded institutions than in privately-funded institutions.
That's also consistent with the academic freedom hypothesis, if you believe not-for-profit and/or publicly-funded universities care more about academic freedom.
And that isn't counting the fact that private, for-profit institutiions might emphasize different things that may affect this analysis.
For example, although he controls for the presence of graduate degrees, he doesn't control for the extent to which universities emphasize graduate education, which could affect this analysis.
Why would not-for-profit or publicly-funded institutions be more likely to favor academic freedom? I frequently hear arguments that private universities only care about profit or something to that effect, but isn't profit tied to educational quality? And to the extent academic freedom is valuable, wouldn't it tend to increase educational quality? If educational quality is something that people desire in the marketplace, aren't for-profit universities compelled by the forces of competition to achieve it?
> wouldn't it tend to increase educational quality
Not necessarily. Reducing academic freedom might actually *increase* educational quality by allowing false or disputed beliefs to be taught as fact.
(Also, how do people measure educational quality? Is the average applicants judgement even reliable?)
Besides, many universities exist to do research and debate new ideas as well as teach. Academic freedom benefits those other purposes at least as much as it does education.
Universities that are good at those other things also tend to be not-for-profit or publicly funded, presumably because a lot of students, researchers, and professors who care about those other purposes inherently dislike for-profit institutions. If that's the case, for-profit institutions would benefit less than not-for-profit institutions from increased academic freedom.
Being against academic freedom is often politically controversial, which may explain why tenure is more common at publicly-funded institutions. It might also have to do with culture inside the public sector.
And being good at research probably wouldn't matter as much to for-profit colleges, because it's already harder for them to attract good students/faculty. There also aren't any very prestigious for-profit universities, so for-profit university students probably care less about the prestige associated with research/debate.
Also, thanks for replying to my comment.
> Not necessarily. Reducing academic freedom might actually *increase* educational quality by allowing false or disputed beliefs to be taught as fact.
Increase educational quality to whom?
> Also, how do people measure educational quality? Is the average applicants judgement even reliable?
On this point, I will quote Alchian at length:
"A criticism of this substitution of competition for tenure is that students and parents can't tell good teaching from bad teaching. There are ways of discerning good from bad; they can also tell the difference between hard and easy, interesting or dull. Would one say that students who go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or the California Institute of Technology do so without knowledge of the best engineering schools? If the students can't tell good from bad teaching, one has to wonder how they manage to choose among colleges."
I would also add the following question. If educational quality and academic freedom are independent, how is it that people are able to identify the degree to which there is academic freedom, but not educational quality?
> Besides, many universities exist to do research and debate new ideas as well as teach. Academic freedom benefits those other purposes at least as much as it does education.
You seem to take a more narrow vision of educational quality than I do. I would include the research environment and the presence of debate as part of educational quality, not just classroom teaching.
> Universities that are good at those other things also tend to be not-for-profit or publicly funded, presumably because a lot of students, researchers, and professors who care about those other purposes inherently dislike for-profit institutions.
It is not at all clear to me that people who favor academic freedom dislike for-profit institutions. It is true that professors seem more likely to dislike markets, but seems like selecting on the dependent variable to me. What I mean is that the observation of the people who are professors and the people who are not is an observation of an equilibrium outcome. It could be that some people who value academic freedom would have become professors, but the cost of tenure in terms of foregone salary is higher than the value they place on tenure. People with better outside options are also probably likely to be more pro-market.
> And being good at research probably wouldn't matter as much to for-profit colleges, because it's already harder for them to attract good students/faculty. There also aren't any very prestigious for-profit universities, so for-profit university students probably care less about the prestige associated with research/debate.
I'm not sure I understand this point. Prestige and academic freedom might be related, but it is not clear that they are. As it relates to tenure, professors also have a way of limited academic freedom. They can deny people tenure because they don't like their research agenda. This is easier to do at a place of high prestige because one can claim that this research simply didn't meet the high standards of the institution when in reality it is designed to have a chilling effect on research topics.
> Increase educational quality to whom?
Future employers maybe? That sub-point was mainly just speculation, but the main point was the effects of academic freedom on the value of a degree probably isn't huge for most for-profit universities (and might be negligible). That would mean for-profit universities would use tenure less if tenure has something to do with academic freedom.
> one has to wonder how they manage to choose among colleges.
Expected future wages/opportunities, costs, culture and amenities probably matter a lot. The first is related to educational quality, but is not the same as educational quality; it's primarily affected by reputation (which is linked to a lot of stuff), and also related to other things like selectivity and connections of the university.
> how is it that people are able to identify the degree to which there is academic freedom, but not educational quality?
Most applicants can't identify academic freedom, but can identify things that academic freedom leads to: eg. prestige, and maybe influence of research and a few famous/controversial public intellectuals (eg. John Mearsheimer, Jordan Peterson).
> You seem to take a more narrow vision of educational quality than I do. I would include the research environment and the presence of debate as part of educational quality, not just classroom teaching.
Either way, I don't think students would value academic freedom's impact on the average for-profit university's degree enough for the universities to implement it to the same extent not-for-profit universities do.
> It is not at all clear to me that people who favor academic freedom dislike for-profit institutions
This is anecdotal, but I think most people in general dislike for-profit corporations, reducing their prestige.
> Prestige and academic freedom might be related, but it is not clear that they are.
I think the would be, or else there would be universities with high prestige and little academic freedom.
> As it relates to tenure, professors also have a way of limited academic freedom. They can deny people tenure because they don't like their research agenda. This is easier to do at a place of high prestige because one can claim that this research simply didn't meet the high standards of the institution when in reality it is designed to have a chilling effect on research topics.
Yes, it's not perfect, but tenure still has the effect of increasing academic freedom for experienced researchers, does it not?
Also, what do you think motivates not-for-profit and/or publicly funded universities?
The concept of tenure always struck me as bizarre, as you write, its relatively unique and professors are not alone in the "truth" business.
My understanding is that tenure is also slowly disappearing.
A very interesting take. I'm still mulling it through, but I did think about this issue (slightly) differently (given I'm not sure what property right mean in this context). Corporations (and for profit universities are that in the end) need to be flexible in responding to financial circumstances. So tenure is impossible for them to offer and why at-will termination is prevalent. The metric most for profit schools will be judged is outcome for students - which does not necessarily imply much higher education quality. We know that universities are important for networking and signal effects - so this leads to jobs. Thus a professor that can get people jobs is valuable - not necessarily the one that teaches how to determine OLS bias.
Regarding research (at non-profits) one issue is how do you measure quality. It's definitely not based on teaching quality in most places since it barely features in tenure decisions. Thus, it is research output. However, research output matters in so far as it brings paying students and donations. So one way would be for professors to specialize in bringing in donations (not only grants, but for example getting Ken Griffin to put money in the school). This all has been outsourced to administrators, in part because academics don't want to do that. So the main value from academics is then research. Now that's a risky proposition to have your career rely on. If you don't publish, you're fired basically. Tenure is that protection mechanism from the employee side. Since an employee's direct value cannot be measured in any meaningful way (beyond publications), and especially in the short run (some research becomes valuable in the future), I need to guarantee myself a job. Furthermore, regarding measuring via publications, we also know there is a university fixed effect - whether simply brand increases publications or how many resources it has (physical laboratories). So just publishing might also not be fully indicative of researcher quality.
Pushing for tenure also generates distortions - since you must publish in a short span of time, your research will more likely be 'safer' or at least that's what we were encouraged to focus on. So this significantly limits the topics covered and restricts certain difficult questions that for example are lacking data but need answers. Moreover, usually best research is done at a younger age - which especially true for parents for example.
Overall, I might be agreeing with the property right idea if by that you're implying that tenure is simply part of the total compensation package.
And apologies if my comment sounds a bit disjointed - still mulling through all the implications.
You might find this interesting given the piece -
"At the Antitrust and Beyond Conference at the @StiglerCenter, @martincschmalz says that he was offered tenure if he retracted his research on monopoly industry leaned on the university administration (he declines to name the university)."
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1649071643938148352