Not that I want to give the Board of Regents any ideas, but remember that whole bit about how tenured faculty can’t get fired unless the institution is about to go broke? Well, Inside Higher Ed’s “Layoffs Without ‘Financial Exigency’” suggests not so much. Here’s a long opening quote from the article:
One of the ultimate protections of being a tenured faculty member, historically, has been being immune from layoff in all but the most extraordinary circumstances. Under policies issued by the American Association of University Professors and largely accepted by higher education leaders, only institutions that declare “financial exigency” — a state so dire that it “threatens the survival of the institution as a whole” — can eliminate the jobs of tenured faculty members.
Given the strict criteria on when an institution can declare exigency, and the obviously unwelcome scrutiny such a declaration would bring about, institutions have hesitated to invoke that status. As a result, while institutions eliminate adjunct positions all the time, the tenured faculty member has been protected.
But maybe not so much anymore. In a series of recent actions, colleges appear to be ignoring the exigency requirement either when eliminating tenured jobs or considering the possibility of doing so. Administrators defend their moves as necessary to manage institutions in tight financial times, but faculty leaders see an erosion of a key right.
It’s also evidence to me that while financial things here at EMU aren’t great, they aren’t near as bad as they are at a lot of other universities around the country.
Just to follow up with this a bit: a couple days ago, an alert reader sent me a link to an article in the U of Georgia student paper about the budget problems down south: “CHOPPING BLOCK: University proposes ‘unthinkable’ budget cuts (w/documents).” The short version: if you think it’s bad here….