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Lawmakers’ campaign to reshape public higher education in Texas advanced on Thursday, with the state Senate voting to approve a ban on tenure for new faculty hires.
Under Senate Bill 18, public colleges “may not grant an employee of the institution tenure or any type of permanent employment status.”
The legislation would apply only to faculty members hired by Texas colleges after January 1, 2024. Professors who have tenure or have applied for tenure would not be affected. It’s not clear what the measure, if enacted, would mean for tenure-track faculty members.
Public-college boards would be able to create “an alternate system of tiered employment status for faculty members” that’s not tenure, the legislation states. But that system would require faculty members to go through an annual performance evaluation.
The bill will have to be approved by a Texas House committee, the full House, and the governor before it can become law. The legislative session ends on May 29, and the measure’s prospects in the House remain unclear. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has not taken a position on the bill, saying “it will have to be looked at.”
Tenure has been a political punching bag for years — a venue for lawmakers to level criticisms at higher ed and its alleged liberal indoctrination. Some politicians, mostly Republicans, have decried the idea of a system that, as they see it, gives poorly performing professors lifetime job security. Bills have been proposed and typically died in committee. Limits on tenure have generally come from college and university governing boards.
This time is different: A tenure ban has passed a legislative chamber.
Such a ban in Texas has been a top priority this year for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, whose position also makes him president of the state Senate. “Tenured professors must not be able to hide behind the phrase ‘academic freedom,’ and then proceed to poison the minds of our next generation,” Patrick, a Republican, said in a February statement. He also said at the time he would push for a requirement that professors who retain tenure get an annual performance review.
Faculty members and others have expressed alarm at the possibility of banning tenure, saying it would harm the state’s recruitment of top scholars and spark fear among professors that they could be fired for teaching or researching controversial subjects.
Brandon Creighton, a Texas state senator and author of the bill, said during floor debate on Thursday that he didn’t think a tenure ban would put Texas colleges at a competitive disadvantage, as long as the alternate employment model that colleges design is attractive.
The Texas Senate acted on another higher-ed matter this week: On Wednesday lawmakers passed a ban on campus diversity offices. Senate Bill 17 would also bar mandatory diversity training and the use of diversity statements in hiring.
Texas’ tenure bill has moved forward while a tenure-reform bill in North Dakota recently fell short. Legislation there would have created a program at two public colleges to reshape post-tenure reviews, putting the process in the hands of college presidents. One president who supported the bill said it would have allowed him to hold unproductive faculty members accountable. The bill passed the North Dakota House, but narrowly failed in the state Senate last month.
In Florida a sweeping higher-ed reform bill initially took aim at tenure, proposing to give public colleges the power to review any tenured faculty member at any time for cause. Those provisions were removed last week from the Senate version of the bill.
Iowa lawmakers also proposed banning tenure several months ago, but the bill stalled after college officials and business leaders expressed concerns.
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