LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 63

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SYNODICAL REPORTS 63

an obvious question. The answer to that question lies in the dra-
matic changes that have and are taking place, not only within
higher education, but also within the culture.

The major cultural change is the increased awareness of the role
of post-secondary education in helping individuals function effec-
tively in an increasingly complex society. With this awareness has
come increasingly critical examination of the effectiveness of
higher education institutions in fulfilling that role.

The expectations of society are very high. These expectations
relate not only to program areas in which instruction is offered, but
also to the quality of those offerings. Most of today’s students come
to higher education looking for instruction that will transfer directly
to the job market. If an institution is to attract and retain students it
must respond to this reality. [t is no accident that the most popular
programs in colleges and universities are those most directly job-
related. The difficulty is that those jobs are constantly changing, re-
quiring a constant change and updating in programs. Although the
situation is somewhat different for seminaries, they are not immune
to the pressures colleges and universities are facing.

A major challenge to institutions is how to respond to rising ex-
pectations when the cost of doing so requires budget increases that
go beyond the general inflation rate. The competition for students is
increasing as well. The size of the problem is related directly to the
dependency of an institution on student tuition to meet its budget.
Although it varies among institutions, tuition income dependence is
very high in the higher education institutions of the Synod.

The central element of an institution’s future is the faculty. How
well an institution meets the expectations of students, parents,
donors, and the broader society and how successful it will be in at-
tracting and retaining students is directly related to an institution’s
faculty. While there are expectations about the general quality of
life on the campus, the central concern for most students is what
goes on in the courses they take.

The process by which an institution chooses and how it makes
decisions about retention of faculty in a changing environment is
absolutely critical. The way faculty have been chosen at most in-
stitutions has been similar to that of any other business. Notice is
given that a job is available. applicants are screened, and the person
judged most qualified for the position is chosen. Once chosen. the
individual serves a probationary period. This probationary period
gives the institution an opportunity to assess the individual’s job
performance before making any long-term commitment. How this
assessment is done varies widely among institutions. Some have
very formal procedures in place to do annual reviews of perfor-
mance; others do the assessment in a much more informal manner.

Formal or informal, the results of these assessments have tradi-
tionally been used to make decisions about “granting tenure.” The
time between hiring and being “‘granted tenure” varies from insti-
tution to institution, but is typically five or six years.

There is a good deal of discussion today about tenure. This dis-
cussion tends to occur at two levels. The first is the general public,
where the major issues can be defined in terms of two questions.
The first is, “Why should tenured faculty, unlike other workers, be
guaranteed lifetime employment?” The second is, “Why aren't
tenured faculty members subject to job performance reviews just
like other workers?” The second level of discussion is the legal
level. There have been a number of highly publicized lawsuits
brought by faculty because they were denied tenure, and given that
our culture is becoming increasingly litigious, the probability is that
such lawsuits will become more frequent.

Institutions have responded to this discussion about tenure by
tightening up the processes of screening, selecting, and granting
tenure and reviewing the work performance of faculty who have
been granted tenure. The key to the granting of tenure and the re-
view of the performance of tenured faculty is the nature of the

process used in assessing job performance and the possible conse-
quences of that assessment.

The process of assessing job performance has become more for-
malized both as to procedure and frequency. Although evaluating
faculty performance will require, even at best, a good deal of sub-
jective judgment, the subjectivity can be reduced by carefully iden-
tifying what faculty are expected to do and specifying what evi-
dence will be used to determine how well they are doing it.
Furthermore, such evaluations are being required not only before a
faculty member is given tenure, but also after it is granted.

Further, institutions are beginning to look at the possibility of
using these evaluations to not only help faculty increase their level
of performance, but as a basis for starting the process of dismissai
if their level of performance does not increase. Although such dis-
missals have been rare in the past, the American Association of
University Professors 1940 Statement of Principles does allow for
dismissal of tenured faculty for “cause.” It also allows for dismissal
in cases of financial exigency. This statement is important because
it has been used as a guide by the courts when dealing with suits in-
volving public institutions.

At the same time these changes have been occurring relative to
tenure, another movement has been gathering momentum, often in
the same institutions which have tenure. This is “contract hiring.”
Contract hiring can take many forms ranging from annual or even
one-semester appointments with no assurance of any renewal to
four- or five-year rollover contracts in which there are annual ex-
tensions of the rollover period. If a decision is made not to extend
the contract, the faculty member involved is still guaranteed em-
ployment until the end of the existing contract. [f. for instance, the
decision is made after the first year of a five-year contract not to
extend the contract, the faculty member involved is still guaranteed
the four years of employment that remain on the original five-year
contract. That might well be more than a faculty member would
have in a tenure system that had regular reviews, the results of
which could lead to a decision to terminate. A contract system can
provide faculty with more job security than a tenure systein, de-
pending on how the two are structured.

We now find ourselves in a situation where the definition of
tenure is becoming increasingly imprecise. The term tenure can be
and is applied to systems that run all the way from those that award
a status that virtually precludes further systematic review of the
performance of the one holding tenure (virtually guarantees life-
time employment) to systems that require full-scale reviews at reg-
ular intervals and allow for the possibility of warnings being issued
and employment being terminated if the condition(s) which led to
these warnings are not alleviated. Similarly, contract systems can
and do run all the way from those that involve short-term commit-
ments that may not be renewed without any reason given, to those
that have long rollover periods with built-in protection against
capricious and idiosyncratic nonextensions.

At one extreme, the two approaches are quite different. At the
other they show considerable overlap. Words that have such broad,
overlapping meanings can and do have the potential to create a good
deal of misunderstanding and unnecessary semantic bickering.

Recognizing this, the Task Force chose not to make its recom-
mendations in terms of supporting one or the other of these by
name. Rather, it decided to establish a set of guidelines that, in
combination with what is already in the synodical Handbook,
would create a system that combined the protection of faculty
rights emphasized in tenure systems with the increased account-
ability demanded by contract systems. The major difference be-
tween what the Task Force is proposing is the mandating of more
frequent and tormal performance reviews of faculty. The primary
purpose of these reviews is to help faculty not only see where they
need to improve their performance, but also see what they do well
and think about how they might capitalize on those strengths. A

2001 Convention Workbook