In practice, how secure is a tenured position in the US?

Question

Coming from France, where any official academic position (i.e. associate professor or full professor, or equivalent positions at public research institutes) is a civil-servant one, and therefore automatically for life, I've been always intrigued by the "tenure" system in the US.

While reading the Wikipedia article, I spotted the following paragraph:

While tenure protects the occupant of an academic position, it does not protect against the elimination of that position. For example, a university that is under financial stress may take the drastic step of eliminating or downsizing some departments.

Does this kind of elimination/downsizing occur a lot in practice? Is it possible to "cheat" and to pretend to cut a position in order to save money just to get rid of a tenured professor? Are there some laws stating that if a position is cut, then another equivalent one cannot be created right after?

Answer 1

I haven't seen any statistics on how many tenure professors have been fired, but most articles on the topic treat tenure as though it's a lifetime position (e.g., this Science article, "Tenure and the Future of the University"). Anecdotally, you will likely never meet someone who knows someone else who was fired from a tenure position; it simply doesn't happen.

Note, however, that the number of tenure track positions made available over the past decade been trending downward fairly significantly (see the same article, and simply do a google search on the topic to see more).

Answer 2

In practice, a tenured appointment is one of the safest job positions out there. Essentially, the number of things which can get a tenured professor "sacked" are exceedingly small, and most of these involve criminal actions. (Even in such cases, the university tends to pressure resignations rather than try to fire them, as has happened, for instance, in high-profile cases at Harvard and Yale.)

Outside of that, you need the aforementioned budget catastrophes that lead to elimination of entire departments. Even then, sometimes departments are allowed to "decay" rather than get eliminated—current staff stays as the department gets wound down, without new hires and additional support.

Answer 3

It does happen occasionally that entire departments are shut down. An example I remember being in the news a lot was several language departments at SUNY Albany. But it's an extreme measure and even with the current severe economic situation it did not happen very often.

Answer 4

Even if you don't get fired, the department can still make you miserable enough to want to leave. Tenure contracts often only guarantee a small salary, say 50% of the base salary when you were originally hired. Years later, that could be a pittance due to inflation.

Your department could tell you that your research isn't important or significant, and they could require you to do more teaching and service on committees, leaving you very little time to do any research. You could lose your lab space or access to shared equipment. You might not be allowed to take on new students or to hire technicians.

So you'll want to leave, even if they can't officially fire you. You can read some horror stories on this website.

Answer 5

I've seen one case that almost led to firing a tenured faculty member. The university had found him guilty of misconduct and tried to get him to resign; as far as I can tell this involved incentives more than threats. But when that approach failed, the university began proceedings to revoke his tenure and fire him. The "definition" of tenure at my university amounts to specifying what those procedures must include, and they make the the process so cumbersome that no one would want to invoke them except in extreme cases. In this case, the person finally reached an agreement with the university and resigned, on the day that the Board of Regents was to meet to revoke his tenure. Even so, he apparently got come concessions from the university. In particular, a short time later, the people involved in the tenure revocation hearings, even those like me who were only indirectly involved, were informed by the university's lawyers that, under the resignation agreement, we are not allowed to divulge who this person is. As far as I know, that gag order is still in force.

Answer 6

Thoughts on Academic Tenure by Joseph F. Baugher (August 15, 2014):

Tenure can only be revoked for valid cause--normally a professor has to do something really wrong or really stupid to lose tenure.  Most universities have disciplinary procedures already in place for handling such cases—typically a quasi-judicicial proceeding is provided, surrounded by due-process protections and an opportunity for the accused to provide a defense.   Such cases are quite rare--in the US, according to the Wall Street Journal (Jan 10, 2005), it is estimated that only 50 to 75 tenured professors (out of about 280,000) lose their tenure each year.  Revocation of tenure is usually a lengthy, costly, and tedious procedure, very often resulting in a lawsuit.  Grounds for dismissal typically include doing something illegal like embezzling research funds, stealing school property, or conviction of a felony or any offense involving “moral turpitude”.  The grounds for tenure revocation can also include things such as professional incompetence, gross academic malfeasance such as plagiarism or the faking of research results, falsification of records or credentials, neglect of duty, unprofessional or confrontational conduct toward colleagues, sleeping with a student, sexual harassment of another faculty member, or other conduct which falls below minimum standards of professional integrity.  A tenured faculty member can also be dismissed if they develop a physical or mental disability, one so serious that even with reasonable accommodations the faculty member is no longer able to perform the essential duties of their position.

Carolyn J. Mooney, "Dismissals for Cause", The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 7, 1994, p. A17, as reported by Wikipedia:

In 1994, a study in The Chronicle of Higher Education found that "about 50 tenured professors [in the US] are dismissed each year for cause."