[EAS]Half-Time Tenure Track
pjk
peter.kindlmann at yale.edu
Wed Jan 10 00:28:08 EST 2001
Mail*Link® SMTP Half-Time Tenure Track
Dear Colleagues -
This strikes me not only as an important policy opportunity for
appointing women in academia, but in generalized form for
appointments in fields where competition from industry is
particularly intense, where the necessary leading-edge resources
cannot be maintained in academia. Such competitive tensions will
continue to increase.
Institutions have differed widely in their innovativeness and
success in using adjunct appointments for sustaining faculty
representation and educational offerings in such competitive
fields. And they will differ further yet once tenure becomes less
of a binary divide.
--PJK
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Date: 1/9/2001 11:39 PM
From: reis at stanford.edu
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Folks:
The following article looks a relatively new approach to the
work/family balance issues faced by an increasing number of both men
and women academics. My thanks to Karen Schmeelk-Cone of the
University of Michigan for calling it to my attention.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis at stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Building the Faculty We Need: Colleges and Universities
Working Together
Tomorrow's Academic Careers
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HALF-TIME TENURE TRACK COULD LEVEL PROFESSORIAL PLAYING FIELD
Half-Time Tenure Track Could Level Professorial Playing Field
http://www.psu.edu/ur/2000/tenure2.html
Nov. 13, 2000
University Park, Pa. -- Despite the increased numbers of women
receiving Ph.D.'s, the percentage of tenured women faculty in U.S.
colleges and universities has increased at a snail's pace, but a
proposal for a half-time tenure track might not only allow more women
to compete, but also provide an equitable solution for all untenured
faculty with work/family issues, according to a Penn State researcher.
"Women have failed to rise in academics because traditionally, the
ideal professional worker is someone who works for 40 years with no
career interruptions, taking no time off for childbearing or
child-rearing," says Dr. Robert Drago, professor of labor studies in
Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts.
However, the childbearing years coincide with the tenure track years.
Although women enter graduate programs in roughly equal proportions
with men, they hold fewer than 15 percent of all tenured academic
posts," says Dr. Joan Williams, professor of law, American
University. "Women are much less likely than men to receive tenure.
The rate for women receiving tenure in 1995 matched that of women in
1975, but the rate for men increased from 46 to 72 percent in the
same time period."
Recently, some institutions have implemented policies to aid
childbearing couples. These policies may include parental leave
policies, reduced workloads for new parents, or temporary stoppage of
the tenure clock.
"However, raising a child takes 20 years, not one semester," says
Drago. "American women, who still do the vast majority of child care,
will not achieve equality in academia so long as the ideal academic
is defined as someone who takes no time off for child rearing."
In the November issue of Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning,
Drago and Williams propose a redefinition of the ideal academic
worker. Their proposal offers proportional pay, benefits and
advancement for part-time work. In essence, a part-time tenure track.
They suggest, "Any tenure-track faculty member with care-giving
responsibilities for children, elderly or ill family members of
partners could, with sufficient notice, request that he or she be
placed on half-time status for a period of one to twelve years.
Workload, including teaching, research, advising and committee work,
would also decline by half."
The tenure clock would run at half-time, but so would salary,
benefits and advancement.
"Given the financial penalty involved, we expect that most academics
would use the part-time policy for between two and six years," says
Drago.
A faculty member who went half-time for two years would have a tenure
decision at the end of seven years rather than six, and the maximum
time for a tenure decision would be a set number of years. The
researchers suggest 12, but admit that if individual institutions
thought that was too long it could easily be altered.
The researchers believe that restrictions need to be placed on those
wishing to use the part-time track to deter researchers from going
part-time simply to accrue more research time. However, they do think
that health or personal circumstances that limit an individual's
ability to work full time during the tenure years should be
considered reasonable grounds for the part-time track.
From the university viewpoint, the proposed half-time tenure track
poses no additional costs, especially if the cost-savings are
returned to the departments to provide teaching coverage. The
half-time track would also eliminate under-the-table practices that
offer child-rearing time at full pay to women but not to men under
the guise of maternal disability pay.
According to Drago and Williams, children are better viewed as a
long-term commitment than as a disease. They also note that recent
surveys show that fathers are increasing their expectations and
desire to be active parents.
"At present, academics have only two alternatives: work long hours
and, with luck, get tenure, or refuse to work those hours and take
the consequences," says Williams.
If both parents could reduce hours without the penalties that now
accompany part-time work, more families would choose a slower career
path, rather than have one spouse work time and a half while the
other drops off the career path.
"A half-time tenure proposal would also benefit colleges and
universities," says Drago. "Current practices artificially reduce the
talent pool by eliminating a hefty percentage of qualified candidates
- most mothers - from reaching for or achieving tenure."
**aem**
EDITORS: Dr. Drago is at (814) 865-0751 or at drago at psu.edu by
e-mail. Dr. Williams is at (202) 274-4245 or at
williams at wel.american.edu by e-mail.
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