Kentucky colleges and universities could get a new avenue to fire professors under proposed legislation that passed out of a House committee on Tuesday.
Republican Rep. James Tipton from Taylorsville is the chair of the House committee on postsecondary education, and the sponsor of House Bill 424. He said his bill is not an attack on tenure, but an opportunity to terminate employees who fail to meet certain performance standards.
“There are many protections that tenure offers professors, like freedom of speech, academic freedom. This in no way impacts that,” Tipton said.
Several professors and college students who attended the meeting opposed the bill, saying they believed it is an attempt to weaken faculty protections under tenure. They urged lawmakers to vote no.
Bernadette Barton, a sociology and gender studies professor at Morehead State University, said universities already conduct regular performance reviews and have the ability to fire professors who aren’t doing their jobs.
“Tenured faculty, including myself, who have been at the university for 25 years, we undergo annual reviews every year already. We are already evaluated,” Barton said.
State laws already allow universities to fire professors for “incompetency, neglect of or refusal to perform his duty, or for immoral conduct.”
A previous version of House Bill 424 specifically referenced tenure, and would have instead allowed universities to offer six-year employment contracts “in lieu of receiving tenure.” But Tipton’s substituted bill draft doesn’t reference it at all.
The new version, which passed on party lines, mandates performance reviews — that faculty say are already happening more frequently than the bill mandates — and provides that universities can fire presidents and faculty members for not meeting the requirements identified in those reviews. The bill bears a strong resemblance to one Tipton filed last year as well, but it didn't receive a committee hearing then.
“How many of us in our jobs have a review that we have to go through? And if we're not meeting standards set up by our company, our employer, guess what, we may no longer be employed,” Tipton said.
Barton is concerned the bill would weaken tenure and hurt Kentucky institutions’ ability to retain and attract talent, she said.
Savannah Dowell, a junior at the University of Louisville said she perceives the bill as an attack on the state’s postsecondary institutions. She said tenure is critical to maintaining the academic integrity of Kentucky colleges.
“Faculty are already leaving our institutions under an increasingly hostile political environment, and further barriers to tenure would deter the highest quality faculty from seeking employment here in Kentucky,” Dowell said. “I cannot tell you just how much our universities would suffer under this bill.”
Legislatures in other states across the country have already pushed or successfully passed legislation to weaken or outright eliminate tenure. According to Inside Higher Ed, such proposals have popped up in at least 10 states in the last couple of years.
Florida is one of the most notable states to significantly weaken and essentially eliminate tenure protections. The results for the first “post-tenure review” process came in last year. Politico found the vast majority of faculty members met or exceeded expectations, but more than 60 were put on probation and another 10 were outright terminated.
Tipton said he merely wants to give universities more power in firing faculty who don’t meet their expectations. He said he is familiar with “several situations” where he said universities were prevented from taking action, although he did not provide any specific details.
“This bill is designed to allow a process, a fair process, due process, to allow situations where, if there are faculty members who are not performing based on standards established by the Board of Regents, universities can take action,” Tipton said.
Democratic Rep. George Brown Jr. from Lexington voted against the bill. He said the processes are already in place to review faculty members for incompetency or failing to fulfill their duties.
“The infrastructure that is in place at our universities in the Commonwealth of Kentucky would take care of addressing the needs that are expressed in this bill,” Brown said as he cast his vote. “I don't think this bill is necessary.”
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
