November 10, 1996
The University of Minnesota Board of Regents has now signaled its readiness to back away from a proposal to dramatically relax tenure protections of university faculty. The regents may be prudent in yielding to a growing consensus that further prolonging the traumatic tenure dispute would serve no good purpose.
And yet, the need for change, strategic focus and cost cutting at the U will not diminish. Minnesotans can hope the tenure ordeal has not only achieved some useful reform, but has also demonstrated the reality of changing times inside and outside the university.
The proposal that rocked the U this year was the idea that a tenured professor ought not have absolute employment security for life -- even if the university closed a program and no longer had a suitable job for that professor.
The threat of this ordinary vulnerability to changing economic fortunes -- a measure of vulnerability nearly all other Minnesotans endure -- triggered a virtual uprising among faculty. An effort to unionize the faculty made enough progress to trigger state labor laws that prevented further action on the issue until last Thursday.
At an emergency meeting, the regents unanimously accepted a faculty-approved tenure revision that includes no layoff authority but does substantially increase management flexibility. The new policy applies only to the Law School. But the move signals the regents' willingness to accept the compromise plane for the entire U faculty, which is scheduled to vote on unionization within several months.
The question now is whether the faculty will accept the regents' offer of a truce and vote against unionization. Some faculty leaders have insisted that the regents also enact a lengthy moratorium on tenure revision, essentially promising to disavow further tenure changes permanently.
Instead the regents instructed the administration to study retirement and attrition patterns, to determine whether voluntary departures will create enough flexibility to restructure the university without layoff authority. It's a sensible step that means no further action will be taken on tenure for at least 18 months.
The faculty threat to form a union has always resembled people standing on a window ledge, threatening to jump unless they get their way. With unionization, lifetime job security would still be lost, a single contract would level salaries and work loads, and the university's reputation would be tarnished.
The regents' proved last week that they would rather be humbled than see the university injured. It is now the faculty's turn to demonstrate that they can compromise in their own and the university's best interests.