Iowa lawmaker looking to end tenure at public universities

A state lawmaker is looking to stop Iowa’s public colleges and universities from being able to offer tenure to professors or other employees.

Sen. Brad Zaun, R-Urbandale, has introduced a bill that calls for prohibiting any institution overseen by the Iowa Board of Regents from establishing or continuing “a tenure system for any employee of the institution.”

The bill would establish “acceptable grounds for termination of employment of any member of the faculty.” The list of possible causes for termination include just cause, program discontinuance and financial exigency.

“My thoughts are obviously to end tenure," Zaun told the Register on Wednesday. "I think the university should have the flexibility to hire and fire professors and then I don’t think that bad professors should have a lifetime position guaranteed at colleges. It is as simple as that.”

Regent officials expressed opposition to the bill Thursday.

"We recognize the concern about merit-based evaluations addressed in the bill, however the Board of Regents understands the role of tenure," Bruce Rastetter, president of the board, said via email. "We oppose this bill, and I look forward to meeting with Sen. Zaun to hear his thoughts."

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Joe Gorton, a professor of criminology at the University of Northern Iowa, said the proposed legislation shows Zaun misunderstands how tenure works to ensure universities attract the best and the brightest faculty members, not to offer protection for those underperforming.

"Tenure does not prevent faculty from being terminated for just cause," said Gorton, who also serves as president of United Faculty, the union that represents UNI's 550 faculty members. "It does prevent firing faculty for exercising our freedom to teach and conduct research about controversial or politically unpopular topics. This protection is a critical bulwark in the protection of American democracy."

The American Association of University Professors, a century-old professional organization for academics, defines tenure as "an indefinite appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency and program discontinuation."

Joerg Tiede, an associate secretary for the national AAUP, described Zaun's bill as being "part of a larger legislative assault on higher education in the U.S."

A similar bill was introduced earlier this month in the Missouri Legislature.

Zaun, who chairs the Iowa Senate Judiciary Committee, said he has filed similar legislation during the past few years, but those bills received little attention because he was in the minority. Because Republicans now claim a majority of the Iowa Senate, however, some of his bills are receiving significantly more attention this session.

Since the 2016 election gave Republicans control of both state legislative chambers and the governor's mansion, many faculty members have expressed concerns that Iowa might follow Wisconsin's recent example of weakening longstanding protections for tenured faculty.

"Abolishing tenure would destroy public higher education in the state of Iowa," said Loren Glass, a UI professor of English who chairs the membership committee for university's AAUP chapter. "Any Iowan who cares about the quality and value of the degrees our public colleges and universities confer should oppose this bill."

Tiede said the bill before the Iowa Legislature would go beyond efforts in Wisconsin, where lawmakers removed long-standing tenure protections from state law and directed that state's Board of Regents draft new policy.

"This is stronger than what passed in Wisconsin," Tiede said. "This is would prohibit the Iowa regents from having tenure at all."

Zaun's legislation would provide university presidents and college deans more flexibility to downsize the number of faculty members to the level needed “to carry out the academic duties and responsibilities of the college.”

“My job is to look out for the best interests of our college students and certainly for the people of the state of Iowa," Zaun said. "There are some bad professors out there that need to be fired, and this would allow universities to have that opportunity.”

The bill's prospects for becoming law remain unclear.

Sen. Amy Sinclair, R-Allerton, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said that many of the concerns Zaun raises also could be addressed through discussions of reforming the state's collective bargaining law for public employees.

"So I am honestly in a wait-and-see pattern on this," Sinclair said. "I want to make sure that anything that we are doing does not conflict."

Democratic senators said they are viewing the bill as a serious proposal from a member of the majority party and, if it advances, are planning to fight against it.

“It is pure political silliness. It is micro-managing from Des Moines on its face. But substantively, it will harm Iowa’s ability to recruit the best professors around the world," said Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Cedar Falls, who has worked as an adjunct, non-tenured professor at UNI.

During the 2015-2016 academic year, tenured faculty made up 2,645 of the total faculty members at the three regent universities, according to the most recent Iowa Board of Regents tenure report. That number marked a decrease of 1.3 percent of tenure faculty members when compared with the previous years. The number of tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty members both increased over the previous year.

Questions about tenure were raised multiple times during the research searches for new presidents at UI and UNI. UI President Bruce Harreld and incoming UNI President Mark Nook both said during on-campus interviews that protections offered by tenure were essential for attracting qualified faculty and for ensuring academic freedom on campus.