Is there life after tenure?
Within academic medical settings, the issue of tenure is highly controversial. Advocates maintain that tenure is necessary to protect academic freedom and reward accomplishment; critics claim that it promotes sloth and encourages incompetence. Unfortunately, the available facts do not support any clear-cut answer. Studies on the scholarly, research, and service activities of faculty do not reveal any clear relationship between tenure and a decline in productivity. Nor, for that matter, does tenure seem to have any bearing on the exercise of academic freedom. As to the viability of tenure, economic and political factors may have more of an impact than the presumed merits or weaknesses of this system.
D002322:Career Mobility; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D009042:Motivation; D011572:Psychoanalysis / Q000193:education; D012106:Research; D014481:United States