Welcome to Science with Shrike! Today’s focus is not just on universities, but on political plans to regulate them further and curtail tenure. Notably, we will discuss Florida Senate Bill 7044 passed in April 2022, requests made in April by the Texas Lt Governor to the Texas Higher Ed board, and similar decisions made 6 years ago by Scott Walker in Wisconsin and implemented to varying degrees there.
Political Decisions
While the bills and directives vary in many ways, they also share key elements. The Wisconsin bill removed tenure provisions from the state code and left it up to the Boards of Regents to set policy. It also weakened faculty governance. However, prior readers know Shrike is bearish on faculty governance being much more than an administrative rubber stamp. The provision in the Wisconsin decision that upset most was the ability to fire faculty when eliminating under-performing programs. It also conveniently let people other than the faculty decide when a program was under-performing. Even more conveniently, the criteria for under-performing are subjective.
The Texas Lt Governor asked for a “review of tenure” with an eye to eliminating tenure, and separately asked for an investigation to ensure “elements of Critical Race Theory” are NOT being taught in mandatory US history courses. His openly stated goal is to end tenure for new hires in Texas, and to consider teaching critical race theory sufficient cause to revoke tenure.
The Florida bill does many similar things. It requires new post-tenure review every 5 years. This review is conducted by the Board of Governors. It requires transparency in tuition, fees, textbooks and syllabi, allows transfer of general education credits, and requires institutions to change accreditors every year. Shrike previously discussed accreditation here.
Digging more into this bill, the transparency and transfer credit is the least controversial aspect of the bill. The university has to post a lot of information, and the required textbooks have to be submitted at least 45 days before the semester starts. Given book order lead times, this is par for the course. While faculty can receive royalties for assigning their own textbook, they are not allowed to be paid by textbook vendors directly, or sell the review copies of textbooks they get. The transfer credit system is streamlined so that credits can be transferred, and apply first to general education requirements where possible.
One controversial aspect of the bill is the post-tenure review assigned to the Board of Governors. 14 of the 17 members are appointed by the governor, while the remaining 3 are student rep, faculty rep and higher ed commissioner. Like many Boards of Regents, it is primarily comprised of businessmen. This means non-experts review faculty tenure every 5 years, and these non-experts are appointed by the governor.
The other controversial aspect of the bill is the mandatory change in accreditation every cycle. This may be payback for the current accreditation agency raising concerns that politics unduly influences Florida schools. The pro to this is that it weakens the power of any one accreditation agency to force changes on the university. It also gives the university different opinions on what they’re doing right vs wrong. The con is that this changes the rules for the university every 5 years. What one accreditation agency likes or dislikes may not be the same as what the new one likes or dislikes. That means increased administrative costs and confusion as the university pivots to the new system and needs to make sure all the documents are in place for the accreditation.
Of these two controversial aspects, the former strongly impacts faculty, the latter strongly impacts administrators. Let’s consider them in order.
Post-tenure review
The new changes in Florida make it easier for the governor to remove faculty. Whether you think that is a good thing or not likely depends on who is governor, and if you like the faculty member in question. While Shrike would expect this will be used primarily to pressure universities not to teach anything resembling Critical Race Theory, it gives the Board of Governors a lot of room to destroy tenure.
The pro to eliminating tenure is that underperforming faculty and those faculty members bleeding out the university can be more easily removed. Getting rid of deadweight is a benefit to a department. The con to eliminating tenure is that it removes job security, and allows faculty to be eliminated for political reasons. This is the outcome Shrike expects will be more likely. Faculty member annoys an administrator, they can get removed more easily. Useless faculty member sucks up to an administrator, they won’t get removed. At the higher level, it also helps the political theater. When Republicans are in charge, expect faculty teaching things like Critical Race Theory and various other Grievance studies to be in the hot seat. When Democrats are in charge, expect them to remove white, male faculty in order to hire their diversity quotas. Please recall that in the most recent Florida governor election, the Republican (DeSantis) beat the Democrat (Gillem) by 0.4% of the vote. Consequently, Shrike does not view eliminating tenure as a net positive.
Shrike believes the best way to remove deadweight at the university is to cultivate the departmental culture. If the department is high performing, the deadweight either picks up or packs out on their own. If not, there are ways for a Chair to make their life more challenging. If the Chair is not a competent leader, or the department culture is to be deadweight, revoking tenure is the least of your problems. The new hires will be contaminated by the culture. While it sounds good to businessmen like the Texas Lt Governor and Florida Governor, these measures do not accomplish their primary aim.
The other challenge is that a lack of tenure protections impairs recruitment efforts. Tenure is one aspect of recruitment, but certainly not the only one. Geography, compensation, scientific environment, culture, family, trainee/tech availability, and institutional commitment all play potentially larger roles. However, tenure is one aspect of institutional commitment. Top performers hate wasting time on paperwork (like 5-year reviews). They also like tenure protections, because they help when unexpected problems arise. The ongoing legal suit between David Sabatini and MIT illustrates the importance of tenure, especially for high performers. Almost by definition, the high performers take risks, often as part of their lifestyle. If you want to attract the top talent, you have to protect them.
Administrative Considerations
Administrators don’t care about recruiting the best faculty, as evidenced by the pay scales and willingness to overlook tenure. They care about aggregate rankings. Let’s look and see where universities in WI, TX and FL currently rank.
One broad measure of university prestige is the US News & World rankings. Collectively, there are 10 universities (1 WI, 5 TX, 4 FL) in the three states ranked in the top 100 National Universities. The ranking for WI, TX and FL schools in the top 100 are below.
University 2022 National University Rank
Rice 17
Univ Florida Gainesville 28
Univ Texas Austin 38
Univ Wisconsin Madison 42
Florida State Tallahassee 55
Univ Miami 55
Southern Methodist 68
Texas A&M 68
Baylor 75
Texas Christian Univ 83
Digging back through the archives, in 2015, UW Madison was ranked #41, so the ranking has not changed despite Wisconsin’s changes to tenure rules. One rank is not significant, but the change did not improve UW Madison’s ranking.
Another metric to better measure research is NIH funding. For FY2022 NIH funding, there are 12 institutions (2 WI, 7 TX, 3 FL) ranked in the top 100 NIH funded institutions. Both # of awards and total dollars are tracked. The # of awards is biased against single large awards, whereas the NIH dollars is biased towards clinical trial funding.
University # Awards (2022 Ranking) NIH Dollars (2022 Ranking)
Univ Wisconsin Madison 20 23
Univ Texas Southwestern 22 31
Baylor 26 32
Univ Florida Gainesville 29 44
Univ Texas MD Anderson 51 64
Univ Texas Houston Health Sci Ctr 55 67
Univ Miami 56 63
Medical College of Wisconsin 61 59
Univ Texas Austin 67 95
Univ Texas Health Sci Ctr San Antonio 69 78
Univ Texas Med Branch Galveston 84 36
Univ South Florida 108 85
By comparison, in FY2015, UW Madison was 18th for awards and 19th for NIH dollars. Not a major change, especially over a 7 year period, but the changes didn’t improve the standing at all.
If all states were equal, you would expect 2 institutions in the top 100 per state. Texas and Florida both beat this average, but Wisconsin does not for Nationally ranked universities. If revoking tenure protections hurts the universities, expect Texas and Florida to drop in these metrics as other universities gain ranks. It’s possible academics fleeing Democrat-run states could offset losses due to the tenure bill. Shrike thinks this unlikely because most academics are liberal, and most of the biohubs are in California and on the East Coast.
Accreditation
One of the intriguing aspects to the Florida bill is the requirement to change accreditors every cycle. Readers of Science with Shrike know that credentialing is the key to the entire college enterprise. Florida does not buck the entire educational trend because the requirement sticks to Dept of Education approved accreditors. The bill further provides flexibility in case they can’t find a new accreditor for the universities.
In practice, Shrike expects this to be an administrative mess, due to the problem of changing expectations. Three reviewers for a single manuscript often find conflicting good/bad aspects; different accreditation agencies are likely to be even worse when analyzing miles of university policy.
However, this is a bold move that opens the door for new accreditation agencies. If there is a lack of accreditation agencies, it is easier to break into this area. It further moves away from the regional model of accreditation. This part of the bill may be the truly revolutionary part.
Will the bills accomplish their aims?
The non-controversial provisions of the Florida bill will improve education in Florida. Increased transparency is net positive, as is improving transfer of credits between institutions.
To the extent that the goal of the bill is to improve faculty quality, Shrike does not think cutting tenure is the best way to accomplish this. There are better ways to incentivize departments to cut deadweight, and high-performing departments already find ways to limit the deadweight bleeding them out. Empowering them is much better than taking away core rights of all faculty members. The challenge is that empowering faculty costs money, and governors are scared to invest money to improve returns on faculty performance.
If the goal is to limit Critical Race Theory, it will only work until a Democrat wins the governorship. Then the opposite will occur. If the governorship swings, it will cause instability, which can cripple the university’s ability to recruit and retain top performers. Giving political agents control of universities does not historically end well.
If the accreditation change is just payback, then it accomplished its goal at the cost of university administrators’ sanity. If the goal is to improve the universities, Shrike thinks in the short and medium term it is unlikely to accomplish that. However, it sets a precedent to weaken regional accreditors, and opens the door to new accreditors. A new accreditor offering evaluation of critical race theory teaching and diversity training might be attractive to Republican governors running on that issue. Measuring diversity programs gives the accreditor a hedge for Democrat governors. A new accreditor might also consider modern approaches to online education.