As I was reading about the recent Nebraska legislative hearing regarding LB 1064 proposed by a state lawmaker in 2024 for making modifications to how tenure is governed in public postsecondary institutions, a particular comment drew attention: "While tenure initially was good policy, some professors now delegate much of their work to graduate students and teaching assistants." This line of reasoning, offered in defense of rolling back tenure protections, is increasingly common across the country. Yet it rests on a misleading and oversimplified view of the academic workforce, especially within the context of PUIs where the faculty work more closely with students as mentors and educators in addition to their research pursuits.

Tenure – what and why?

The tenure system was established in the early 20th century as a safeguard for academic freedom. It was meant to protect educators from dismissal based on unpopular or controversial ideas, minority opinions, political pressures, or the shifting whims of institutional leadership. By offering a level of job security to qualified and committed faculty, tenure empowers professors to take intellectual risks, pursue long-term scholarly inquiries, and speak truth to power without fear of unjust professional targeting. In today's climate, where ideological pressures and budgetary constraints often intersect, tenure remains one of the few mechanisms ensuring that institutions can uphold rigorous, independent, and student-centered education and research.

Tenure in PUIs

differ fundamentally from large research universities in scope, though its protection is justified all the same. Faculty in PUIs typically do not have graduate programs, and therefore, do not employ graduate assistants (GAs) or teaching assistants (TAs) in the way flagship research institutions do. Faculty at PUIs are not delegating instruction or mentoring to graduate students, they are delivering it themselves. If anything, PUIs are defined by their high-contact, teaching-intensive environments, where full-time professors work closely with undergraduates, often in small classes and in individual mentorship settings. The comment made during the LB 1064 hearing simply does not apply to these institutions. Yet, legislation like LB 1064 applies universally across the state’s higher education institutions, illustrating a critical disconnect between policymakers and the lived realities of faculty roles.

To underscore this point further, consider similar rhetoric from Texas, where lawmakers have also questioned the value of tenure by citing examples of ideological bias or supposed lack of accountability. In one high-profile hearing, a legislator referred to tenured faculty as "untouchable" and claimed they "refuse to teach undergraduates." Once again, such sweeping accusations may find anecdotal support in isolated contexts but are categorically unfair when applied to PUIs. The structure, values, and day-to-day operations of PUIs are entirely distinct from those of research-heavy universities.

Professors are Not Lazy

Even in institutions that use GAs or TAs, the argument deserves a more honest assessment. Professors who rely on support staff are not doing so to shirk responsibility. Rather, they are often overburdened—expected to juggle high teaching loads, grant writing, institutional service, student advising, and in many cases, their own research. The notion that professors are simply passing off their work and relaxing is both unfair and demonstrably false. Professors are among the few professionals regularly found on campus during weekends, preparing lectures, grading, conducting labs, or mentoring students. Professorship is not a 9-to-5 job, and in academia it is very common for faculty to work seven days a week – the half-filled parking lots of universities during weekends stand testament to this fact, something that does not hold true for vast majority of other professions unless they are paid for working overtime. This caricature of a disengaged, idle professor is more of a myth than it is reality.

Faculty Roles

at PUIs are mission-driven and student-centric. These institutions exist to provide high-quality undergraduate education, often to students from underrepresented or first-generation backgrounds. The faculty at PUIs wear many hats: they teach, mentor, write recommendations, coordinate undergraduate research, and often do so without the robust support structures available at research universities. When policymakers apply the same critiques to all academic institutions without regard for institutional mission or scale, they conflate apples and oranges—and risk doing real harm.

Tenure Attack Undermines Higher Education

The erosion of tenure protections is not just a bureaucratic change; it is a threat to the core values of higher education. Nationwide, tenure is already in decline. According to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), only about 21% of all college and university faculty currently hold tenured positions, a stark drop from nearly 50% in the 1970s. Meanwhile, over 70% of faculty appointments today are contingent or adjunct, with little to no job security. These trends should alarm anyone concerned with educational quality, faculty retention, or academic freedom.

Importance of Tenure at PUIs

At PUIs, tenure also plays a unique and a more practical role. Because these institutions cannot always offer the highest salaries or the most lavish research facilities, tenure becomes one of the few tools they have to attract and retain dedicated, high-quality faculty. For many professors at PUIs, tenure is not a symbol of privilege. Rather, it represents an appropriate trade-off that offers professional stability to faculty who could command significantly higher salaries in the private sector allowing them to build meaningful careers focused on undergraduate education and mentors. Lack of such non-financial perks will almost certainly fail to attract talented and appropriately trained individuals to the profession, which would prove to be detrimental to the cause.

What Tenure Means for Students

For students, the presence of tenured faculty means access to experienced, committed educators who will be there across multiple semesters, not just for a single course. Tenure promotes continuity, deep faculty-student relationships, and a strong sense of campus community. For institutions, it helps preserve academic standards, promote institutional memory, and ensure that faculty are empowered to push for reforms and improvements without fear of retaliation.

Lawmakers

When lawmakers propose tenure reforms based on faulty assumptions or anecdotal complaints from unrelated institutions, they risk dismantling systems that serve students well—particularly at PUIs. The broad brush approach that seeks to rewrite tenure policy across all institutions ignores the very diversity that defines American higher education. Just as community colleges, research universities, and liberal arts colleges serve different missions, so too do the faculty within them operate under distinct expectations and constraints.

The debate around tenure is not just about faculty rights; it is about preserving the integrity and mission of our educational institutions. When tenure is threatened based on mischaracterizations or political expediency, we lose sight of the larger purpose of higher education: to foster critical thinking, challenge orthodoxy, and nurture intellectual curiosity. Administrators and lawmakers alike must take care not to sacrifice these ideals in the pursuit of oversimplified reforms.

The Real Focus

Rather than dismantle tenure systems under the false premise of increasing accountability, we should invest in better understanding the needs and missions of different types of institutions. Tailored policies, informed by institutional context and grounded in evidence rather than caricature, are the only way to preserve both academic freedom and educational excellence in an era of increasing political scrutiny.

In the end, protecting tenure in the PUIs, or in general, is not a matter of shielding the ivory tower or “lazy professors”. It is a matter of defending the democratic role of education in society. When we fail to distinguish between institutions, we fail to protect the very values we claim to uphold.