Dive Brief:
- Faculty at the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus have approved a layoff and termination policy they hope will grant them tenure protections no longer laid out in state law.
- Inside Higher Ed reports that the policy says “no faculty member shall be laid off or terminated due to curtailment, modification, and/or redirection of a department,” and it requires the university to find an equally ranked position for the faculty member in the event of such reorganization.
- Even though the policy is now in place on campus, the UW Board of Regents is drafting its own policy that must be in line with state law, and many worry any greater protections afforded at Madison will be nullified once that policy is in place.
Dive Insight:
Tenure used to be enshrined in Wisconsin law, protecting faculty from layoffs and termination, until the legislature removed that protection this summer as part of a two-year budget deal. At the time, system president Ray Cross said the law change would not get rid of tenure protections across the University of Wisconsin because the Board of Regents could pass its own policy. That was presented as more common at public systems nationwide. Now, the danger seems to be the Board of Regents cannot offer more protections than state law allows.
If the Madison campus commits to following its own tenure policy until and unless they’re told not to, it could be years before the fight becomes anything more than theoretical.