Dive Brief:
- Despite strong opposition from faculty across the system, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents has approved a new policy that will make it easier to lay off tenured faculty because of programmatic changes or poor performance.
- The Journal Times reports regents voted near unanimously in favor of the tenure policy, which gives administrators the power to discontinue academic programs or lay off faculty to reallocate funding, as well as a new post-tenure review policy, which makes it easier to discipline or fire low-performing faculty.
- The regents next will be tasked with reviewing and approving policies at individual campuses, and System President Ray Cross has already indicated the stronger protections passed at UW-Madison may need to be tweaked to align with the systemwide policies and state law.
Dive Insight:
The American Association of University Professors spoke out against the new policy at the University of Wisconsin, calling it the latest step in an ongoing attack on the University of Wisconsin as a public good. The association said the new policies jeopardize working and learning conditions at the university and weaken the system overall.
The state legislature removed tenure protections from state law with the latest budget, forcing the Board of Regents to come up with its own policy. Instead of enshrining similar protections into system policy, the regents weakened them. The change is expected to make the system less competitive in hiring and some worry it could set a precedent for weakening tenure at other public systems across the country.