Why Professors Have Tenure and Business People Don’t

Abstract

Academic tenure has become, understandably, the holy grail of newly employed assistant professors in the country’s colleges and universities. Without tenure, faculty members must, as a general rule, be dismissed after 7 years of service, which means they must seek other academic employment or retreat from academic life. With tenure, professors have the equivalent of lifetime employment. Rarely are they fired by their academies, even if they become incompetent to teach and/or conduct research.¹