The General Assembly’s last-minute additions to a budget bill dealt another blow to tenure in Indiana’s public universities, a situation faculty see as chipping away at academic freedom.
Without public input, the Republican majority passed post-tenure review and productivity requirements. If a faculty member doesn’t meet the productivity requirements – that have yet to be determined -- they could be sanctioned or terminated.
"These are common-sense reforms to give our higher ed partners the latitude to innovate, be more efficient and focus on delivering valuable, results-driven education to our students,” House Speaker Todd Huston (R- Fishers) said. “We're driving efficiencies across all of state government and asking our higher ed partners to do the same for the benefit of Indiana taxpayers, Hoosier families and students."
President Pro Tempore of the Senate Rodric Bray (R-Martinsville) declined to comment on how and why the productivity requirements were added.
Critics of academic tenure say it fosters complacency and makes it hard to fire someone for poor performance. They question why an academic should be immune from expectations most employers have for employees.
The law goes into effect July 1.
Noor O’Neill, president of the Indiana conference of the American Association of University Professors, said faculty are already motivated to do scholarship, research, teaching and service. Plus, she noted, faculty already have annual reviews.
O’Neill believes higher education should be independent from marketplace needs and political bodies. To keep that, faculty need tenure, she said.
“The way the politicians spin it is, ‘Oh, we're just going to get rid of the faculty who don't do enough,’” O’Neill said. “The problem is politicians and administrators don't understand scholarship the way we do. That's why we're here and they're there.”
The problem of ‘productivity’
Moira Marsh, an Indiana University faculty member, has heard the stereotypes about tenured professors. But incompetent tenured faculty can still be fired or lose their status.
Marsh said tenure protects researchers and teachers from external pressures such as politics and allows them to pursue unbiased work.
“Tenure is widely misunderstood,” Marsh said. “People think it is a perk, basically, for privileged professors, and something that lets people sit back on their behinds and not do anything the rest of their working lives. It is not that. Tenure is the best tool that the country has to ensure that academic freedom exists.”
Productivity in academia is also misunderstood. Marsh said quality academic papers and books take time.
For example, Marsh said Nobel-winning physicist Peter Higgs wouldn't be considered “productive.” His discovery of the Higgs boson — also called the “God particle” — revolutionized how humans understand the universe.
That’s what universities are about, Marsh said.
“And that is what academic freedom is for, to allow things like that to happen,” Marsh said. “If you take away the protections that create the space and the time for that kind of work to happen, then we might as well just pack up and go home.”
O’Neill said most faculty deal with heavy workloads while the number of tenured faculty shrinks. The policy may discourage long-term or creative projects.
“Satisfying an administrator versus showing that you are competent in these areas, or can do excellent work in these areas, are very different things,” O’Neill said. “If we become beholden to management-focused administrators, we really lose our independence.”
IU enacts detailed post-tenure review policy
Indiana’s public universities must adopt policies to comply with productivity requirements. The IU Board of Trustees passed its new policy in a June 12 meeting.
During the meeting, IU President Pamela Whitten said the policy was created by academic leaders with University Faculty Council co-chairs Philip Goff, Danielle DeSawal and Greg Dam.
"They came together in a couple of weeks, frankly, and looked at how this was done across peer institutions,” Whitten said. “I had guidance, I think, also from General Counsel about what would need to happen to be in compliance with the law. And I think they did a terrific job in short order."
The policy was not released to the public or faculty before passing.
“This is a massively consequential policy,” IU Bloomington professor Deborah Cohn said. “There was no discussion of it, and it's going to have a massive change on the university, on hiring practices, frankly, on productivity.”
Some faculty, such as Cohn, believe IU’s policy goes beyond the law. It’s unnecessary, she said.
“The policy introduces plenty of new hurdles, plenty of new paperwork, and of course, its redefinition of productivity to include compliance with laws and compliance with policies,” Cohn said.
IU’s policy requires an annual report of activities, accomplishments, scholarship and service. Every five years, faculty will submit a summary of productivity including teaching and research workload, the number of students taught, time spent instructing students and scholarship.
Then, faculty must submit the materials to their dean or department head. From that point, the materials pass through the dean, the chief academic officer, the chancellor and finally to the president. Along the way, the campus leaders review the materials and accept, reject or modify tenure recommendations.
Cohn believes faculty will have to do more work to meet the requirements each year.
“Every five years, that work, in turn, gets put on the next level of administrators, and it's going to be difficult for those administrators to be able to continue to do their jobs while constantly pushing papers,” Cohn said.
The policy may change in the future.
“Procedurally, it's a mess,” Marsh said. “There's a lot more work yet to do, which supposedly has to happen over the summer.”
The faculty council didn’t respond to requests for comment, but Goff provided some more information about the policy in a message to faculty at IU Indianapolis, IU Columbus and IU Fort Wayne.
“It was written so as not to be onerous for faculty to put together, as well as easy to move up the normal channels to the Office of Academic Affairs,” Goff wrote. “Because it will be based on annual reviews, very little will be required beyond a summary by the faculty member.”
Cohn and other faculty are particularly concerned about another section of the review: the faculty member’s disciplinary record. The policy says “sustained violations of applicable state and federal law and Indiana University policies and procedures” may be evidence of unsatisfactory productivity.
Some faculty — along with students and community members — were arrested during protests in Dunn Meadow in 2024. Others were cited for violating a now-amended expressive activity policy.
“We already have many policies and procedures on the books internally to discipline faculty who misbehave in any number of ways,” Marsh said. “This new post-tenure review process is a very expensive solution for a non-existent problem.”
A university spokesperson referred to Whitten’s statements and a public release summarizing the policy changes.
Aubrey is our higher education reporter and a Report For America corps member. Contact her at aubmwrig@iu.edu or follow her on X @aubreymwright.
