Promotion and tenure criteria in higher education institutions

Education -- Psychological Effects of Delayed Promotion

Understanding the Fundamental Role of Contemporary Educators

Traditionally, the education field is one where the individual devotes himself to a higher philosophical purpose than direct remuneration or other tangible forms of compensation. The rewards of a career in education include the opportunity to contribute to the intellectual development of others and to the betterment of society by contributing to the development of thousands of qualified professionals over the course of a typical academic teaching career. Certainly, there are also benefits to a teaching career; nevertheless, in many respects, the choice to pursue a teaching career entails certain altruistic sacrifices on the part of individuals who go into teaching as a profession.

Ideally, all stakeholders, including educational institutions, students, and society benefit when educational systems and institutions employ the best educated, best qualified, and most motivated professionals as teachers and instructors. By definition, that means that the best educators are those who are sufficiently talented and capable to pursue employment in non-academic (i.e. private sector business) careers. Therefore, it would seem to behoove the academic community to ensure that career development and advancement opportunities available to educators are awarded strictly on objective merit.

Reconsidering Traditional Professional Advancement Process

The importance of ensuring the highest possible quality of educators also suggests that the elements encompassed by the concept of objective merit, must, in principle, be directly related to the primary responsibility of educators: namely, to educate their students. Certainly, for example, it is beneficial to academic institutions of higher learning that some of their professors publish extensively; on the other hand, research and writing may not necessarily be as important a criterion for evaluating the performance and the merit of the work of many professors. In that regard, the traditional criteria and processes necessary for professional advancement (and tenure award in particular) in higher education may place undue emphasis on certain criteria while failing to recognize the significance of other criteria in appropriate relation to their actual importance to the main objective of educating students.

Unfortunately, the traditional emphasis on publishing may preclude some highly talented educators who do a superb job actually educating and contributing to the intellectual development of their students from achieving the most important professional reward that fairly compensates some of those who make the lifelong professional commitment to the betterment of others: namely, promotion to full professor and eventual tenure. Meanwhile, the traditional evaluation matrix normally employed in conjunction with consideration for tenure are not necessarily capable of ensuring against tenure being awarded to educators whose primary motivation and efforts may not genuinely relate to their commitment as educators.

Ironically, in education, (as in the realm of business and other major human endeavors), a certain amount of energies directed toward professional success sometimes relate more to egoistic goals and impulses than to altruistic goals or to impulses that are intrinsically related to the education of others. In fact, the professional advancement and tenure award systems at many institutions incorporates aspects of so-called "politics" both at the interpersonal and at the institutional levels to a significant degree that have nothing to do with the degree to which educators benefit their students. As a result, in all likelihood, the process of awarding full professorships and tenure does not necessarily guarantee that the best educators will always be recognized for those benefits and distinctions.

Frequently, and as a very general principle of human personal psychology, individuals who exhibit the highest drive to achieve professional success do so substantially as a manifestation of a phenomenon that mental health professionals call "overcompensation." This is a psychological phenomenon that is evident throughout modern society and it applies to virtually every conceivable human endeavor, avocation, or vocation. If anything, it is probably less characteristic of education professionals than of private sector professionals, simply because those hoping to make the biggest possible "splash" tend to pick careers in the highest paying or highest profile fields for which they are qualified.

Admittedly, by definition, those who go into education as a lifelong profession are less extrinsically (and superficially) motivated than their counterparts in commercial business or entertainment, for example. Nevertheless, in every community of educators there are undoubtedly those who maintain a low profile and perform superbly as educators without earning promotion to full professorship or tenure; likewise, those communities likely also include others who fulfill their roles as educators less thoroughly or effectively but who achieve full professorship and tenure by devoting themselves to the tenure track.

Ironically, everything else being equal, adjunct professors who focus mainly on their roles as educators at the expense of the energy and time necessary to publish more or to ingratiate themselves more to others within the institutional political hierarchy often actually contribute more to their students than some of their counterparts who aggressively pursue promotion and tenure. Surely, every academic institution of higher learning employs adjunct and untenured full professors who routinely become foundational influences on the lives of some of their students. Just as surely, every academic institution of higher learning also employs tenured professors who lecture only to large lecture halls and rarely interact with any students directly other than their research assistants. In some respects, the traditional criteria and processes of professional advancement may overlook many in the former category while rewarding those most inclined to become part of the latter category.

Conclusion

Teaching, like many other professions with altruistic elements, provides more in the way of both tangible and intangible transactional benefits based on professional status within the field. Educators who genuinely love teaching and who devote their entire professional energies to the essential purpose of their profession often lose their enthusiasm gradually when their efforts continually go unrecognized and unrewarded in the only meaningful way that their employers could demonstrate their appreciation. They may begin to entertain alternate careers despite their love of teaching simply as a function of their growing need for self-actualization through their professional efforts along the lines outlined by Maslow and other contemporary psychologists.

Ultimately, to the extent they perceive their efforts as unrewarded by their organizations, they will leave the profession. Unfortunately, many of those who eventually leave the profession for lack of appropriate professional recognition for their work in the classroom are likely to include some of the best educators by virtue of the existing "room for error" in traditional standards for professional advancement and tenure within the community of professional educators.

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