[Tenure] distorts people’s effort so that they face strong incentives early in their career (and presumably work very hard early on as a consequence) and very weak incentives forever after (and presumably work much less hard on average as a consequence).

The idea that tenure protects scholars who are doing politically unpopular work strikes me as ludicrous. While I can imagine a situation where this issue might rarely arise, I am hard pressed to think of actual cases where it has been relevant. Tenure does an outstanding job of protecting scholars who do no work or terrible work, but is there anything in economics which is high quality but so controversial it would lead to a scholar being fired? Anyway, that is what markets are for. If one institution fires an academic primarily because they don’t like his or her politics or approach, there will be other schools happy to make the hire. There are, for instance, cases in recent years in economics where scholars have made up data, embezzled funds, etc. but still have found good jobs afterwards.

Imagine a setting where you care about performance (e.g. a professional football team, or a currency trader). You wouldn’t think of granting tenure. So why do it in academics?

The best case scenario would be if all schools could coordinate on dumping tenure simultaneously. Maybe departments would give the deadwood a year or two to prove they deserved a slot before firing them. Some non-producers would leave or be fired. The rest of the tenure-age economists would start working harder. My guess is that salaries and job mobility would not change that much.

Absent all schools moving together to get rid of tenure, what if one school chose to unilaterally revoke tenure. It seems to me that it might work out just fine for that school. It would have to pay the faculty a little extra to stay in a department without an insurance policy in the form of tenure. Importantly, though, the value of tenure is inversely related to how good you are. If you are way over the bar, you face almost no risk if tenure is abolished. So the really good people would require very small salary increases to compensate for no tenure, whereas the really bad, unproductive economists would need a much bigger subsidy to remain in a department with tenure gone. This works out fantastically well for the university because all the bad people end up leaving, the good people stay, and other good people from different institutions want to come to take advantage of the salary increase at the tenure-less school. If the U of C told me that they were going to revoke my tenure, but add $15,000 to my salary, I would be happy to take that trade. I’m sure many others would as well. By dumping one unproductive, previously tenured faculty member, the University could compensate ten others with the savings.

“Why,” asks Victor Davis Hanson, “does this strange practice linger on?” If it’s there to guarantee free and unfettered thought, he writes, why is thought in our universities monolithic?

“Why then does uniformity of belief characterize the current tenured faculty? Contemporary universities are among the most homogeneous of all American institutions, at least in attitudes toward controversial issues of race, gender, class and culture. Faculty senate votes aren't just at odds with American popular opinion; they often resemble more the 90 percent majorities that we see in illiberal Third-World stacked plebiscites.”

Tenure, further, has contributed to the maintenance of the university as a strikingly unjust hierarchy:

“Our universities are also two-tiered institutions of winners and losers. Despite the populist rhetoric of professors, exploitation occurs daily under their noses. Perennial part-time lecturers, many with the requisite Ph.D.s, often teach the same classes as their tenured counterparts. Yet they receive about 25 percent of the compensation per course and without benefits. Universities cannot remove expensive tenured "mistakes" or public embarrassments, but they can turn to cheaper and more fluid part-time teaching.”

As for job security, “the warning that, in our litigious society, professors would lack fair job protection is implausible. Renewable five-year agreements — outlining in detail teaching and scholarly expectations - would still protect free speech, without creating lifelong sinecures for those who fail their contractual obligations.” No, what tenure has wrought is “a mandarin class that says it is radically egalitarian, but in fact insists on an unusual privilege that most other Americans do not enjoy. In recompense, the university has not delivered a better-educated student, or a more intellectually diverse and independent-thinking faculty. Instead it has accomplished precisely the opposite.”

Max Boot agrees: “Churchill and his professorial colleagues are beneficiaries of the most ironclad protection for mountebanks, incompetents and sluggards ever devised. It's called tenure. To fire a tenured professor requires a legal battle that can make the Clinton impeachment seem like a small-claims dispute by comparison. Even if there is clear evidence of wrongdoing, professors are entitled to endless procedural safeguards against being fired. The University of Colorado wanted to offer Churchill a generous financial settlement to leave voluntarily, but that idea has been torpedoed by regents angry at the idea of buying off this buffoon. An epic struggle looms in which Churchill and his numerous faculty defenders will nail their colors to the mast of ‘academic freedom.’”

He also agrees with Hanson on the intellectual freedom argument:

“The rigid ideological intolerance of American universities makes a mockery of tenure's primary justification: It is supposed to allow scholars to pursue their work without outside pressure. Professors like Churchill are all too happy to take advantage of this freedom to mock off-campus pieties. But few dare to disagree with the received wisdom of the faculty club, where the political spectrum runs all the way from left to far-left.

The primary practical effect of tenure is to make universities almost ungovernable. Those ostensibly in charge — presidents and trustees — come and go; the faculty remains, serene and untouchable. This helps to explain some of the dysfunctions that mar big-time universities, such as the overemphasis on publishing unintelligible articles and the under-emphasis on teaching undergraduates. Armies of junior faculty and graduate-student drudges have been enlisted to assume the bulk of the teaching load because most of the tenured grandees think that instructing budding stockbrokers and middle managers is beneath them. And there is almost nothing that administrators can do about it because mere laziness is no grounds for removing someone with a lifetime employment guarantee.

The solution is obvious: Abolish tenure. Subject professors to the discipline of the marketplace like almost everyone else. But of course this is an idea too radical to be seriously entertained on campus. Comparing the United States with Nazi Germany, as Ward Churchill routinely does, doesn't raise an eyebrow among the intelligentsia, but suggesting that there may be something fundamentally wrong with a system that rewards a Ward Churchill is considered too outre to discuss.”

Amy Ridenour concurs:

"Rarely do I criticize another for being old-fashioned, but I find the very notion of tenure distastefully medieval.

Literally.

In the Middle Ages there were few institutions offering scholars the opportunity to ponder -- not just few alternatives to universities, but very few universities, period. If that were the case today, perhaps tenure for the purpose of protecting academic freedom would make some sense. But it isn't, and it doesn't.

A simple question: If professors at universities need tenure to feel free to think, how is it that think-tanks do so well without it?"

That’s one side of it, and UD has more than a little sympathy with these arguments. But then there’s this, from Winfield Myers:

“Recently, a friend who teaches at a major state university told me that he and some of his colleagues -- all tenured full professors, all known to be conservatives -- would have been gone ‘long ago’ were it not for the protection that tenure affords. It's the only thing keeping him in his job, he said, and despite the abuses it can bring, nothing else could protect like-minded scholars from being tossed out by the left-wing majority.

I think he's correct in this, and that conservatives who want to see tenure abolished should think through the implications of opening up academe to an even more thorough scrubbing of conservatives or libertarians than we've already seen. Granted, tenure is abused -- massively -- by both the entrenched left and the drunk, the lazy, and the incompetent. I've known dead wood who fit some, or even all, of those descriptions, and their presence on campus is a disgrace.

But until some way is devised to protect professors whose politics are deemed beyond the pale by sanctimonious left-wingers, tenure works to preserve their careers. Perhaps some means can be worked out that would allow universities to fire those who should never have been granted tenure to begin with, or who have abused the system since winning their lifetime positions. Surely, some means of holding professors accountable can be devised that would allow a sense of responsibility and obligation into campus life while protecting the minority of true radicals -- those who uphold high standards and who lean to the right. Reform is long overdue in higher education; let's just be careful not to leave embattled conservatives vulnerable.”

Thomas Reeves says the same thing:

“What about the protection of intellectual freedom? In fact, there is more to academic life than just the knee-jerk leftist reaction that is often celebrated in the media. Genuine thought goes on everywhere in academia and can be viewed in learned journals and books and heard in untold numbers of seminars and lecture halls. (The University of California System spends $30 million a year on scholarly journals.) Many of the best professors spend their lives seeking the truths of the universe, nature, and human conduct; indeed, that’s why they entered the academic profession. When the responsible scholarship of serious and qualified scholars clashes with conventional thought, it should be protected, for in that way alone do we advance. Heresy has long played an important role in history. Ask the historians of science.

Today, on campus, conservatives are heretics, often challenging the established principles of orthodox leftist ideology with scholarship and bold thinking. It is a dangerous business, for the people who talk the most about diversity and tolerance are rarely in the mood to welcome dissent. As an abundance of literature shows, and experience verifies, conservatives are often persecuted on campus. They must sometimes mask their beliefs in order to be hired. But tenure, once achieved, protects them. Eliminate that protection and watch conservative heads roll, both at the hands of administrators and fellow faculty members.

Instead of arguing for the elimination of tenure, conservatives should be defending it strenuously, for without its protection the heresy of thinking outside leftist orthodoxy would be eliminated. Tenure may need adjustments; conservatives should demand more objectivity and fairness in the process. But let us not abandon what has long served us well. Today, the tenure system enables free minds to step beyond the iron curtain of political correctness without fear of serious reprisal.

Tenure is not one of the major problems in contemporary academia. Indeed, it is a blessing for those, all across the ideological scale, who are interested in thoughtful scholarship. Intellectual freedom is among the most valuable features of Western civilization, and we threaten it at our peril.”