Stop Stressing Graduate Students About Tenure

This is the second in a series of blog posts developed by students in my PhD seminar, Public Intellectuals: Theory and Practice.

Stop Stressing Graduate Students about Tenure 

By: Jordan Harper 

Faculty are responsible for and take pride in many things: teaching, research, service, and stressing graduate students out about tenure. The realities of the academy actually make the latter unnecessary. 

The academy is changing and has been for a while. Data from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) show that three-quarters of all faculty positions exist off the tenure-track. That is, non-tenure-track faculty (i.e., part-time, full-time contingent and adjunct faculty). Pressuring graduate students to think about tenure in just about everything they do is a carceral logic that impacts their intellectual curiosity and overall experience in graduate education. It is unhelpful to burden graduate students with the thought of tenure when the reality of the academy is that very few, if any at this point in time, will even land a tenure-track job, or, even have a desire to go into the academy at all. Conversations about tenure are distracting and burdensome. 

Before we go any further, let us first observe how tenure is talked about before graduate students even become fully aware of what it actually means to ‘get’ tenure. I present to you, tenure, as discussed on Big Bang Theory. 

In the clip, tenure is discussed as a flashy, highly sought after reward that will not impact “output,” gives you job security and freedom, and may even make your mother proud, that is if she can even comprehend what tenure truly is. One of the guys, Sheldon, even goes as far as to allude that, even after achieving tenure, he will still have to live with a roommate. This slight comment illustrates that the Ph.D. and tenure is not a ticket to financial freedom and ease, but instead serves as more of a personal achievement and a recognition that your work in theacademyis promising and worthwhile. Another guy in the clip, Leonard, informs Penny that he, in fact, does not have to schmooze up to anyone to be awarded tenure. This is not true. In fact, your career leading up to tenure is all about schmoozing.

Graduate students, especially, exist in marginal and vulnerable positions. They feel all the pressure to conform and fold into what the academy desires of them (i.e., publications, conference presentations, research) and even adjust their research interests to what will get them published and land them a job. As gatekeepers of the academy, faculty often call attention to tenure every chance they get and some feel that it is their responsibility to do so. The tenure conversation deeply impacts vulnerable graduate students by lowering them into a rabbit hole of reevaluation: reevaluating their relationships with the academy, with their personal research interests, with social media, with television, with themselves. Graduate students then internalize the position of a tenure-track professor by falling into the idea that they must publish or perish, reach for only the top journals that exist behind a paywall, and put their mental health on the line and work, work, work. 

Tenure talk also stirs graduate students away from engaging with public audiences. It is no secret that research published in top-tier journals is the golden ticket to tenure, especially at a Research I institution. So, graduate students will often feel the pressure to shift all of their energy to the top journals in their respective fields, even if it takes over a year for the article to get published. Graduate students only talk to other academics when publishing in these journals and miss vital opportunities to share that research and information with broader audiences. Partly because of the ongoing tenure conversations, graduate students do not even think about ways to translate their research to public audiences by way of op-eds, blog posts, or resource guides. Here, key opportunities are missed to broaden a graduate students’ network and reach. And, if a tenure-track position is out of their reach or becomes a distant desire, all they have on their CV’s is an article citation that shows their allegiance to academia and to no one else. 

Another tale as old as time is that graduate students are in no position to conduct ‘cutting edge,’ ‘radical,’ or ‘critical’ research. Graduate students are frequently reminded of tenure when they do so and are often encouraged to wait until they receive the job security that comes with tenure to produce such research. What happened to the purpose of graduate education? To advance and construct new knowledge? Unfortunately, the purpose of graduate education gets lost in the conversation of tenure. When students are indoctrinated with the thought and concept of tenure, they tend to police their actions and the product(s) they consume, locking themselves into a carceral state that stifles their creativity and agency.  

I, for one, am not solely looking at academic jobs or tenure-track jobs. In fact, I am aware of the current job outlook for tenure-track faculty and am fully aware of the fact that tenure is diminishing before our eyes. Therefore, in all the work I do, I am reminded of two things: why I’m doing a Ph.D. and the fact that I do not necessarily need to enter academia after completing my program. I’m doing a Ph.D. because I’m genuinely curious about a multitude of things regarding higher education—leadership, non-tenure-track faculty, graduate admissions/education, hiring. And I know that my curiosity about all things higher education will lead me wherever I am meant to be. I am also aware of my commitment to public work and public scholarship and how that may later come in tension with a tenure-track faculty position. My commitment to public work is something I hold close and allows me to drown out conflicting messages about publishing or perishing and the need to publish in top-tier journals. In fact, I am more interested in publishing in open-access journals and more public forums so my work can land in the hands of those who need it most. I want my work to start conversations. If my work is only published in top-tier journals and journals behind paywalls, then that means only other academics with institutional access to these journals can start conversations. And even then, it’s probably only to cite me in the introduction of a paper or at most, a literature review. These commitments I hold cause me to think beyond tenure. In fact, I very seldom think about tenure. I think about the vital need for the work I produce, where it can go for others to read widely, and how to have subsequent conversations with the people who read and engage with my work. Tenure is truly the last thing on my mind. And I acknowledge that this is a privilege and a luxury, but I think it is a mindset for other graduate students to adopt and actively think about to push against the carceral state graduate students’ are put in when they are bogged down with the reminder of tenure and what you have to lose or give up in order to achieve it. 

So many graduate students lose their soul well before landing a tenure-track job. And that is, in part, due to the conversations they have with other faculty regarding what they should or should not be doing during their time as graduate students. Instead of pressuring graduate students to think about tenure and how their work will affect their ability to be awarded tenure, the message should be more about authenticity; to thine own self be true. Graduate students should be able to pursue any line of inquiry they want without the pressure of tenure looming over their heads. They should be able to honor their personal commitments in an academic space. Also, graduate students do not need a reminder of tenure in every academic space; it’s stressful, unnecessary, and lowkey traumatic. The message for faculty is clear: stop stressing graduate students about tenure. And the message for graduate students is even more straightforward: express yourself and do work that you’re passionate about during your time as a graduate student. We’ll cross that [tenure] bridge if and when we get there. 

Jordan Harper is a research assistant at the Pullias Center for Higher Education and a PhD student in the Urban Education Policy program at USC Rossier School of Education. His research interests are focused on higher education leadership, non-tenure-track faculty, graduate admissions, and graduate education.

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