Study: Professors’s Student Evaluations Worsen After Receiving Tenure

A recent study discovered that professors at the University of Colorado Boulder receiver lower scores on student evaluations starting the semester immediately after the professor is granted tenure. While the study may raise questions regarding the effectiveness tenure might have in improving students’ learning experience, the researchers insist there are “clear advantages” that come with tenure.

Researchers from the University of New Haven are investigating the impact that tenure has on student evaluations and have found that student feedback gets worse after a professor has received tenure.

Researchers Patrick Gourley and Greg Madonia have discovered that post-tenure professors have seen a “small, but persistent, decline” in student course evaluations in the “course overall” and “instructor overall” categories.

Gourley and Madonia say they have been studying a large sample of more than 250 University of Colorado Boulder professors who were granted tenure over an 11-year period.

“The conferment of tenure in the United States’ university system gives substantial job security to its recipients,” states the abstract in the researchers’ working paper, “This policy is designed to allow a professor the ability to explore new, and risky, research questions without fear of losing their position due to lack of publications.”

“At the same time, this policy creates an incentive system with an ambiguous effect on how the professor performs in the classroom,” continue the researchers, “Professors may no longer care about teaching evaluations since future teaching evaluations are unlikely to affect their job security.”

The researchers also noted that “this effect is mainly driven by the semester immediately after tenure is granted.”

“Because of the difficulty of removing professors with tenure, critics have long called the system into question,” acknowledges the working paper, “Detractors claim that tenure enables professors to phone-it-in for the rest of the career, which can easily last for decades.”

While the study may raise questions from some as to whether tenure might facilitate a professor’s declining performance, Gourley and Madonia insist that “there are clear advantages to the tenure system,” such as “academic freedom” and “the ability to pursue long-term projects.”

“Scholars need to be able to pursue truth even if their research will unearth politically inconvenient conclusions,” affirm the researchers, “The overall impact of tenure on teaching is unclear.”

“Measuring teaching effectiveness is difficult, and there is not a universally agreed upon method,” concedes the working paper, “However, in recent decades student course evaluations are generally the preferred measurement.”

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