Faculty Privilege: Research and the Rise of Tenure and Faculty Authority in American Higher Education

Abstract

Faculty at American colleges and universities possess an exceptional combination of job security and decision authority. In addition to the protections of academic tenure, “regular” faculty at most higher education institutions exercise significant authority over important organizational policies and decisions, including product design (curriculum) and personnel matters (appointments, promotions, and dismissals). Why some faculty should enjoy rights, privileges, and protections available to virtually no other class of employees has never been adequately explained, however. This paper makes three main contributions to the debate over tenure and university governance. First, it identifies a source of “hold-up” peculiar to academic employment. Second, it directs attention to the critical role of faculty authority over personnel decisions in securing the employment protections conventionally associated with academic tenure. Finally, the paper documents the relationship between research and faculty personnel authority over time and across institutions. Estimates accounting for selection of governance form based on unobserved heterogeneity show substantial costs of “mistaken organization”: Delegation of authority over personnel decisions to faculty is estimated to have increased research productivity among institutions that chose to do so, whereas such delegation at institutions where administrators retained that authority would have reduced research productivity.