WASHINGTON—Tenure, a long-standing pillar in the higher education community, fueled a debate Tuesday among experts who argued the pitfalls and merits of fighting to save the professorial practice that has come under attack in recent years.

The concept is shifting and no longer ensures permanent employment at a university or college, but it’s still a revered tradition for many who feel it bolsters academic freedom.

Some post-secondary schools, like Shimer College in Chicago and Florida Gulf Coast University, have done away with tenure all together.

Professor and author Murray Sperber defended the traditional idea of tenure, or the idea of job security for professors after a probationary period, as a necessary vehicle for free speech.

But a science reporter for The New York Times, Claudia Dreifus, who is also a Columbia University adjunct professor, said that Sperber’s argument only shows how some professors believe their speech is more valuable than others’ who do have to risk their jobs to speak freely.

The six panelists all agreed on one point, though: Tenure is on its way out the door, for better or worse.

“Tenure is going—whether it’s in my lifetime, certainly in your lifetime,” Sperber said addressing a younger audience member, “there will no longer be tenure. But I think a huge thing will be lost and the academy will become much more like corporate America.”

Academic freedom is at stake, Sperber said, if tenure is lost, but other panelists disagreed that the two are inextricably tied together.

Author and former Wall Street Journal editor Naomi Schaefer Riley strongly advocated for disbanding tenure and replacing it with multi-year renewable contracts to stress the ever-changing nature of teaching.

“I think tenure is a static way,” Riley said, “of measuring what I think should be a dynamic profession.”

Tenure, she added, is a fine measure for a professor’s research, but it doesn’t speak to how the professor is doing as a teacher. Just because a teacher was great 30 years ago doesn’t mean he or she is doing as well today, Riley said.

Sperber said he’s seen every abuse of tenure and he still stands by it because the practice means too much for research and freedom of speech. Without creating a system that could ensure those two things, Sperber said, he can’t see a way around tenure.

The debate wasn’t split by age though, as Dreifus, 66, demonstrated in agreeing with the much-younger Riley.

The two, along with other panel members, said they want to see parents, teachers and students demand more from their schools so that the emphasis falls once again on teaching, and not on the isolated institution.

“It’s time for the expectations in academia,” Riley said, “to look more like the expectations in the rest of the world.”

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