Half-Time Tenure Track Could Level Professorial Playing Field
Nov. 13, 2000
University Park, Pa. -- Despite the increased numbers of women receiving Ph.D.'s, the percentage of tenured women faculty in U.S. colleges and universities has increased at a snail's pace, but a proposal for a half-time tenure track might not only allow more women to compete, but also provide an equitable solution for all untenured faculty with work/family issues, according to a Penn State researcher.

"Women have failed to rise in academics because traditionally, the ideal professional worker is someone who works for 40 years with no career interruptions, taking no time off for childbearing or child-rearing," says Dr. Robert Drago, professor of labor studies in Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts.

However, the childbearing years coincide with the tenure track years. Although women enter graduate programs in roughly equal proportions with men, they hold fewer than 15 percent of all tenured academic posts," says Dr. Joan Williams, professor of law, American University. "Women are much less likely than men to receive tenure. The rate for women receiving tenure in 1995 matched that of women in 1975, but the rate for men increased from 46 to 72 percent in the same time period."

Recently, some institutions have implemented policies to aid childbearing couples. These policies may include parental leave policies, reduced workloads for new parents, or temporary stoppage of the tenure clock.

"However, raising a child takes 20 years, not one semester," says Drago. "American women, who still do the vast majority of child care, will not achieve equality in academia so long as the ideal academic is defined as someone who takes no time off for child rearing."

In the November issue of Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, Drago and Williams propose a redefinition of the ideal academic worker. Their proposal offers proportional pay, benefits and advancement for part-time work. In essence, a part-time tenure track.

They suggest, "Any tenure-track faculty member with care-giving responsibilities for children, elderly or ill family members of partners could, with sufficient notice, request that he or she be placed on half-time status for a period of one to twelve years. Workload, including teaching, research, advising and committee work, would also decline by half."

The tenure clock would run at half-time, but so would salary, benefits and advancement.

"Given the financial penalty involved, we expect that most academics would use the part-time policy for between two and six years," says Drago.

A faculty member who went half-time for two years would have a tenure decision at the end of seven years rather than six, and the maximum time for a tenure decision would be a set number of years. The researchers suggest 12, but admit that if individual institutions thought that was too long it could easily be altered.

The researchers believe that restrictions need to be placed on those wishing to use the part-time track to deter researchers from going part-time simply to accrue more research time. However, they do think that health or personal circumstances that limit an individual's ability to work full time during the tenure years should be considered reasonable grounds for the part-time track.

From the university viewpoint, the proposed half-time tenure track poses no additional costs, especially if the cost-savings are returned to the departments to provide teaching coverage. The half-time track would also eliminate under-the-table practices that offer child-rearing time at full pay to women but not to men under the guise of maternal disability pay.

According to Drago and Williams, children are better viewed as a long-term commitment than as a disease. They also note that recent surveys show that fathers are increasing their expectations and desire to be active parents.

"At present, academics have only two alternatives: work long hours and, with luck, get tenure, or refuse to work those hours and take the consequences," says Williams.

If both parents could reduce hours without the penalties that now accompany part-time work, more families would choose a slower career path, rather than have one spouse work time and a half while the other drops off the career path.

"A half-time tenure proposal would also benefit colleges and universities," says Drago. "Current practices artificially reduce the talent pool by eliminating a hefty percentage of qualified candidates – most mothers – from reaching for or achieving tenure."

EDITORS: Dr. Drago is at (814) 865-0751 or at by e-mail. Dr. Williams is at (202) 274-4245 or at by e-mail.