The Train Has Left

There is probably no more cantankerous, anger-producing, intractable problem in the history of the College than the issue of the "tenure quota" beginning in 1972 and lasting for at least a decade.

In many ways, it is the defining issue of that decade setting the tone of the College community and extending from the faculty to the Board to the President to the Chancellor.

Ironically, if you ask any of the younger faculty -- those that have been appointed in the last ten years or so -- about the tenure quota they will all say that they have no idea what is being asked. It simply has disappeared as an issue; most have no idea about the struggle that obsessed us as a College for so long.

If you find an older faculty and ask about the quota, they will tell you that it was a device invented by the first President to make sure the administration had "managerial flexibility". That phrase is almost never heard these days.

I have been going through the relevant documents recently and the history of the tenure quota here is complex and sometimes unclear. It is, however, essential for us to understand how this became a dominant issue, who were the players and what caused it to disappear.

To understand how the tenure quota became such a defining issue we have to understand higher education in New Jersey in the late 1960s.

At that time, the six State colleges were really teacher training schools. They tended to duplicate each other's curricula and, as it finally came to everyone's attention, a high proportion of their faculties had tenure. Over all, in September, 1971, 63% of the faculty across the State had tenure; this rate climbed to 71% in early 1972 but was expected to drop back to 65% in 1972 because new faculty were hired to meet increased enrollment. One State college had a 75% tenured faculty.

The other causal issue was the fact that, by State statute, faculty in New Jersey State colleges were tenured in three years. This may, on the surface, seem an advantage. From the faculty's standpoint, the College has to commit to a young teacher at the end of three years so the waiting and stress of defending one's teaching and research is over quickly. From the administrator's standpoint, if the faculty member shows no aberrant behavior in that three year period, the college can make the commitment and move on. It would seem like everyone wins.

This might work for experienced teachers -- those at the rank of Associate or Full Professor -- who will have a verifiable record. But what about Assistant Professors who have minimum teaching experience? How valid is a judgment made about teaching after three years?

The concatenation of a short probationary period and high proportion of tenured faculty certainly caused State officials to wonder whether a tenure quota might not solve both problems at one blow.

Stockton's founding falls between these issues.

The President, Richard Bjork, in January of 1971, wrote a document Adminstrative Working Paper IV: Faculty and Staff Evaluation outlining a Promotion and Tenure Policy for the college. In this document, Bjork lists the various State laws and regulations that defined tenure and the probation period including Title18a:60, Chapter 271, Public Law 1967 which defined the probationary period as three years.

Interestingly, no mention is made of tenure quotas. Also, of equal interest, a Report of the Faculty Committee on Administrative Working Paper IV (the document written by Bjork) does not mention tenure quotas once. At this point (1971) neither the administration nor the faculty considered tenure quotas worth mentioning. Things were about to change dramatically.

That change came in the form of a report on Tenure At the State Colleges of New Jersey (June, 1972) ordered by the then Chancellor of Higher Education, Ralph Dungan. This 34 page report covers the tenure situation in the State colleges, what the Department of Higher Education had tried to do about the short probationary period, what other reports had recommended about tenure quotas and, finally, what the report recommended.

Briefly, this report stated that a tenure quota of 60% should be instituted at the State colleges. To insure compliance, each college was to submit an annual report to the Department of Higher Education.
Coincidentally, the AFT was elected as bargaining agent in February of 1973 -- just between Bjork's document on Promotion and Tenure and the DHE report on tenure quotas. These three facts shaped the firestorm that followed.

When the NY Times ran an article on October 22, 1972, the bargaining agent was the Association of New Jersey College Faculties -- and NJEA affiliate. It attacked the quota plan as being against State law and the US Constitution. They also saw Chancellor Dungan as overruling local boards. Montclair's president resigned over the issue and the reporter states that Stockton's faculty was especially "infuriated".

And so the issue was joined. Four months later the bargaining agent elected -- with incredibly strong Stockton support -- became the AFT. From that point on the tenure quota was the center issue for the Union because to lose the fight would have meant that the Union could not protect its members and if that had ever happened it would have lost all credibility.

Tenure quotas appeal to administrators in times when education is expanding. If a college isn't hiring many new faculty, quotas are not impressive or needed. But, when Stockton doubled its faculty in two years after its founding, quotas made sense to administrators who feared that if the faculty ever achieved 100% tenure, change would have become impossible. At a place like Stockton -- which prided itself on constant change -- full tenure would have been anathema.

On the other hand, Stockton's faculty was uniquely young in the State system so it saw the quota as a direct attack on being here, teaching, doing research and becoming a successful academicians.

Once these lines were drawn there was no turning back to the excitement of the earliest days and to a communality of purpose.

Indeed, Bjork wrote and presented testimony before The New Jersey Assembly Education Committee in November, 1976. In his short statement he argues fully against tenure. By then, the issue was already beginning to fade -- though it wasn't a dead issue until at least a decade or more -- and Bjork's speech is an elegant rear-guard action. As they say: the train had left the station (see Rob's remark about his speech below).

With 40 years hindsight one is forced to wonder if all of the anger, effort, talk, arguing, planning and writing was not wasted. Other issues of power sharing, faculty governance, tight budgets and benefits occupied the Union -- and rightfully so. Once the halcyon days of the Founding had passed, the College had to survive in a radically different world from 1971 as the new kid on the block. It had to compete for funds, for faculty, for lines, for students and for the excellence it had so long assumed.

No one talks -- or writes -- about tenure quotas today; this is true, at least, in my hearing. Concomitantly, no one becomes much excited about any issue either. As I said: the train has left.