I was told a while back that British universities do not have "tenure" in the legal job protection sense that American universities do. Can anyone with knowledge of British academia comment on whether the have de facto tenure? Just something I've always wondered and I decided today was as good a day as any to get two good responses, a few references to the prisoner's dilemma and, if I'm really lucky, a bear sighting.
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Tenure in England?
(26 posts)-
Posted 6 months ago #
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English academia is a classic example of the stag hunt.
Posted 6 months ago # -
I live for bear sightings. Glad you asked the question.
Posted 6 months ago # -
Someone on PSJR wants legal advice? This is a question only Barnaby Jones is qualified to answer.
Posted 6 months ago # -
Who gives a fuck about BJ?? This is what registration brought upon us-- senseless comments about individual users. Without registration we can just enjoy troll-spotting and Bear's one-liners.
I'm calling dibs on the "this is why registration sucked" troll identity.
Posted 6 months ago # -
The British contracts I know of have five year probationary clauses and then you are in a permanent position. The jobs are both more and less guaranteed than US jobs. They are more guaranteed in that getting past the probationary test is a formality essentially everywhere (I know of just one person who didn't make it through, but that worked more through a very informal "we encourage you to leave while you can save face" than an actual formal review and it was well before the end of the five years). I was asked to be an external reviewer for someone, so I know they use them, at least sometimes. The jobs are less guaranteed in that what you get after five years is essentially the EU standard for protection of all jobs rather than a very special standard of job protection for just academic jobs, which is what you get in the US. In actual practice, I have heard of more US tenured faculty being fired (especially recently) than I have ever heard of British long term faculty being fired. You can decide if that's de facto tenure.
Posted 6 months ago # -
Wow, EU standards about job protection cover all jobs? sweet.
Posted 6 months ago # -
Just waiting to see how someone will tie this to Rochester.
Posted 6 months ago # -
Nothing beats the old Soviet tenure system. Once hired, you were guaranteed a job for life. If your performance wasn't great, they didn't fire you, they just killed you.
Posted 6 months ago # -
^I love how even here the moment somebody mentions something about EU's high job protection standards, next thing we know another person brings up the Soviet Union. The association between "socialism" in Europe now and socialism in the Soviet Union needs to end for heaven's sake.
Posted 6 months ago # -
"The Reform of Academic Tenure in the United Kingdom," International Review of Law and Economics 18:4 (1998): 491. Don't know if that still reflects the current situation.
Posted 6 months ago # -
Same situation in Australia. Probation is usually less than 5 years. 3 years is more likely from my experience.
Posted 6 months ago # -
^7 This poster describes the process correctly: 5 year probation, usually with a mid-term review, then "confirmation in post" in the 5th year. The confirmation usually involves two or three outside letters, not tons of letters as in US. It is very rare to get turned down. The search committees factor all this in when they make the initial hire -- they assume that they are giving de facto tenure to the successful candidate, and they adjust their expectations accordingly. I have served on a lot of search committees in both UK and US and I have found that the UK committees are much more thorough in reading and scrutinising the written materials. You would never guess this from the perfunctory panel interviews (45 min per candidate at some places), but that's the way it is. The committee usually deliberates a lot before they see the candidates.
Posted 6 months ago # -
"I love how even here the moment somebody mentions something about EU's high job protection standards, next thing we know another person brings up the Soviet Union. The association between "socialism" in Europe now and socialism in the Soviet Union needs to end for heaven's sake."
The immediately prior post was about Rochester. Form your own conclusion.
Posted 6 months ago # -
Here in New Zealand, we're good to go from Day 1. There's nothing existentially as fancy as tenure guarding our careers, but our jobs don't seem to be any less protected in an academic freedom sense than those in the States, as far as I can tell. It is possible to sack people for really, really low performance or for budgetary reasons, and it does happen. But not that much.
Posted 6 months ago # -
^^Yeah, I am just sick of Rochester showing up on every thread so I just ignore any post that mentions it by now.
Posted 6 months ago # -
The situation is not the same everywhere in the UK. In fact, some schools have recently started US-style tenure track positions (LSE, Oxford). Some top schools might have an external review after 3 (rather than 5) years; I have never heard of it though. When I was in the UK, you simply got 'tenure' after 3 years, except when you would repeatedly rape the president's daughter/son.
Posted 6 months ago # -
how about Canadian schools? do they have a tenure system identical to the one operating in the US?
Posted 6 months ago # -
The Stag Hunt post is tragically underappreciated. Pure genius.
Posted 6 months ago # -
^^ pretty much, yeah.
Posted 6 months ago # -
I wrote the first extended post about British tenure above if that gives me any credibility. The Canadian system is much more similar to the US one, although my impression is that the tenure standards would generally be considered low (quantity and quality) by US standards.
Posted 6 months ago # -
^You have credibility. Oxford is as you and the other extended poster describe: it does not have a US-style system as ^^^^ claimed. Maybe LSE does, I don't know.
Posted 6 months ago # -
^^At my Canadian school the tenure standards are identical to the tenure standards at ranked R-1 programs in the US.
Posted 6 months ago # -
^^LSE does not have a US style system. Bigger point: in this market/ environment, the security and ubiquity of tenure in the US may itself be short-lived; you may--as I and my partner have--find opportunities in the UK rather than in the over-saturated and contracting US academic market; UK also pays worse relative to similarly prestigious schools in the US, especially if you consider the cost of living in London, for example.
Posted 5 months ago # -
Canadian tenure standards have traditionally been low with nearly everyone making it, but the bar is starting to rise, especially at the top places like Toronto and UBC that crave credibility in the U.S. Cases that might have slipped through a few years ago are now being turned down.
Posted 5 months ago #