The reform of academic tenure in the United Kingdom

In this paper, we examine the reform of academic tenure in the United Kingdom (UK) after the 1988 Education Reform Act.¹ We test the hypothesis that softening tenure encourages incumbent academics to consolidate their hold on academic life [ Carmichael (1988)]. We also assess the economic significance of the English and American case law on tenure, because an understanding of the legal aspects of tenure is required to identify the possible effects of tenure reform. The years after passage of the Act provide an interesting natural experiment, as the broad effect of the legislation was to soften, though not to remove, tenure in British universities. ² We can find support for the Carmichael hypothesis prereform but do not believe that the Act caused incumbent academics to consolidate their hold on senior posts after the reform.Tenure implies that the holder of a post cannot be removed from it except for good cause, usually based on gross moral turpitude or gross incompetence. Such removal is historically characterized by a costly procedure governed by organizational statutes, as shown in Hines v. Birkbeck College.³ In the United Kingdom, academic tenure has been associated with open-ended contracts of employment and often had a particularly hard form before 1988. In the United States, where it has often been possible to dismiss academics for financial reasons by abolishing whole departments, tenure has taken a softer form (although often harder to obtain) and can still be held to exist even when an employment contract is of a fixed term as long as it is renewable. ⁴ The details of universities’ tenure statutes have always varied between institutions, in both the United Kingdom and United States, which is often overlooked.

Abstract

“Before 1988, could your university make academics redundant by giving notice and paying statutory redundancy pay, or was it extremely hard to sack academics—having to buy them out or use arguments based on gross moral turpitude or incompetence?”