The last survey of college and university tenure practices, in the U.S. Education Department’s National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, was in 2004. At that time, 17 percent of institutions said they’d replaced tenure lines with contingent appointments in the previous five years. Today, that figure is 54 percent, according to the AAUP survey.

The AAUP survey sheds light on how diversity, equity and inclusion now factor into tenure processes, as these issues were not part of earlier national studies. Asked whether their institutions include explicit DEI criteria in tenure standards, 22 percent of respondents said yes. By institution type, some 30 percent of doctoral universities said they had DEI criteria in their tenure standards, compared to 19 percent of master’s and 18 percent of bachelor’s institutions. By size, 46 percent of large institutions reported having these criteria compared to 16 percent and 15 percent at medium-size and small institutions, respectively.

Forty percent of institutions had provided training on implicit bias to members of promotion and tenure committees in the last five years, with larger institutions being more likely to do so. 

The survey found that tenure clock stoppage when a candidate has a child is far more prevalent (even the norm) now than it was in Trower’s 2000 study: 82 percent versus 17 percent. And of those institutions that offer tenure-clock stoppages today, 93 percent offer them to parents regardless of gender.

Fifty-one percent of institutions explicitly allow stopping the tenure clock for eldercare. But many respondents said these kinds of leave can be negotiated for various reasons. Virtually all doctoral institutions offer tenure-clock stoppages, compared to about three-quarters of small and bachelor’s institutions. Beyond statistics, the AAUP report notes “the long-term, disparate, and gendered impact of such policies on primary caregivers,” given that women are more likely to stop the clock and therefore delay opportunities for promotions and raises for the rest of their careers. There is “certainly is a need to look for alternative arrangements that avoid this result,” the AAUP report adds. (This criticism of tenure-clock stoppages has been levied against pandemic-related pauses, as well, for the same reasons.)