THE ABUSE OF TENURE

To the Editors of The Crimson:

It was unfortunate that the Economics Department Committee on outside consulting work did not also discuss the relation of academic tenure to such work. The rationale for lifetime tenure is that it provides scholars with a risk-free appointment to pursue a life of reflection undisturbed by the uncertainties of the market economy. It is not intended to provide professors with a sheltered enclave from which to set up profit-making enterprises, at no personal risk to themselves. To do so--and then to retain tenure as well as the full profits from outside consulting work -- constitutes a clear abuse of the system.

One would, therefore, think it appropriate that those professors who pursue lucrative outside activities which have been made possible by the security and prestige of the tenurial system either give up voluntarily the guarantee of lifetime tenure or remit voluntarily as a gift to the University a substantial portion of the additional income accruing to them from outside work. Such latter funds might be used to supplement the dwindling scholarship monies available for undergraduates and graduate students, who are increasingly encouraged -- by the substitution of loan for scholarship programs -- to tie their own educational plans to market calculations.

The point here is that the tenure system has a rationale that carries with it its own ethics. The acceptance of tenure involves a commitment to live within a fixed, secure and comfortable income to pursue a life of teaching and research. Those who feel this income is insufficient to support them should accept a less permanent association with the University or find other voluntary means to justify their status.

In the absence of such voluntary measures perhaps formal ones are needed. It follows also from the ethics of the tenure system that those with working spouses or large inherited incomes receive less support in salary that those who depend entirely on their University salaries. Perhaps what is needed is a mathematical formula which would relate salary to calculations of outside income, net assets, number of children, publishing royalties and the like.

The pages of your newspaper have recently given extensive coverage to the application of just such a formula to graduate students, who like tenured professors are adults who have chosen to pursue a scholarly career. One assumes that the Harvard Administration has adopted this measure because it is disturbed by abuses of the current fellowship program by graduate students with large, outside incomes. It doubtless can point to students who supplement comfortable outside incomes with scholarship funds. Only such reasoning can account for a measure designed to enforce a uniform--and low--standard on all graduate students. Judging from the administration of past standards of this sort at Harvard (e.g. in staff tuition scholarships) the effect on those who want to live slightly above the prescribed standard will be to give them an incentive either to lie on their financial forms or to abandon scholarship aid altogether by seeking outside employment which interrupts their studies.

This new regulation toward graduate students may be justified if there is abuse of the current system. When a voluntary sense of community fails, it is often necessary to institute formal and disagreeable regulations. I would submit, however, that abuse of scholarship programs by wealthy graduate students is trivial. I would also submit that abuse of the tenurial system by full professors is not trivial. If we are to have a Kraus formula for the former, let us have a similar formula for the latter. Perhaps a Committee of the Economics Department would be qualified to prepare such a formula.

If on the other hand, these are (as I think likely) good reasons for not enforcing a uniform standard of income and a full reporting of assets on those who choose to accept metime tenure, I would be interested to know why these arguments do not apply to graduate students and teaching fellows.

We should, at any rate, be grateful to Professors Galbraith and Eckstein whose dispute has brought needed attention to abuses of the tenure system which deserve continuing discussion. Josiah Lee Auspitz '63   Teaching Fellow in Government