How Tenure Reduces Tuition

A recent article in CNNFortune repeats claims that eliminating tenure for law school faculty (and presumably university faculty generally) will reduce schools' costs, thereby allowing schools to reduce or stabilize tuition.  In particular, the article states as follows: 

"But with signs mounting that the law school predicament is not a blip, administrators are looking to address their biggest fixed cost -- the full-time faculty. . . .  While salaries and secure employment are not inextricably linked, they are related. With tenure comes the security of consistent paychecks, regular raises, and no abrupt layoffs -- and most universities bestow tenure, or near-guaranteed employment, to guard against firing teachers for expressing controversial or unpopular views. But decades ago, the American Bar Association, which accredits law schools, took it a step further by tying accreditation with tenure protection for most full-time professors. But last month, amid complaints from graduates who cannot find sufficient work, the professional body decided to float two proposals that would sever this link. . . . [C]hanges to faculty tenure -- and compensation -- are inevitable as law school tuition costs barrel ahead."

 

This assertion echoes similar claims that eliminating tenure would reduce the cost of higher education in general and at law schools in particular.  (See here and here.)

However, and as previously explained on this blog, those who claim that the institution of tenure increases labor costs and thus tuition seem to have things backwards. Both common sense and basic economic theory predict that, other things being equal, eliminating tenure will actually increase costs, as schools increase faculty salaries to retain high quality faculty and thus maintain the quality of the education they provide.  Moreover, schools that failed to increase salaries after eliminating tenure would see faculty quality suffer and thus reduce the quality of the education they provide, without an correlative reduction in tuition. 

 

Presumably universities pay whatever total compensation they deem necessary to attract and retain desireable faculty.  Such compensation generally includes a mix of salary and non-salary compensation, the latter of which can include such benefits as health insurance, paid vacation, free parking, or free day care, to name just a few.  Tenure, of course, is a form of non-salary compensation, economically indistinguishable from the benefits just described.    Actual or prospective employees will interpret the elimination of tenure in the same way they would interpret the elimination of health insurance or free parking, that is, as a reduction in compensation.  As a result, schools that eliminated tenure would thus effectively cut faculty compensation and thus attract and retain less qualified faculty, thereby reducing the quality of the education provided.  Students at such schools would thus pay the same tuition for a lower quality product, the economic equivalent of higher tuition for the same product.

 

Of course, schools that eliminated tenure could maintain faculty quality by increasing salaries, thereby offsetting the elimination of a non-salary benefit.  Such salary increases, however, would increase schools' overall costs, and schools would presumably pass such costs on to students.  In these circumstances, then, eliminating tenure would increase and not decrease tuition. 

 

Some may still contend that the elimination of tenure will empower schools to fire incumbent faculty, hired long ago, thereby reducing labor costs. (Though of course universities would have to hire new faculty to perform the varies duties once performed by fired faculty.)    However, this contention does not withstand close scrutiny.  To be sure, like any other firm, a university can reduce its nominal costs by breaching its long term contracts.   For instance, a university that has borrowed $100 million to construct a new building could reduce its costs by repudiating that debt and thus attempting to avoid its obligation to pay annual debt service.  While such a tactic might reduce costs in the short run, it will have the opposite effect in the medium and long run, as firms pay damages for breach of contract to disappointed creditors and find it more expensive to borrow in the future, as future creditors demand an interest premium as compensation for the risk that the firm will default again.  In the same way, a school that breaches its contracts by firing tenured faculty will find itself liable for contract damages.  Such a school will also tarnish its reputation for trustworthiness, thereby making it far more difficult for the school to make credible promises to prospective faculty, staff and administrators, who will demand higher salaries to offset the risk that the university will breach such promises.

No doubt pundits will continue to debate what accounts for the cost of higher education.  (See here for one important contribution.)  It should be clear, however, that tenure reduces that cost.



 

 

Does Tenure Increase The Cost of Higher Education?

A recent essay in the New York Times entitled "The End of Tenure" reviews two books critical of modern higher education. The complaints summarized by the review are familiar, and they include:

1) Higher education costs too much, and tuition keeps rising faster than inflation.

2) Tenured faculty at some elite universities do not teach enough, leaving much of the teaching to be done by adjuncts and other faculty who are not on the tenure track.

3) Student debt is rising by leaps and bounds and is unsustainable.

4) Faculty conduct research that is of little practical relevance, a claim that, if true, implies that the social cost of additional teaching by such faculty members is relatively low.

No doubt at least some of these claims are exaggerated. For instance, recent data also published in the Times suggests that horror stories about students graduating with, say, $100,000 in debt are few and far between. Indeed, these data show that 90 percent of students who borrowed to obtain their bachelor's degree graduated with less than $40,000 in debt. Moreover, some of those individuals who emerged with more than $40,000 in debt presumably chose to attend private universities instead of less expensive public institutions, thus undermining somewhat any complaint about resulting debt burdens. (A North Carolina resident who could have attended UNC Chapel Hill but matriculates at Wake Forest or Duke instead should not be heard to complain about his or her resulting debt burden.) Also, the tuition announced by a college or university is merely a sticker price and does not reflect financial aid that schools provide in the form of discounts for students who demonstrate financial need and/or academic merit.

What though about the claim, implied by the very title of the essay, that the institution of academic tenure is partly responsible for these woes? This is not a new claim --- earlier this year a legal academic argued that proponents of academic tenure for law school faculty were insufficiently sensitive to the fact that the institution of tenure increases the cost of law school. Does the institution of academic tenure make college more expensive, reduce access to higher education and pump up student debt?

Certainly not. After all, eliminating tenure and the job security that tenure brings would make academic positions less attractive than before, with the result that schools would have to raise salaries to attract high quality faculty. Moreover, if eliminating tenure led to greater faculty turnover, schools would presumably incur additional costs searching for and replacing departing faculty. In short, other things being equal, eliminating tenure would increase college tuition, reduce access to college and further add to student indebtedness.

While the institution of academic tenure might have some shortcomings, any propensity to raise the cost of higher education is not one of them.