Examining Perceptions of Tenure in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of
Business
Carlin Cherry, Bradley Hamilton, Eileen Huang, Elisabeth Kalomeris,
Juan Saldana, Fasai Phuathavornskul, Tim Wang, Bridget Youngs, Dr. Lyn Ragsdale
School of Social Sciences, Rice University
Introduction
• Student-led fellowship conducting qualitative and quantitative social science research.
• Past years studied: the School of Social Sciences, School of Humanities, School of
Natural Sciences, and School of Engineering.
• Research from past years explored:
o Societal impression of academia
o Role of academia in self, society, and next generation
Objectives
The Role of Teaching
• Tenured professors perceive teaching as equally important for both tenured and nontenured professors. On the other hand, non-tenured professors perceive teaching as much
more important for non-Tenure professors than for tenured professors.
• tenured professors perceive that the importance of teaching over research increases after
they received tenure.
• While tenured professors perceived nearly-equal importance on teaching for tenured and
non-tenured professors, non-tenured professors perceived teaching as more important for
non-Tenure professors than tenured professors.
• Investigate how the tenure system affects the way in which Jones School of Business
faculty members perceive their impact on society, mentorship and teaching, and the
freedom and flexibility of their research desires.
• Examine the differences in perceptions found between pre-tenure faculty, non-tenure
track faculty, and post-tenure faculty members.
Figure 3: Tenured professors perceive
that tenured and non-tenured professors
place nearly-equal importance on
teaching. On the other hand, nontenured professors perceive that nontenured professor value teaching more
(9.25) than tenured professors (2.75).
This shows that getting tenure seems to
increase the perception on the
importance of teaching after tenure.
Perceptions of Impact
• Many different areas of impact were mentioned, such as public policy, private industry,
economics, and academia.
• Quantitative: For tenured professors, there was a greater emphasis on the impact of
“inspiring...students”. For non-tenured professors, there was a greater emphasis on
the impact of “development of new knowledge”.
• Qualitative: There was no significant difference in perceptions of impact between
tenured and non-tenured professors.
“But I would say 75% of my time is spent working
on my research papers.”
“Ultimately, I think it was the type of
university Rice was, the resources they had,
the value they placed on both research and
teaching.”
Academic Freedom
Figure 1. Non-tenured professors
perceive a greater impact on
“development of new knowledge”
(2.33) than “inspiring of students”
(1.75). Tenured professors perceive
the reverse. This implies that
tenured professors has less
pressure to publish new
knowledge, and can therefore
focus more on mentorship.
• The prospect of tenure has a greater impact on both “research freedom” and “pressure to
publish” for non-tenured professors on the tenure track.
• Non-tenured professors on tenure-track have a lower perceived freedom to pursue their
research interests than non-tenured professors who are not pursuing tenure.
• Our survey also found that tenured professors attribute less of their professional stress to
the pressure to publish.
Research Methodology
• Conducted one-hour long personal interviews with 25 Jesse H. Jones Graduate School
of Business faculty members.
○ Interview Questions about academia, research motivation, and teaching
• Coded interviews to identify prevalent themes.
• Sent out a follow up anonymous survey to all Business school faculty members to
investigate the disparities in how pre and post tenure business faculty perceive their
impact, the importance of mentorship and teaching, and the amount of freedom in
research given to them.
Analysis
• Our qualitative interview codes revealed that tenured professors believe their work is
more impactful to private industry and students than academia.
• Interview responses indicate that the tenure system can be responsible for reduced
research freedom among pre-tenured faculty members.The general consensus among
survey respondents was that non-tenured professors place the highest value on their
time for research, while tenured professors value mentoring and teaching aspects of
academia.
• It was shown through our survey data that the priority placed on teaching increases
after tenure.Because tenured professors can spend less time working on publishing
research.
• All surveyed professors place higher priority on research than they do on teaching
regardless of tenure status.
• Survey results show that tenured professors perceive themselves as having lower
stress levels due to pressure to publish than non-tenured professors on tenure track.
Future Studies
• Perform a more in-depth study on the effects of the tenure system on private industry
involvement of faculty in order to see how the pressure to publish affects involvement
in other aspects of the business world.
• Conduct a cross-departmental research project to study the differing views on the
societal impact of faculty research between the School of Humanities and the Jones
School of Business.
• Further our analysis of the similarities and differences amongst Jones School of
Business and other business schools within the United States.
Acknowledgements
“I think we play an important role especially
because most of our students are going to be
leaders in ...most of the corporations here in
the US. And I think they are going to make
important decisions regarding what is going to
happen in the next 10, 20 years.”
We would like to thank Ipek Martinez and Dr. Lyn Ragsdale for their support throughout
the project. Additionally, we would like to express our gratitude to Alex Wyatt and
Courtney Stefancyk for their logistical help throughout the process. Finally, we would like
to thank Dr. Brandon Vaidyanathan for his guidance and support. We are grateful to the
Jones School of Business professors who allowed us to study their department.
“I think it has less and less
consequence, and that’s very
dangerous, after all this is a business
school and you’re supposed to deal
with business problems.”
Fig 4. Tenured professors reported on their
ideal allocation of time during their work
week.
Figure 2. The non-tenured
professors perceive a greater
impact on “growth on my academic
field” (3.33) than “private industry
applications” (2.58). The tenured
professors perceive the reverse.
This can be perhaps be attributed
to a greater sense of freedom for
post-tenure professors, who aim
for a broader scope of impact
through their research.
“Before tenure, I was like ‘I'll work on
whatever I want,’ but then now
looking back on that I think I'll work
on whatever I want as long as it gets
published in the Journal of Finance.
That's actually really narrow.”
Fig 5. Non-Tenured professors reported on
their ideal allocation of time during their work
week.
“You know, there are incentives in place to
focus on your area and there's less of a reward
for … branching out too much. But that's the
beauty of the tenure system because once you
are more … senior than I am at this point and
tenured, that allows you the flexibility to do
those things and you'll see more of that at …
the senior levels of academia.”
Limitations
• Small sample size
• Out of 111 faculty members at the Jones School of Business, 23% were interviewed
and 24% responded to our survey.
• Self-selective
Fig. 6. Non-tenured professors on tenure track evaluated
their level of professional stress due to the prospect of
tenure as 8.75/10. Tenured professors evaluated that they
perceived the level of professional stress due to the
prospect of tenure for non-tenured professors to be 2.22
/10.