Ron Grossman’s article about tenure for university faculty (Perspective, April 6) misses the point. Tenure makes the long-term investment in people and projects needed for successful research and training of researchers. It parallels the strategy financial planners favor for private investments: buy high-quality stock and hold it for the long run.
Research typically calls for long-term programs, often with a high chance of not succeeding (if something is easy, it usually has already been discovered). For example, colleagues and I are seven years into a program to help understand the cause of great earthquakes in the Midwest, which may take 20 years to complete. Without tenure, we couldn’t take on such a project. Similarly, teaching complex subjects calls for long-term experience. I am frequently asked by colleagues at other schools around the world for lecture material that took years to develop. Without tenure, this effort couldn’t have been done.
For these reasons, U.S. and foreign researchers in both universities and government laboratories typically have tenure, and the best corporate laboratories do essentially the same thing. Getting rid of tenure in U.S. universities would simply ensure that the best research and best-trained researchers would come from overseas.
