A GOP-backed bill could decimate tenure at SC colleges. Here’s what to know

South Carolina’s House of Representatives will consider whether it will effectively do away with tenure at colleges and universities throughout the state.

The Canceling Professor Tenure Act has the support of 23 House Republicans, who have sponsored the bill, which was pre-filed earlier this month. No Democrats have sponsored the bill.

If passed, the bill would prevent universities from offering tenure to professors for more than five years and require all tenured faculty to teach two undergraduate or graduate classes in both spring and fall semesters starting in the 2024-2025 school year. Professors who already have tenure will not be affected by the five-year rule.

Tenure is a distinction that prevents qualified professors from being fired without cause and guarantees them due process if the school seeks to fire them, according to the American Association of University Professors. While tenure is common at universities throughout the country, most people who teach college classes don’t have tenure. Less than 20% of instructional faculty at all U.S. colleges are tenured, according to 2016 data published by the AAUP.

The longstanding institution of tenure has faced criticism for what some say allows professors to become complacent and unaccountable.

In other industries, “There are no guarantees of lifelong employment,” said bill sponsor Bill Taylor, R-Aiken.

“The question is always why professors in higher education are the single exception. In my view, each of us needs to demonstrate their work,” Taylor said.

The point of tenure is to prevent political, corporate or other interests from interfering in research or steering the curriculum, said University of South Carolina professor Carol Harrison, who serves as the president for the university’s AAUP chapter.

“This is not a tenure reform bill. This is a tenure abolition bill,” Harrison said.

“It would transform university education and research in really terrible ways. There is just no way to have a modern, innovative research university that is producing the knowledge, and introducing it to students and challenging students if faculty are constantly afraid they’ll lose their jobs because they run afoul of some special interest, some corporation (or) some legislator,” Harrison said.

While Taylor has been a critic of certain topics being taught in schools — he sponsored a bill to limit how K-12 schools teach gender and race — the tenure bill is not about what is being taught in classrooms, Taylor said. Rather, the point is to make sure the state’s education system holds its employees accountable and ensures students are learning from actual professors and not just graduate assistants, he said.

“In today’s dynamic society, where… the delivery of education is changing at every level, is tenure helping or hindering that?” Taylor asked.

The bill has the potential to devastate universities by driving away talented researchers, students and grant dollars that fund topics like climate change, stem cell research, research that examines society, gender and race and more, Harrison said. Even for topics that may seem noncontroversial, the proposed policy could have a “chilling effect,” Harrison said.

“Even if you are working in an area that’s not a hot button issue, you will hesitate before you come to a state where your research and teachings are going to be overseen by the state legislature,” Harrison said.

Professors who lead their field in research could be among the first to go, as it will be easier for them to get jobs at other universities.

“The more outstanding your research is the more mobile you are,” Harrison said.

The bill follows a similar move made recently in Georgia that also cracked down on tenure. In October, Georgia’s Board of Regents allowed colleges to fire professors without input from fellow faculty members, according to the New York Times.

However, “the bill was already drafted when Georgia went down the same road,” Taylor said.