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The Value of University Tenure by John A. Pearce II Although tenure allows universities to strengthen their ability to recruit talented faculty, it represents a long-term commitment to faculty who may not continue to make important contributions to the university over time. If that's the case, why do so many institutions continue to employ tenured professors? Of business schools that responded to AACSB International's 2013 Business School Questionnaire, 99 percent of schools in the U.S. (504 of 509) and 88 percent in Asia (52 out of 59) reported that they offer tenure. I believe there are three compelling reasons. First, tenure helps universities attract and retain the best research faculty. Second, universities without tenure are at a disadvantage when it comes to securing top-tier faculty for the long term, which limits faculty involvement in the life of the institution. And, finally, tenure positively impacts a university's reputation, performance, and ability to deliver quality education. Tenure attracts faculty who publish high-impact research. Over the last two decades, business schools increasingly have measured the impact of faculty by how often their faculty's research is published in high-quality journals and cited by other authors. But scholarship with real impact on a field of study is relatively rare. In a 1998 study, Eugene Garfield 32 September/October 2013 BizEd found that of approximately 33 million articles included in the Science Citation Index from 1945 to 1988, 40 percent were never cited by others, and 56 percent were cited only once. Only 4 percent received two or more citations. Publishing articles in top-tier journals with rejection rates of 90 percent to 95 percent may be extremely difficult, but publishing articles with enduring impact on the field of study is extraordinarily so. In a 2008 study, Philip Podsakoff, Scott MacKenzie, Nathan Podsakoff, and Daniel Bachrach found that a mere 5 percent of faculty account for 50 percent or more of all citations. They also found that the number of a professor's scholarly publications is positively related to the number of citations he or she receives. Likewise, the recognition a university receives for research is positively related to its number of faculty publications. The only way universities can set themselves apart through scholarship is by hiring faculty with proven capability to publish high-impact articles in top-tier journals. Not surprisingly, these professors can command contracts with significant benefits, and many of them expect to be offered the possibility of tenure. Schools need to offer a tenure process to attract and retain such faculty. The absence of tenure affects the quality of education. The imbalance between part-time and full-time faculty appointments has steadily increased since 1975. The number of part-time, short-term, non-tenure-track—or "contingent"— professors has grown tremendously over the last four decades, across all institutional categories. As of the 2012–2013 academic year, tenured and tenure-track fulltime positions represented fewer than 24 percent of all instructional staff positions in colleges and universities, according to the American Association of University Professors' "Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession." Authors John Curtis and Saranna Thornton note that non-tenure-track full-time and part-time faculty and graduate teaching assistants represent the remaining 76 percent. While fulltime tenured or tenure-track positions grew by only 26 percent since 1975, contingent academic positions increased by more than 300 percent. Although these trends are less marked in business disciplines, their direction is nearly identical. Curtis and Thornton calculated the median rate of pay per three-credit course over all disciplines to be just US$2,700, which suggests that schools are cutting costs by relying on contingent professors. Unfortunately, such appointments F1on li n e R M /G low Imag es When all benefits are taken into account, tenure remains a compelling and pragmatic option for academic institutions.