In Emails, UNC’s Provost Claimed Roberts Approved Tenure Delay

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee Roberts signed off on a plan to delay approving tenure for dozens of faculty in hopes of cutting costs this spring, a school official said in an email obtained by The Assembly.

The UNC-CH Board of Trustees in March postponed taking up personnel actions until its May 22 meeting, at which the trustees approved 18 new tenure cases, promotions, and appointments in health-sciences disciplines. But the board did not act on dozens of other cases, sparking faculty outcry. 

Personnel votes are usually fairly routine; faculty who are up for tenure go through a rigorous process within their respective schools before their cases reach trustees. In June, the trustees reversed course and approved 33 tenure cases.

The university did not explain why the votes had been delayed. But some UNC-CH trustees have criticized the tenure system, both in emails media outlets obtained following the delayed votes and publicly this week. Some trustees also cited the university’s complicated financial outlook as a reason to hold off on personnel actions, as Inside Higher Ed reported.

What Roberts knew about the decision was unclear at the time. But a May email from then-Provost Chris Clemens claims Roberts had agreed to the plan to delay votes as a cost-cutting measure amid federal and state funding uncertainty. The Assembly obtained the email via records request.

“The trustees have decided that they are going to address a pending financial crisis by holding up votes on awarding tenure to faculty, most of whom have already received a 6-year trial investment and sometimes large start-up funds,” Clemens wrote in the May 3 email, a few weeks before the votes were delayed a second time. “The Chancellor has agreed to this strategy based on a net present cost evaluation of the faculty who receive permanent tenure.”

Net present cost is an accounting method used to analyze the lifetime cost of an investment, which Clemens said was the wrong way to think about tenure. “With all due respect, this argument is incorrect,” Clemens wrote, explaining that it did not consider the value faculty generated over time.

Clemens, who had already submitted his resignation by the time he sent the email, declined to comment for this story.

“Another delay will be impossible to ignore,” Clemens wrote at the time. “None of the leadership team wants to present the fifty or so tenure cases to the board, given that the provost met his Waterloo after the last meeting.”

At a board of trustees meeting on Wednesday, there was a heated discussion about the value of tenure. The day after the meeting, Roberts told The Assembly UNC-CH would have tenure “for the foreseeable future, and there’s just no two ways about that.”

“There’s a range of views about tenure on our board, as you heard yesterday, and there’s a range of views in the broader national debate,” Roberts said. “But whatever else you want to say for or against tenure, there is one incontrovertible fact about it, which is that tenure is a competitive imperative for Carolina.”

Kevin Best, UNC-CH’s senior media relations director, said the university had no further comment beyond Roberts’ previous statement.

An Unsolicited Report

Faculty with tenure have an indefinite appointment at their university and can only be fired in limited circumstances. The modern-day form of tenure originated in the 1940s to preserve academic freedom, which aspires to allow faculty to speak openly about their research without fear of retribution. 

Over the years, tenure has become the industry standard at most U.S. universities and serves as a recruitment tool to attract and retain academic talent.

On May 3, Clemens, a tenured faculty member in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, tried to communicate tenure’s financial value to Roberts, who had little academic experience before becoming chancellor. Clemens shared a report with Roberts—which he said was “unsolicited”—titled “The Importance of UNC Faculty to the Financial Health of the University.”

Clemens detailed a series of calculations about the value of tenured professors based on the annual cost of salaries versus the “positive cash inflow from instruction,” or tuition. At the end of his calculations, Clemens wrote that a hiring freeze or offering retirement incentives would be “more capital efficient” than halting tenure votes to address financial uncertainty.

Just as it would be “foolish” for a manufacturer to unplug recently acquired machines rather than retiring “the old cranky machines near the end of their service life,” Clemens argued, targeting early-career faculty who are about to get tenure would harm the most essential part of the business—and at a time when UNC-CH is trying to add 5,000 more students over the next 10 years.

“We are compromising the ability to hire faculty at the very time we have already committed to enrollment growth,” Clemens wrote. “We are also compromising the foundation of the brand reputation that allows us to generate the same enrollment growth.”

Clemens also offered his help over his final nine days as provost. The records The Assembly received did not include a response from Roberts, though the then-provost suggested discussing his report during an in-person meeting.

In a follow-up report titled “The Margin of Faculty Awaiting Tenure” Clemens sent to Roberts on May 7, the provost said he and several other people had put together “rough numbers” on the financial impact of denying appointments for faculty awaiting tenure votes.

Based on the revenue faculty generate from tuition and appropriations funding minus the cost of benefits and salaries, Clemens estimated that the university would lose $2.7 million each fiscal year from delaying the tenure cases. If the faculty remained on staff for the average of 25 more years, Clemens wrote, their estimated net present value would collectively be $67.5 million. He also included an additional $263.5 million estimate in research grant funding that would be lost.

“While the revenue margin on tenured faculty is likely lower than for untenured, these faculty conduct the research and scholarship that has built UNC’s reputation,” Clemens concluded the report. “The refusal to approve these tenure awards costs UNC money, disrespects faculty who generate the operating revenue of the university, and will make it harder to compete for talent in the future.”

The Vote

About 20 days after Clemens sent his first missive to Roberts, the board delayed voting on the tenure cases for the second time. It only took the cases up after national pressure, via an email vote on June 3. Best, the university spokesperson, said that Roberts “advocated for a mail-in ballot for tenure following the BOT meeting in May.”

Additional records obtained by The Assembly shed more light on negotiations behind the scenes, including how some board members voted, which has not been publicly reported because the votes took place in closed session.

On the day of the email vote, interim Provost Jim Dean texted Chris McClure, UNC-CH’s chief strategy officer and the board’s secretary, offering to call trustee Jennifer Lloyd.

“She has been fine with this all along,” McClure responded, adding that he was checking with others. 

When Dean asked for a vote update later that night, McClure told him that “we have 7 of the 8” votes needed to pass the tenure cases, while “3 that we knew opposed are in.” The only votes that were missing were board Chair John Preyer and Vice Chair Malcolm Turner, and McClure said he knew they would both vote yes.

This week, the board met in person for the first time since the email vote. At the meeting, Dean gave an informational presentation about tenure at the university, including how the process typically works. The board wasn’t entirely receptive.

Trustees Marty Kotis and Jim Blaine both reiterated their opposition to tenure, while Perrin Jones and Rob Bryan raised skeptical questions. Much of the discussion centered around the net present cost of tenured faculty—the metric Clemens argued against using—and how the board can provide strategic and financial oversight of those decisions given the commitment of long-term resources.

Preyer said he supported tenure in general but felt it had been given out “willy-nilly” in the past. He also inquired about ways to oust tenured faculty who “retire on the job.”

No one discussed the other side of the accounting ledger, as Clemens had. Roberts did not weigh in on the discussion.

Erin Gretzinger is a higher education reporter at The Assembly. She was previously a reporting fellow at The Chronicle of Higher Education and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. You can reach her at erin@theassemblync.com.