Faculty Evaluation: Surveying Policy and Practices

Evaluation of faculty has taken on new meaning and importance during this period of retrenchment Who makes the decisions? What are the criteria for tenure, promotion? Here's a look at evaluation in 1983. A -Z A. diminishing number of professors are selected for promotion and tenure these days, and many professors are perplexed by the criteria by which they were judged. Decision makers, the chairpersons and academic deans, are also perplexed by the promotiontenure procedures and question the validity and legality of their decisions. The process whereby an institution appraises a professor's performance has taken on new importance since a professional career may depend on it. With faculty mobility mostly a thing of the past, the decision to promote or to grant tenure has major impact on the professor's career. For their part, colleges and universities are under growing pressure to render sound decisions in the face of higher operating costs, fund shortages, shrinking student enrollment, and the threat of genuine competition from giant corporations who are moving into higher education. In an examination of policies and practices behind these institutional decisions, all the accredited, four-year, undergraduate, liberal arts colleges listed in the U.S. Department of Education's Directory were surveyed early in 1983. University-related liberal arts colleges were excluded to make the population more manageable. A questionnaire went to 770 academic deans