ABSTRACT

The conferment of tenure at a United States university provides substantial job security to its recipients. Tenure is designed to allow a professor the ability to explore new and risky research questions without fear of losing their position due to lack of publications. At the same time, this policy creates an incentive system with an ambiguous effect on how the professor performs in the classroom. Professors may no longer care about teaching evaluations since future evaluations are unlikely to affect their job security. Alternatively, tenured professors, no longer having strenuous research priorities, may devote more resources to the teaching component of their job. This paper investigates the impact of the conferment of tenure on student evaluations of teaching. Data comes from a large, flagship state university and spans 22 semesters (2006–2017). We use an instructor-level fixed effects structure to compare end-of-semester course survey scores before and after an instructor receives tenure. We find that conditional on being granted tenure, professors experience a small, but persistent, decrease in student course evaluations. This effect is driven by professors in the top half of the course evaluation distribution.

摘要

美国大学的任期授予为其接受者提供了大量的工作保障。终身任职旨在使教授能够探索新的和有风险的研究问题，而不必担心由于缺乏出版物而失去职位。同时，这项政策建立了一种激励机制，对教授在课堂上的表现产生模糊影响。教授可能不再关心教学评估，因为将来的评估不太可能影响他们的工作安全。或者，终身教授不再具有艰巨的研究优先权，可以将更多资源投入其工作的教学组成部分。本文研究了终身任职制对学生对教学评价的影响。数据来自大量 旗舰州立大学，横跨22个学期（2006-2017年）。我们使用讲师级别的固定效应结构来比较讲师获得任期之前和之后的学期末课程调查得分。我们发现，在获得终身教职的条件下，教授在学生课程评估中的经历会有所减少，但会持续减少。这种影响是由教授在课程评估分布的上半部分驱动的。