Following the board’s decision in March 2009 to end tenure in the KCTCS, the AAUP and the AFT issued a statement urging the board to reverse its decision. More recently, the Kentucky Attorney General issued an opinion that questioned the board’s authority to eliminate tenure and continuing-status rights for new employees.
Students need professors with job security, continuity and academic freedom to address challenging topics and maintain high standards. In our April statement, the AFT and AAUP emphasized that tenure is a process that protects professors from arbitrary dismissal and therefore ensures that educational decisions are made by frontline educators for strictly educational reasons.
Now that tenure is reestablished in the KCTCS, we encourage the board and system institutions to work with faculty to restore guidelines and implement employment processes that ensure this policy is appropriately enacted and put into practice and that comport with nationally recognized standards and conditions of academic employment.
The AFT represents more than 1.4 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.
The American Association of University Professors is a nonprofit charitable and educational organization that promotes academic freedom by supporting tenure, academic due process, shared governance, and standards of quality in higher education. Founded in 1915, the AAUP has approximately 47,000 members at colleges and universities throughout the United States
