Promotion and Tenure Process in Education - Essay Example

Additionally, faculty members are evaluated for promotions and tenure at appropriate intervals during their careers. Therefore, clear standards and tenure must be articulated and publicized (Dalager, 2011).

Furthermore, the academic leaders who come up through faculty ranks sometimes develop close relationships with peers and often start viewing themselves as their advocates rather than their administrators. This creates biases and nepotism, making employees not believe in the process of evaluation, also affecting the validity of data collection.

Consequently, peer-to-peer evaluation is not considered valid when it comes to students. There is no denying the fact that students play an integral role in the academic life of the university through their participation in the evaluation of the faculty by the Faculty Course Evaluation process, but in this case, there is a fear of ‘grade inflation'. Students may also get biased in their decision. Other general problems in student evaluation of the faculty could be over-interpretation about the instructor which only reflects one aspect of teaching in statistics. Students are sometimes unable to judge in an unbiased way or some unique aspects of teaching, therefore, the process is concerned for reliability and validity (Diamond, 2011).

While doing evaluations from faculty members, they must be all aware of the terms and policies of the process. Lacking clear guidelines about the process and some specific legal situations causes ambiguity among faculty members and administrators. All such issues must be discussed with faculty and changes should be informed immediately to the staff.

Coming towards the tenure and promotion process, it has been noticed that for a successful institution, the policies described in the tenure and promotion process must match the mission of an institution. If the priorities of an institution are not supported by the faculty reward system, it can create problems (Kelly, 2010).

In general, the process usually involves an assembly of candidates, in consultation with the head of the department. On this evaluation basis, the high-rank faculty department decides whether they should proceed with the promotion or not. Other high-rank officials do the external evaluation. With all combine evaluations and recommendations, the decision is being made. If it is in favor of a candidate’s promotion, then the head of the department writes to the dean of the institution forwarding the decision along with faculty votes. Further action is taken by the dean who forwards the dossier to the president of the institute and which is then discussed in committee. Hence, the decision gets finalized after the board of trustees issues it.

Difficulties with the tenure process are not just an individual faculty concern that can be solved by minor adjustments; they are major institutional dilemmas. Universities and colleges all over are working hard to find their place in a rich mosaic of American higher education institutions (Nebrasca, 2004).