The Senate's Academic Council has approved policy that, if implemented, would provide a mechanism under which the University of California could terminate "grossly incompetent" tenured faculty. The policy proposal now goes to the Office of the President, which will in turn distribute it to campus administrations for two separate rounds of review, the first of them beginning this fall.
The proposal was produced by the statewide Academic Senate's University Committee on Academic Personnel (UCAP), which worked closely with UC Berkeley's academic personnel (or "Budget") Committee in coming up with its recommendations.
The UCAP proposal does three things: it sets forth a rationale for a policy on grossly incompetent faculty; it proposes criteria for determining gross incompetence; and it proposes a procedure under which allegedly incompetent faculty would be judged. The procedure UCAP has proposed has so many layers to it, however, that some faculty question whether any faculty member could be fired under its provisions. Afaf Meleis, the Chair of UCAP, says she believes, however, that under the "extraordinary circumstances" her committee envisioned, the policy could realistically be used for this purpose.
The effort to develop a mechanism for dealing with incompetent faculty at UC has a long history. Such a policy was first proposed by the Berkeley Senate division in 1988. A statewide Senate task force was formed in 1989 to study the issue and its final proposal (in 1991) served as the basis for proposed changes to the Academic Personnel Manual that were sent out for review by UCOP in 1992 and 1993. Shifts in Senate and UCOP leadership, and uneasiness about what had been recommended, stalled the proposal, however, and as a result the Senate was asked this past fall by UCOP to take yet another look at the issue. The outcome of this request was the UCAP proposal.
UCAP viewed its central task as a balancing act: to create a policy that could be used to remove incompetent faculty without threatening other faculty. Given this, the committee proposed that, to be terminated, a tenured faculty member must be judged grossly incompetent in both teaching and research. The panel then went on to offer criteria for gross incompetence in both realms.
The elaborate procedures UCAP recommended for establishing gross
incompetence would require judgmental concurrence by six sets
of campus reviewers: the departmental chair or equivalent, the
chancellor, the members of the department, the dean overseeing
the department, the campus Committee on Academic Personnel and
the campus Privilege & Tenure Committee. Past an initial stage
in the reviewing process, should any one of these reviewing authorities
decide against termination, the entire process would be halted
and could not be instigated again against the same individual
for at least five years. Considerable safeguards regarding confidentiality
also were built into the proposal.