Behind this race for scientific primacy lies an anomaly that is virtually unknown outside the academic world: tenure.

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One such policy suggests that colleges reform their academic employment policies by replacing tenure with one of a number of alternatives that would preserve the holy grail of higher education, academic freedom, which is necessary to prevent faculty from being arbitrarily dismissed for saying or writing things that administrators or influential outsiders consider wrong or offensive.

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The Harrisburg University of Science and Technology has abolished tenure and merged academic departments.

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They are already losing the support for academic freedom and spirited teaching that tenure protects.

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On this front, there is much room for improvement: writings by business faculty in academic journals can be bad enough to be meaningless, as they seek tenure in their institutions through their publishing records.

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Although he was a widely respected academic, with a high Q-index, great SciDigg scores, three successful tenure renewals, and excellent student references, he knew that the game was changing.

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Defending the tenure system was Dr. Cary Nelson, an English professor at my own academic institution (the University of Illinois) and President of the American Association of University Professors.

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Besides the pay gap, academic life is less secure than it used to be: staff who would once have had tenure are as sackable as anybody else.

ECONOMIST: s: Doctored | The Economist