Promotion and tenure actions are among the most critical personnel decisions any college or university will make. They are crucial to maintaining academic freedom and unfettered inquiry. Cumulatively, they help gear up (or wind down) a department's intellectual horsepower, and they ultimately enhance (or erode) an institution's scholarly reputation. At most institutions, the promotion and tenure process is meticulously delineated, but the fairness and transparency of the process have been subject to minimal empirical scrutiny. 

So, are promotion and tenure processes completely fair and entirely merit-based? The recent case of Nikole Hannah-Jones, who was denied tenure at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill despite winning a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship and a 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, raises serious questions about tenure and promotion processes as core elements of the meritocracy. But, does Nikole Hannah-Jones' case represent an isolated event in a promotion and tenure system that otherwise rewards the most deserving scholars with tenure and career progression?

That’s the kind of question a team of researchers headed by investigators at the University of Houston will try to answer, They’ve received a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the fairness and transparency of the faculty promotion and tenure process in higher education.

Led by Christiane Spitzmueller, principal investigator on the project and professor of psychology at the University of Houston, the team will involve eight other institutions (Hampton University, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, University of Alabama, Louisiana State University, Texas A&M University, Lehigh University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Rice University).

Data-sharing agreements between the nine universities will ultimately enable the researchers to study external letters written over several years for as many as 2,000 promotion and tenure candidates across disciplines at the institutions, which were selected to represent a broad cross section of U.S. universities.

The research team will scrutinize the external review letters - typically considered the "make-or-break" components in promotion and tenure dossiers - written for faculty being considered for advancement at the nine institutions. In contrast to industry settings where direct supervisors and colleagues determine promotions and career advancements, academic promotions are heavily influenced by external review letters written by senior scholars. In these letters, the evaluators provide a confidential assessment of a promotion candidate's trajectory, potential, and overall contribution as a scholar and educator

The letters will be analyzed confidentially using a computerized text analysis technique developed by James Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas. Called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), Pennebaker’s tool allows a fine-grained analysis of all kinds of texts - letters, speeches, books, diaries - by detecting features such as emotional tone, confidence, and sincerity, as well as the analytical quality of writing (If you want to analyze your own writing, you can give it a try here.)

The researchers have already run a pilot study, in which they analyzed 995 external review letters submitted as part of the promotion portfolios of 195 candidates at one research university. They studied the influence of three linguistic characteristics (clout, authenticity, and emotional tone) on the actual promotion votes taken at the department, college and university levels.

Letters that reflected confidence (i.e., clout) and honesty (i.e., authenticity) were positively related to positive votes at the department and university levels. The characteristics of the letter writers themselves were more likely to be associated with the linguistic characteristics of the letters than characteristics of the candidates. For example, female writers used text that reflected more clout than male writers, but male writers used text that reflected more honesty or authenticity.

As another example, candidates’ research productivity related to fewer letter characteristics than the letter writers’ research productivity, institutional ranking, and gender. The lesson here is obvious - the quality of an external reviewer’s letter may convey just as much about him or her as it does about the individual being evaluated.

The design of the full study will allow the researchers to examine differences in evaluation letters written for male and female candidates, white and non-white candidates, and candidates in different disciplines (e.g, evaluations of peers’ research by faculty in STEM disciplines are rumored to be tougher than in other fields).

It will also permit the team to look into another poorly understood element in promotion and tenure cases - extensions of what’s known as the “tenure clock.” While most candidates for tenure are evaluated in their sixth year of appointment, they can petition - for personal reasons such as parenthood or illness - to have the “clock” extended, thereby allowing an extra year or sometimes even two before their promotion portfolios are evaluated and decisions rendered.

Extensions appear to have become more common during the Covid-19 pandemic, as universities seek to accommodate candidate requests for extending the timing of their mandatory tenure review.

But it’s unknown how such extensions are regarded - especially by external reviewers. Are they sympathetic to the personal factors that might have necessitated such requests? Or do they view them with suspicion and speculate that perhaps candidates are just trying to buy some extra time to shore up what they fear is a weak academic record. And might that speculation find its way into letters, spelling trouble for candidates who thought they were being helped - or at least not harmed - by a postponement.

"Little to nothing is known about how, when and why these tenure clock extensions work in favor of the candidates in the promotion and tenure process," said Juan Madera, co-PI and professor at the Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Houston.

Clearly, a major motivation for the study and presumably a reason NSF found it worthy of funding is the desire to make the promotion and tenure process as fair and unbiased as possible. "We are hoping this work will continue to contribute to increased representation of faculty of color and women in mid-career and senior faculty positions by showing how transparent and fair promotion and tenure processes can be achieved,” said Spitzmueller in the university release announcing the grant.

The Houston study carries the promise of shedding more light on the promotion and tenure process and ultimately of improving its quality, transparency and trustworthiness.