The Unseen Costs of Cutting Law School Faculty

Victor Fleischer:

The law school at Seton Hall University has put its untenured faculty on legal notice that their contracts may not be renewed for the 2014-15 academic year. The firings of these seven individuals are not certain, depending on the outcome of other steps the administration will try to bring the budget in balance.

The situation at Seton Hall is representative of many other non-elite law schools. Firing untenured faculty is a shortsighted approach to managing an academic budget. It encroaches on an important principle of academic freedom, namely that a tenure decision should be based on the merit of the case, not the budget of the department.

As a tax scholar who writes about issues that can hit rich people in the pocketbook, I am sometimes reminded why the institution of tenure, for all its flaws, is worth keeping around.

Paul Caron has more.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 12, 2013 1:06 AM
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