Tenure is a protective teaching position typically appointed to a professor after five to 10 years of teaching and continued research, publication and service to one university that offers invulnerability to terminations except under extraordinary circumstances. 

Originally created to safeguard free speech, tenure allows professors to teach in ways most suited to them, express opinions, conduct research and publish works that might otherwise have been prevented or delayed by copious amounts of oversight.

Many students have expressed concerns regarding tenure, how it can lead to professor apathy and negatively affect the classroom long-term, while others agree it is an important aspect of free speech in the university setting. 

James Welborn, associate professor of history, was tenured and promoted in August 2021, marking August 2025 as four years of tenure status. Welborn will go up for a promotion to full professor in the next academic year.

According to Welborn, GCSU has a similarly rigorous tenure and promotion process to peer public higher education and liberal arts institutions.

In the field of history, tenure and promotion require multiple article-length publications or credit for other forms of publication, such as conference presentations of public history work. GCSU does not emphasize book publications as requirements, though they are encouraged and fully credited. 

Wellborn believes in general, tenure is beneficial to teaching and student engagement as it incentivizes continued professional development that improves student learning experiences and outcomes. Wellborn himself claims his classroom has evolved partly due to his tenured status, but mostly as a result of his passion for being a great professor.

“Good teachers evolve as needed when necessary, sustaining what continues to work, discontinuing what perhaps once worked but no longer does, and continually seeking out more effective and efficient means of maximizing students’ success in the classroom and beyond,” Welborn said.

Tenure provides faculty with professional and financial security, but is also essential to fully realizing academic freedom. It enables faculty to continually explore and evolve as lifelong learners and as educators. 

“A truly committed teacher never stops learning and instills that lifelong yearning for learning in their students, regardless of subject or discipline,” Wellborn said.

One of the problems many students have with tenure is that it is a position that professors can obtain to take advantage of, as there is no longer a risk of termination except under extraordinary circumstances. Olivia Langston, a junior English major, shares this opinion.

“Tenured positions are in general respected, but when they’re taken advantage of, they’re taken advantage of to the fullest extent,” Langston said. 

Ciara O’Riordan, a junior nursing major, also shared similar thoughts on tenure 

“I see the potential of using Tenure to protect professors,” O’Riordan said. “However, I don’t think it’s generally used that way, and there are some tenured professors who should be fired.” 

Wellborn believes that what he calls ‘professor complacency’ happens when faculty who’ve achieved tenure status are not rewarded for continuous productivity and progress due to a lack of enforcement in incentivizing reward policies. 

According to Welborn, the lack of rewards for fully promoted positions has to do with the systemic issue in higher education that misallocates funding and resources on administrative window-dressing and recruitment rather than long-term employed faculty.

“It’s this larger systemic ill that generally accounts for faculty complacency, either through burnout or lack of motivation, but which is often erroneously blamed on tenure,” Welborn said.

For Welborn, tenure and promotion have been extremely motivating factors in his professorship. The financial stability and security of the position have allowed him to pursue continuous research in his fields and engage in creative teaching practices that would have otherwise been prevented.

“Beyond my faculty role, it has empowered greater public engagement and social activism grounded in my research areas of expertise to inform public dialogues about history and social issues, without fear of reprisal from institutional or political authorities,” Welborn said.

While there are doubts within the student population surrounding the benefits of tenure to the university, students agree that it is a necessary position for job security. 

“A positive to tenure would be that a professor who receives tenure can not be fired in response to recent legislation being passed and the current political environment, including the removal of DEI,” O’Riordan said. 

Langston, who has had negative experiences with tenured professors in the past, also understands the importance tenure holds to the university. 

“It protects job security in regards to free speech and DEI,” Langston said.

While tenure is a position professors can take advantage of in less than ideal circumstances, it is first and foremost a position that is essential to academic freedom. It is a safeguard against tyranny, whether it’s intellectual, political or cultural.

“Tenure is an essential part of that crucial aspect of real liberty in a truly free society,” Welborn said.