The American Council on Education has just released a very timely report on how the academic tenure system can be improved to reflect modern circumstances of working academic families, especially those who have young children. The report explains that the tenure system was originally structured around the assumption that the typical academic was a married man who had a wife who stayed at home to take care of their children to support his career.

However, this image does not reflect the realities of an increasing number of professors these days, since more than half of all doctorates are now earned by women. With that in mind, the report, entitled “An Agenda for Excellence: Creating Flexibility in Tenure-Track Faculty Careers,” proposes that the following changes should be made:

• Giving young professors up to 10 years -- instead of 6 -- to earn tenure.
• Allowing faculty members to work part time for up to five years at a time.
• Granting multiyear leaves to professors for personal and professional reasons.
• Creating postdoctoral jobs to help people who have “stopped out” of academe after earning their Ph.D.’s, perhaps to raise a family, to re-enter their careers in higher education.

The report also notes that an increasing number of professors have spouses who are also academics and who have a difficult time securing meaningful academic positions at the same institution -- people like my wife and I. We’ve been very fortunate in that each of our respective departments have been very supportive and encouraging, especially my colleagues and my department chair in sociology.

I just hope that my university’s administration pays heed to these recommendations before it’s too late.