At a growing number of public higher education institutions across the nation, professors are no longer guaranteed a job for life.
Tenure reform measures have been passed by state legislatures or higher education boards in seven states so far, and proposals are moving through the system in six others, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures database. Lawmakers and policymakers believe that tenure will remain a major issue as they consider higher education reforms at the national, state, and institutional levels.
Oklahoma is the latest example. On Feb. 5, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed an executive order requiring performance reviews for tenured research university professors every five years. The order also requires lifetime tenure for professors at four-year and community colleges to be phased out and replaced with “renewable contracts” tied to teaching effectiveness, student completion rates, job placement, and economic alignment.
“[These reforms] tie accountability to performance at public institutions,” Stitt said in a statement.
The Sooner State’s board of higher education regents, which will meet on March 26, is expected to accept the governor’s action and direct colleges and universities to implement it ahead of the 2026–2027 academic year.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act in June 2025. Public colleges and universities in that state were given a Dec. 31 deadline to implement post-tenure review and faculty evaluation policies that allow students to comment on whether their professors are effective teachers and provide instruction that is “free of political, racial, gender, and religious bias,” according to the legislation.
The Arkansas ACCESS Higher Education Act, which also passed in 2025, allows institutions to revoke tenure from faculty members who require students to make statements in support of diversity, equity, and inclusion and requires tenure review to evaluate whether professors are effectively educating students as opposed to focusing on advocating their own viewpoints.
Utah’s legislation, enacted ahead of the current academic year, requires the president of every public higher education institution to initiate tenure and post-tenure review policies that include performance improvement plans for faculty members who are not meeting standards, according to the legislation.
Indiana passed two laws, one last year and the other in 2024. Collectively, they establish a post-tenure review process in which faculty members who discourage free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity can be fired, according to the legislation.
Texas and Florida led this trend in 2023 with legislation for post-tenure review mandates and provisions for revoking tenure.
Under a new North Dakota law, post-tenure reviews for faculty members at all colleges and universities will be phased in after the start of the 2026–2027 academic year. The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Mike Motschenbacher, a Republican, originally proposed eliminating future tenure for newer faculty members at two-year institutions such as community colleges, but he amended this proposal after several meetings with higher education leaders and faculty members.
“We have way too many tenured faculty in North Dakota,” he told The Epoch Times, noting that ahead of his bill, he received several complaints from college students and employees, as well as from some professors, about instruction that promoted indoctrination over education.
“The goal isn’t to get anybody fired, but tenure has given professors free rein to do anything they want. They’re supposed to educate our kids for careers or the next steps of their lives.”
Similar legislation is pending in Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
By contrast, although both houses of the Arizona legislature passed a bill last year revising tenure policies to protect campuses from anti-Semitism, Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed the measure. And in Washington state, legislation has been introduced that would grant tenure to more faculty members and increase the number of tenure-track professors in the public university system.
Some individual institutions established their own post-tenure review policies several years ago, but those practices typically do not scrutinize whether a faculty member is an effective teacher, National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood, who formerly worked as a tenured professor and college provost, told The Epoch Times.
He said he is critical of the “mechanical” approach to tenure, in which faculty members are given a job for life based on the number of their published papers or scholarly journal articles, many of which advocate identity-based politics rooted in race, gender, and ethnicity.
Under the tenure system still in place at most public and private higher learning institutions, new faculty members come aboard as non-tenured assistant professors. Those faculty members are often candidates for tenured associate professor positions after at least three years. Associate professors could be considered for full professor positions within six to 10 years. Full professors face minimal scrutiny in terms of job performance, and there is no mandatory retirement age for faculty members, Wood said.
“He can teach into his 90s if [he would] like,” Wood said, noting that candidates for full-time teaching jobs in higher education far outnumber available positions. “It’s a bad system.”
Still, Wood said, it is not fair to pull tenure from veteran professors who have built their careers around the current system. A phased-in approach for tenure review that also considers whether a faculty member is an effective and engaging teacher who does not push political ideologies would be a great first step.
“The tenure debate opens up some deep questions about what higher education really is and where it’s going,” he said.
The American Association of University Professors union stated that it staunchly opposes tenure reform and called Oklahoma’s recent measure a “deeply troubling message that academic freedom is no longer valued as a core public good.”
“The removal of these protections will directly undermine educational quality, weaken faculty recruitment and retention, and deprive students of learning environments grounded in intellectual rigor and open inquiry,” Todd Wolfson, association president, said in a Feb. 5 statement.
“Over time, it will accelerate brain drain, reduce institutional stability, and diminish the public trust that strong colleges and universities help sustain.”
