Tenure and the entrepreneurial academy reply

David Breneman, a distinguished economist of higher education, university dean, and former college president, questions the continued viability of academic tenure and proposes a scheme for its elimination, at least for those relatively underendowed and unselective colleges and universities that constitute the majority of higher education. 1 He relies on a "historical and economic" perspective to advance his argument, but the tack he takes is freighted with sociological significance as well. In what follows, I propose to examine his arguments and proposal and to raise a question about the academic world he would move us toward.