Research proposes fairness framework for faculty promotion and tenure decisions

Granting promotions and tenure to faculty members is among the most consequential decisions a university makes. Growing evidence suggests the process doesn't always work as it should.

A commentary published in Science Advances finds that extraneous factors, including a candidate's race, gender and whether they took a university-approved leave of absence, can influence who earns promotion and tenure, threatening the integrity of a process intended to reward scholarly merit.

To address those vulnerabilities, researchers from the Center for Excellence in Faculty Advancement (CEFA) — a multi-institution consortium led by University of California, Merced Professor Christiane Spitzmueller and University of Houston Professor Juan Madera — have proposed a comprehensive framework for reform.

The framework, which the authors call SET, is built on three principles:

• Structure: Standardize the process to reduce arbitrary variation
• Empowerment: Give promotion and tenure candidates meaningful tools and protections
• Transparency: Open up the process in areas where it has been historically opaque

SET identifies targeted, evidence-based changes that institutions can make in existing processes to reduce bias and inconsistency and ensures that the most meritorious faculty are recognized regardless of their background.

The commentary draws on a decade of CEFA research involving nearly 2,000 promotion and tenure candidates and more than 10,000 external review letters.

Here is a closer look at the recommendations behind the three principles and the issues they are designed to address:

Structure

• Promotion and tenure (P&T) committees operate with high autonomy and low accountability. The framework would require committees to document the rationale behind their decisions so that inconsistent or unexplained judgments can be identified and addressed.
• Evaluate candidates jointly, either alongside a peer going up for tenure the same year, or against a previous candidate's portfolio. CEFA research shows this can significantly reduce racial disparities in outcomes. Underrepresented minority faculty — particularly Black faculty and Black women — faced harsher evaluations than non-URM peers, with productivity judged more critically. At the college level, underrepresented minority candidates received 7% more negative votes and were 44% less likely to receive a unanimous vote. CEFA's research found that racial disparities were significantly reduced when candidates were evaluated jointly rather than in isolation.
• The premium placed on unanimous committee votes as a "gold standard" for P&T should be reconsidered; underrepresented minority faculty are less likely to achieve them, making unanimity a de facto penalty.
• Faculty who used tenure clock extensions — university-approved delays typically taken for caregiving, illness, or other life circumstances — received significantly more negative committee votes in CEFA's dataset. Women are disproportionately affected because they are more likely to take extensions. Institutions should adopt explicit policies protecting candidates from being penalized for using approved extensions
• External review letters carry significant weight in tenure decisions, yet the process for selecting who writes them is inconsistently tracked and varies widely. CEFA's research shows the letters often reflect the writer’s characteristics more than the candidate’s accomplishments. Writers are disproportionately senior, male, and white. Candidates whose letters were written by women are more likely to be promoted; letters written by women use more positive language and less doubt-laden phrasing.
• Publicly disclose committee composition and ensure committees reflect diversity in both academic discipline and lived experience.

Empowerment

• Connect incoming faculty with a formal mentorship network and individual development plans from the start of their appointment. Candidates with established professional networks or senior sponsors navigate the process with significant informal advantages that peers without such connections lack.
• Standardize portfolio formats and provide explicit templates and performance benchmarks so candidates know exactly what is expected of them.
• Give candidates the opportunity to review committee reports before a vote occurs and provide formal mechanisms to rebut inaccurate or misrepresented information.
• Extend formal mechanisms that allow candidates to flag potential conflicts of interest among committee members or proposed external review letter writers.

Transparency

• Make committee composition publicly available before deliberations begin.
• Give candidates clear, accessible information about the P&T process, including access to the institution's informal norms and expectations — what the researchers call the "hidden curriculum."
• Ensure candidates have equal access to information about how their cases will be evaluated — not just those with well-connected mentors or senior colleagues willing to share insider knowledge.
• Require that the rationale for committee decisions be documented and available to equity reviewers, creating accountability without eliminating confidential deliberation.

"Given emerging evidence on bias and mechanisms for building equity in promotion and tenure decisions, now is the time for continued discourse, further experimental and field research to elucidate barriers and interventions to support equity and validity, and evidence-based reform," the authors wrote.

The commentary urges university leaders, faculty affairs administrators, and policymakers to treat the P&T process not as a fixed tradition but as a system that can and should be strengthened to ensure it consistently rewards genuine scholarly merit.

The research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.