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:
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
Empowerment
Transparency
"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.
Science Advances
Data/statistical analysis
People
Addressing equity and validity in faculty career advancement
15-Apr-2026
No conflict of interest