Tenure Density Calibrated and Recalibrated

Amory Yagar () and Eduardo Zambrano ()
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Amory Yagar: Department of Economics, University of Arizona
Eduardo Zambrano: Department of Economics, Cal Poly University

No 2501, Working Papers from California Polytechnic State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Tenure density (TD) denotes the ratio between tenure-track (TT) faculty and all faculty. We examine whether universities should equalize TD across units. We bring tools fromWelfare Economics into the analysis and consider utilitarian, egalitarian, and arbitrator universities. We show that utilitarians assign larger TD to larger units in terms of students, while the opposite is true for egalitarians and arbitrators. Faculty costs influence decisions for utilitarians and arbitrators but not egalitarians. None of these university objectives lead to the TDR. Only inequality-averse universities might apply TDR under specific conditions. The TDR therefore does not appear to be a universally optimal method for university resource allocation.

Keywords: Economics of education; university administration; tenure density; resource allocation in university settings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-upt
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