The head of the American Association of University Professors is questioning why the University of Colorado hired an accounting firm to review its tenure process, adding that AAUP could have done the study for one-third of the price.
“What qualifies PriceWaterhouseCoopers to study the issue or report on the issue of tenure?” said Roger W. Bowen, general secretary of the AAUP. “It would be like the AAUP looking at PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ accounting practices.”
CU awarded PriceWaterhouseCoopers a $327,000 contract last month to review the university’s practices in awarding tenure and monitoring professors who are under the job protection. The study came after lawmakers raised questions about why professor Ward Churchill, who compared the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist victims to a Nazi, received tenure without having a doctorate or the usual seven-year review.
Bowen said AAUP has done dozens of similar reviews and as a nonprofit could have charged roughly a third of what cash-strapped CU is paying the accounting firm.
But CU spokesman Mike Hesse said AAUP did not bid for the contract and that the accounting firm has a former faculty member on staff and has helped the university in combining the health sciences and Denver campuses. “They are not just accounting people,” Hesse added. “They bring with them a lot of higher ed experience.”
Hesse also said that the Advisory Committee on Tenure-Related Processes is structured so that there are university faculty, administrators, regents, a student and community member who also will recommend changes.
Bowen said that addresses part of his concern, but that the tenure process is so involved that it would be better to have experts review it. “You would want professors taking a look at principals (that govern) professors,” he said, adding AAUP did not know CU was hiring a consultant until it saw an article about the contract award.
Staff writer Arthur Kane can be reached at 303-820-1626 or akane@denverpost.com.
