FRANKFORT — Kentucky’s public universities and colleges could remove faculty who fall short of new “productivity requirements” under a bill sponsored by the chairman of the House Education Committee.
Rep. James Tipton’s House Bill 228 would require the boards of Kentucky’s public universities and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System to establish a process to review faculty’s “performance and productivity” every four years. Faculty members who do not meet the requirements in their review could be removed from their position “regardless of status.”
Tipton, of Taylorsville, told a Kentucky Lantern reporter last week the bill “has nothing to do with ending tenure” and described it as a “post-tenure review bill.”
Tipton’s House Education Committee will consider the bill Tuesday morning.
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“We’re in a time now where we have to have accountability, we have to have transparency, we have to have efficiency. And I think this will allow universities to be more efficient,” Tipton said Thursday. “And if somebody is not fulfilling their performance on the job, they should have a mechanism to address that situation.”
Under the legislation, faculty members could not be removed until 10 days after receiving written notice and must be given an opportunity to introduce testimony or have legal defense.
Kentucky law already allows faculty and administrators to be removed for incompetency, neglect, refusal to perform their duties or immoral conduct.
Tipton said that HB 228 expands the causes for firing to include meeting a university’s performance and productivity requirements. Any decisions on employment appointment could be delegated to university presidents.
The bill says university boards would have to establish their evaluation processes and provide them to faculty members by Jan. 1, 2025. The processes would become effective July 1, 2025.
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The American Association of University Professors defines academic tenure as indefinite appointments that “can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency and program discontinuation.” Professors usually earn tenure after teaching and conducting research for six to seven years.
“The principal purpose of tenure is to safeguard academic freedom, which is necessary for all who teach and conduct research in higher education,” AAUP’s website says. “When faculty members can lose their positions because of their speech, publications, or research findings, they cannot properly fulfill their core responsibilities to advance and transmit knowledge.”
At the University of Kentucky, faculty who are working to earn tenure are evaluated every two years.
Tipton said he crafted the legislation to provide consistency across all public institutions, as state law currently has different sections about employment for the University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, other universities and KCTCS.
Tipton referred to 2022 legislation he sponsored and was signed into law to increase oversight of Kentucky State University. That included review of tenured faculty, as well as funding to cover budget falls at the university.
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Republicans in other states have recently pushed or enacted legislation that would limit or end academic tenure. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a former Republican presidential candidate, signed a law in 2022 that made it harder for state university professors to retain tenure and required university boards to review them every five years.
The Texas Senate passed a bill that would kill tenure in that state last year, but the House gave a counter proposal that allowed professors to be fired by schools for “professional incompetence” or “conduct involving moral turpitude.”
In 2023, an Iowan Republican legislator who proposed a failed bill that would ban tenure at public universities said he would likely not bring similar legislation forward again, but wanted institutions to know lawmakers were still “paying attention” to issues such as freedom of speech on Iowa college campuses.
Tipton said he did not review proposals from other states while working on his bill.
Western Kentucky Hilltoppers (3-2) at Kentucky Wildcats (5-0)
Lexington, Kentucky; Tuesday, 6:30 p.m. EST
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BETMGM SPORTSBOOK LINE: Wildcats -22.5; over/under is 164
BOTTOM LINE: No. 8 Kentucky takes on Western Kentucky after Koby Brea scored 22 points in Kentucky’s 108-59 win over the Jackson State Tigers.
The Wildcats have gone 4-0 at home. Kentucky is 10th in college basketball averaging 12.6 made 3-pointers per game while shooting 42.3% from downtown. Brea leads the team averaging 4.0 makes while shooting 74.1% from 3-point range.
The Hilltoppers are 0-1 in road games. Western Kentucky ranks third in the CUSA shooting 37.4% from 3-point range.
Kentucky scores 97.0 points, 24.2 more per game than the 72.8 Western Kentucky allows. Western Kentucky averages 9.8 made 3-pointers per game this season, 3.8 more made shots on average than the 6.0 per game Kentucky gives up.
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TOP PERFORMERS: Brea is shooting 74.1% from beyond the arc with 4.0 made 3-pointers per game for the Wildcats, while averaging 16 points.
Julius Thedford averages 2.4 made 3-pointers per game for the Hilltoppers, scoring 11.4 points while shooting 54.5% from beyond the arc.
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The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
Mark Stoops owns a five-game winning streak in the Governor’s Cup series. The Wildcats have won three games in a row at L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium and have not lost to Louisville at Kroger Field since 2017 when Bobby Petrino was holding the call sheet and and Lamar Jackson was playing quarterback. The Wildcats have also covered a lot of spreads in this series.
Stoops is 7-2-1 against-the-spread (ATS) in this series with with covers as a double-digit dog in 2014 and 2016. Kentucky has beaten Louisville outright as a dog three times since 2016 and has covered five straight in this series. Those are not the only trends going in Kentucky’s direction heading into this Week 14 contest.
Louisville is 0-4-1 ATS as a road favorite under Jeff Brohm with outright losses to Pittsburgh and Stanford. Kentucky is 5-0-1 ATS as a dog in its last six outing including four games this season. Kentucky covered numbers as a double-digit dog against Georgia, Ole Miss, Tennessee, and Texas this season.
The visitor is 11-3-1 ATS (5-10 outright) in the last 14 meetings of this series with 10 outright wins but Kentucky has won the last two meetings at Kroger Field covering each times as a three-point favorite. In 2019, Kentucky ran away for a 45-13 victory and cruised to a 26-13 victory in 2022.
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Kentucky has consistently overachieved pregame expectations in this series. The Wildcats are currently a 3.5-point dog with a total of 48.5. That’s a projected final score of 26-22.5. Will UK exceed expectations again against Louisville? A win would equal four outright upsets for the Big Blue in the last eight meetings of the series.
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Mark Pope and the Kentucky Wildcats are getting ready to host the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers for an in-state battle in Rupp Arena. This is a game that is always fun as it brings different parts of Kentucky together to share in the state’s favorite pastime, which is basketball.
WKU is 3-2 on the season with wins over Lipscomb, Jackson State, and Campbellsville. The Hilltoppers lost to Wichita State and Grand Canyon.
While Kentucky steamrolled Lipscomb, they are a solid team, and Western Kentucky was able to take them down 66-61, so the Wildcats can’t look past this matchup. This shouldn’t be an issue as Coach Pope respects the game and doesn’t let his team look past an opponent.
While WKU is a solid mid-major team, ESPN doesn’t seem to think the Wildcats will have any issue taking down the Hilltoppers, as they give Kentucky a 97.5% chance to win this game.
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The best player for the Hilltoppers is guard Don McHenry, who is averaging 17.2 points per game five games into the season. The 6’2 guard is shooting 32.4% from three on the season, but he lets a lot of them fly, so the Wildcats can let him get hot from deep.
The goal for this Kentucky team when they take on WKU should be to keep working on defense and rebounding while the offense keeps doing what it has been doing all season long. If the Wildcats can keep improving in these two areas, they will be hard to beat come SEC play and March.
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