Second Thoughts on the Notion of Raising Standards

Abstract

The publication of the report from the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion provoked a range of responses, but none so vehement as those to our recommendation that departments consider alternatives to the monograph as the gold standard in tenure cases. It was possible for some to read the recommendation of the task force as a devaluation of the monograph in favor of a lower standard for tenure. Although the task force was perceived rightly as challenging what has been called the tyranny of the monograph or its fetishization in con texts of review (the subject addressed by my colleague Donald Hall in this issue of Profession), it was by no means our intention to recommend that standards for tenure be lowered. The premise of that perhaps inevitable misunderstanding is that there can be no accomplishment higher than a published book and that the prevalence of the demand for a monograph in tenure reviews is in fact an indication of rising standards in scholarship. In truth, it is not immediately evident why the dominance of the monographic form is a bad thing. But in analyzing the monograph phe nomenon, we on the task force had to not only look at the inherent value of the monograph form but also attempt to identify and assess the full im plications of the monograph's domination for the entire system of evalu ation?from the admission of graduate students to tenure and posttenure merit reviews. Realizing in the end that we had strong reservations about