"Despite this recent erosion of tenure in the UK, it is still practiced in most universities. Permanent contracts use the word "tenure" for lecturers who are "reappointed to the retiring age". This is equivalent to a US tenure decision"
Certainly the impression I got when I worked as a contract researcher for 6 years - if you weren't on an explicitly temporary contract (which I was) then you were probably there for life if you wanted.
Nobody talks about tenure though - there's no great divide between tenure track and non-tenure track. There's no massive achievement when you 'make tenure'. People don't talk about the number of people with tenure, or whether someone has tenure or not.
Generally in the UK, once you've been in a job for a few years, they need a pretty good reason to get rid of you, so it's less of a big difference from a normal permanent employment contract.
Isn’t that the same protection that you get with any permanent contract in the UK? You can still be laid-off etc but the assumption is it will continue indefinitely.
Maybe I’m mistaken but I thought American tenure was a different level of protection intended to protect freedom of inquiry.
