Tenure has been around for years, but there has always been controversy surrounding the system’s policies and how professors are selected to receive it.

Its intent is to promote academic freedom and encourage quality education. Professors with tenure are able to work without fear of being fired for their opinions, a benefit of being a part of academia.

Those who oppose tenure believe it keeps incompetent professors at the university and hinders students from getting the most out of their education. It also can put pressure on professors to research and publish as much material as they can to support and improve their teaching abilities.

Still, the job security tenure provides for professors is not airtight. There is a due process for removing professors, and it’s up to administrators to “weed out the incompetent in their midst,” said Greg Scholtz, director of the American Association of University Professors’ Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure & Governance.

But in college, professors can make or break a student’s entire post-secondary experience.

Right now, there are 315 professors with tenure at Marquette. Because students have the most interaction with professors, student feedback should be a heavily weighted aspect of the evaluation process after a professor has the security of tenure.

Norman Sullivan, an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences who has tenure, suggests making the tenure evaluation process public. The Tribune would support such an initiative.

One model the university could consider is for the department and the college to set expectations for a professor’s research and classroom teaching. If a professor were not making the progress expected of them in a given amount of time, tenure would be revoked.

At the very least, by making the reviewing process and a professor’s status more visible to students and the rest of the department, it will become an incentive for professors to work harder.

When asked by a Tribune reporter what they knew about tenure, some Marquette students could only give a vague description or said they did not know what it is. This underscores the need for transparency in a process that greatly affects the education of students.

During the initial tenure selection process, students of a nominated professor are randomly selected to write a letter in favor of or against that person receiving tenure, according to Marquette’s Office of the Provost website.

Student opinions continue to matter after a professor achieves tenure. Tenured faculty pay raises are, in part, tied to student course evaluations, according to Provost John Pauly.

While the online course evaluations play a role in the tenure process, they can easily become biased if too few students fill them out and the responses only represent a small percentage of each class.

The information given on the course evaluations are valuable because they voice the concerns of students who perhaps are not satisfied with certain classes.

So students, stop putting off responding to those reminder emails, and fill out your course evaluations. Your opinions do matter, and they can have a real impact.

And administrators, make sure tenure evaluations focus on the quality delivered by professors in the classroom. The scholarly research and published work done by professors are secondary to how much students need to learn in their classes.

There are obviously more factors that go into a decision to bestow or revoke tenure. But at the end of the day, if a majority of students aren’t happy with a professor, then perhaps tenure isn’t right for them.