MADISON, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents has introduced fiscal sanity and accountability into tenure policy, and university professors are furious.

After a long and angry debate at their meeting on Thursday, the regents adopted a much anticipated new tenure policy for professors in the university system.

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“Under the new rules, UW officials will have the authority to discontinue academic programs and lay off tenured faculty for educational or financial reasons,” Madison.com reported. “Professors could also face discipline, including firing, if they are found to be falling short of expectations under a new policy for post-tenure review.”

The new tenure policy was mandated by the state legislature, which recently removed tenure protections from state statute and gave the Board of Regents the authority to adopt and revise tenure rules.

The regents took advantage of that option, despite howls of protest from those who are accustomed to lifetime job security if they make it past six years as professors and are granted tenure status.

The most contentious debate centered around the question of when tenured professors can be laid off.

Under the former policy, that was nearly impossible. If a professor’s program was discontinued, he or she would have to be offered a new position within the university system, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The regents voted to allow layoffs if an academic program is discontinued and professors in that field are no longer needed. That’s consistent with just about any other job in the world – if a position is eliminated, so is the employee. Otherwise taxpayers would be left footing the bill for very expensive employees who have no specific purpose.

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Keeping highly paid employees on staff unnecessarily would be financially challenging for the university system, which recently lost $250 million in state funding in the 2015-17 budget process, according to the Journal Sentinel.

They regents decided against allowing layoffs if a program is modified, which some had urged, to give chancellors at the various universities flexibility to shape their programs and staffs to meet changing student needs.

“We’re at a point in time where we really have to consider the finances of the institution,” Board of Regents President Regina Miller was quoted as saying by the Journal Sentinel.

The Board of Regents also strengthened the post-tenure review policy, to make it more likely that professors will be held accountable for their performance throughout their careers, and not just skate to retirement with minimal effort after receiving tenure.

Current tenure review policies are reportedly inconsistent from campus to campus. They are also reportedly lax and undefined, and rarely lead to the termination of tenured professors.

The changes in the tenure policy prompted protests from the many professors in attendance, who attended the meeting in caps and gowns and held up a sign saying “Get politics out of education.”

“Tenure has suffered a serious blow in Wisconsin, and I am deeply concerned about our ability to hire and retain the best and brightest faculty in the future,” said James Hartwick, a professor at UW-Whitewater, according to the Journal Sentinel.

“Weakening tenure at the University of Wisconsin weakens the University of Wisconsin,” a statement from the American Association of University Professors said, according to the Journal Sentinel.