MILWAUKEE – PolitiFact Wisconsin recently investigated a remark made by Gov. Scott Walker, who said tenure status for University of Wisconsin faculty equaled a “job for life.”

The resulting story, published by the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal, determined that Walker’s remark was “half true.”

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We think PolitiFact’s assessment is pretty half baked, based on its own stated facts.

The UW Board of Regents, comprised largely of Walker appointments, recently angered faculty throughout the UW system by changing tenure policies to make it easier for university administrators to terminate or lay off professors.

Faculty at several schools in the UW system reacted by approving resolutions of “no confidence” in UW President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents.

On a subsequent radio show, Walker said the professors were overreacting because the Board of Regents” had the audacity to put just a slight restraint on this ‘jobs-for-life’ tenure program that they have at the University of Wisconsin System.”

The phrase “jobs for life” caught the attention of PolitiFact, which set out to measure its accuracy.

The resulting article quoted Walker spokesman Tom Evenson, who cited the Board of Regents’ definition of tenure as an appointment “for an unlimited period.”

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It also cited a spokeswoman for the American Association of University Professors, who indicated that the “UW System’s original policy aligned with the group’s model procedures, which say tenured appointments can be terminated for three reasons: just cause, such as misconduct; program discontinuations due to educational considerations; or financial emergencies that threaten the university’s existence.”

The article cited an opinion piece written by Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, which said that only six out of thousands of tenured UW faculty members have been fired for “just cause” in the last 20 years.

Finally, PolitiFact Wisconsin quoted UW spokesman Alex Hummel, who “acknowledged there have been few cases of faculty members being dismissed after attaining tenure …”

“(Hummel) also said the six-in-20-years statistic doesn’t account for situations in which faculty members, when faced with being fired, chose to resign instead.” But the article added that Hummel “didn’t have data on how many times this happened in the same time period.”

Given all of that, PolitiFact wrote, “The old policy had grounds for dismissal, undermining Walker’s ‘jobs for life’ claim. The fact it was rarely used does not mean it was not there.

“But we think the underlying point Walker was making is a valid one. As a practical matter, the extremely rare usage of the provisions can, in effect, make it a job for life.”

Later the article reiterated that point when it said, “…Because dismissals under that policy were extremely rare, being granted tenure effectively promised someone a job for life.”

Case solved, right?

Not quite. PolitiFact went on to judge Walker’s statement as only “half true,” because the university did have the power under the old tenure policy to fire professors – even though it was almost never used.

“Our definition of Half True is ‘the statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context,’” the article said. “That fits here.”

We would say that Walker’s statement was about 98 percent true. The evidence clearly shows that, for all practical purposes, tenured UW professors have had the kind of job security that most Americans can only dream of.

That’s clearly what Walker meant, and it’s a lot more than just half true.