Ohio State professors with tenure in the College of Medicine and Public Health have more salary security than their counterparts at 15 percent of the medical schools in the nation.Of the 125 medical schools in the country, five have no tenure systems and 15 percent have no financial guarantee with a tenure appointment, said Robert Jones, associate vice president of the Association of Medical Colleges.”Each institution defines tenure in its own way,” Jones said. Tenure without a financial guarantee isn’t rare in medical colleges, but it’s not the norm, he said.At OSU, tenure is connected directly with salary in the College of Medicine and Public Health, said Ronald St. Pierre, the vice dean of the college. When faculty members within the college are granted tenure, they are guaranteed a certain salary.”The only time that would ever change is if the university completely ran out of money,” he said.At Northwestern University, professors tenured within the medical school are not guaranteed a salary. Daniel Kirschenbaum, a tenured professor in the medical school, is suing Northwestern for breach of contract. He is a tenured professor that is not paid a salary by the college. He doesn’t work there, yet he is tenured by Northwestern.The medical school is different from the rest of the university, said Alan Cubbage, vice president for university relations at Northwestern. The tenured professors receive a salary from their practices and not from the university. Every year, they receive a letter of appointment that states they are tenured with a salary of zero.”It is spelled out very clearly,” Cubbage said. “It really doesn’t have anything to do with tenure.”Jonathan Knight, the associate secretary of the American Association of University Professors, doesn’t agree with Northwestern’s interpretation of tenure.”The academic profession says that tenure is a means to determine some economic security,” Knight said.Tenure was created to attract talented faculty for permanent appointment, provide a way of evaluating faculty and protect academic freedom, he said.The security of salary and appointment that should come with tenure ensures academic freedom, Knight said.At OSU, there are only two reasons why a tenured professor in any college would be terminated. One reason would be if OSU was in a state of financial emergency where alternative employment can’t be found for the faculty. Another reason would be misconduct on the part of the faculty, said Nancy Rudd, vice provost for academic policy and personnel.Within the clinical departments of the College of Medicine and Public Health, there may be some variation in the guaranteed income, but at OSU all tenured faculty have some guaranteed income, she said.