Institutional Contradictions and the Reproduction of Service Devaluation in Higher Education

Universities depend on faculty service to support teaching, research, and everyday institutional functioning, yet their evaluation systems devalue this work through policy and practice. Although the prioritization of teaching and research over service is often deliberate, it creates a paradox in which institutions rely on work that their reward systems give faculty limited incentive to perform. Drawing on interviews with nine former members of a university-level promotion and tenure committee, this study examines how evaluators navigate contradictory institutional demands that require service while providing no career incentive for service excellence. The analysis reveals four mechanisms through which this paradox is reproduced: (1) handbook requirements create binds between institutional needs and evaluation criteria; (2) evaluation procedures marginalize service through time allocation and sequencing; (3) the absence of institutional standards, which leads committee members to rely on personal judgment; and (4) well-intentioned adaptations reinforce devaluation and uneven distribution of service. These findings demonstrate how implementing an established evaluative hierarchy can generate consequences beyond those specified in formal policy, affecting institutions’ abilities to sustain the work on which they depend.