Faced with scarce resources and environmental uncertainty in the past decade, colleges and universities have experimented with different modes of academic staffing, most of which are attempts to preserve or create more flexible policies and practices. In spite of tenure systems in operation at 94% of all four year colleges, institutions have at least four major opportunities to reduce expenditures or to reallocate personnel: (1) position control (the decision to create a position or hire replacements); (2) the decision about the type of appointment to be made; (3) the decision to reduce the rate at which tenure-track faculty receive tenure; and (4) the decision to increase the number of tenured faculty leaving the institution (including post-tenure review). The effectiveness of these four reallocation strategies must be evaluated in terms of the content and impact of budget cuts, the strengths and weaknesses of various devices for reduction and reallocation, and consultation processes. Institutions can become more flexible by adopting in the aggregate of all these practices and policies and matching them with a 3- to 5-year perspective. (LB)