Allow me to ruffle some feathers.
As a professor on the tenure track, I agree with all of the critiques of tenure. I operate with the understanding that at some point, tenure may go away. If it did, I’d just play that new hand; I’m not married to my profession because of the tenure possibility. I like being paid to think.
But here’s the rub. Let’s say we wake up tomorrow and tenure is wiped of the face of the earth. What evaluation system would take its place?
I haven’t seen or heard of many colleges that are prepared to properly assess faculty. If tenure goes away, how will this new majority of professors on “multi-year contracts” be assessed? By student teaching evaluations and number of pubs (regardless of quality)? That’s the system we have now. With professors repeatedly fighting for their reappointment, there will be even greater incentives to play it safe, which will only make the classroom experience worse for students.
The current system rewards looking good rather than being good. I’d like to see deans and P&T committees sitting in classes to assess the art of teaching. I’d like to see them reading every word of a professor’s scholarship to separate the meaningful from the fluff.
Of course, there is the position of blowing up tenure and letting the system sort itself out. It’s fine to advocate that, but don’t think that there would be an immediate positive ROI.
I’d welcome any change that helps students, but let’s not forget that the best is the enemy of the better.
Remembering my Professors (and now my Daughter's) in Technical areas (mine Nuclear Engineering and her's Geology), I don't notice any particular problems with tenured staff. The problem is with faculty governance where the few bad apples are. If it becomes a big city union type operation without the benefit of "rubber rooms" for appalling instructors then there is a problem.
One year I wanted to take a Risk Analysis course given by the Management department. The instructor noticed our department affiliation and proceed to give a long diatribe about the misuse of risk analysis by Nuclear Engineers. (turns out he was in a snit because the Nukes were very successful in getting grants). My adviser know all about this guy and rapidly arranged a self study course for me. This was largely a case of lack of professionalism, which I think is duplicated in many departments around the country. Tenure is used as an excuse for failing to confront and correct bad behavior. Students are too cowed to complain so only the evaluation process can catch this.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Too cowed to complain"? Wow. You haven't met my students. They are entitled, demanding, whiny, and more than willing to go up the chain to get whatever they think they deserve. Tenure protects professors from these students and their petty vendettas.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGood for your advisor.
Part of the reason the STEM fields don't have as big of a problem with retiring in place, etc., is that we like to get paid in the summer, and if we work hard and have research funding we can be paid. Non-STEM faculty would also like to be paid in the summer, but generally there is not much hope of doing this through research money, so they either learn to live on less and get lots of practice being lazy in the summer, or the bad ones sleepwalk through another course on the history of rock and roll.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI have a better solution: Let academics bid for the job, the way that construction contractors do for other government work. Among qualifier bidders, low bid wins, in terms of salary and equivalent perks.
What, you are worried about research? Then either privatize it, or let it be run by statewide or nationwide investment for public profit.
The blogger notes "But here’s the rub. Let’s say we wake up tomorrow and tenure is wiped of the face of the earth. What evaluation system would take its place?" So may I ask, if Social Security and Medicare are wiped off the face of the Earth, as is commonly supposed by many at NRO, what support system or (anticipated) return on previously-taxed income will take its place?
When I taught college (not recently), having also worked in industry for higher pay, I used to tell other STEM faculty that instead of tenure, they should carry pagers (shows how long ago this was). They could low-bid for their jobs. Then, when a higher-paying private sector job offer came in, their pager would beep. They could tell their students, "Sorry, kids, but I know so much that others want to pay me more for my knowledge and work skills, so I'm outta here." Something like that would certainly motive students to take STEM courses, eh?
Of course, over in Literature and Social Sciences, they would probably need subsidized pagers, seeing as how they wouldn't ever buzz. But then, at least the public would save money with all those low-bidders.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe bidding is kind of going on now in the non-STEM fields, we just call it hiring adjuncts, and the bidding works by universities offering less and less. I don't have a problem with this -- I tell my colleagues when a discussion of what we deserve to be paid that it should be as little as the university can get away with, which was (and is) pretty much the case in the industrial research lab I worked in before becoming an academic.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell gee, of course colleges are not now properly prepared to evaluate professors, since the colleges are perfectly happy with the defective system that's in place. If the system we have now was a good one, we wouldn't need to change it (duh!) but that's no reason to resist change.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTo a certain extent, the market already determines who stays and who goes in academia. STEM instructors are often very hard to recruit as it is because schools can't compete with the wages of the provate sector -- but the flexibility of work and the security of tenure allow schools to keep their departments staffed. Don't complain about the soaring cost of college tuition if the only reason anyone is given for teaching at colleges is a financial one.
Tenure is not an unalloyed good, or an absolute one. I left a tenured position at one school (where the administration ran it into the ground and made remaining there financially and psychologically impossible) for another school where things were better -- tenure be damned. I go up again in a couple of years -- and will leave this school for greener pastures (or another field) if the academy goes terminally south.
I think tenure is a perk which is abused, to be sure -- only a fool would deny that. But my immediate response (at least for private schools) is that, if tenure must be abolished everywhere since it is abused, so must "golden parachutes" for corporate executives or the very real institutional protections for government (including military) professionals. Let the companies bid discretely for the services of CEOs and CFOs with no guarantees that they will be given payouts if terminated, etc. Likewise with the armed forces -- if we can hire mercenaries to fight more cheaply, let the soldiers know they will be expected to take pay cuts or leave the service.
Until and unless such a radical wage approach is taken to all areas of professional work, singling out academics reveals mre a desire for easy targets than serious thinking about how society should identify, employ and support professional workers.
Just my two cents worth, as a professional mid-way (I hope) through a career teaching humanities at private colleges.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo contracts! At will employment, like a gazillion other people in the US. Our supervisors review our performance every year. If we are doing well, we get a raise, maybe, and possibly a promotion. But if we screw up royally, we get canned. Sure, you can fight getting canned through HR if you have an idiot for a supervisor canning you. If you are terminated for cause, well, no unemployment for you! And if you are laid off, just the negotiated severence. Trying to get someone overpaid with a contract out, costs too damned much money. And with at will employment, you can get rid of the dross... And it ain't just clerks and secretaries who are employed "at will"; some people higher up the food and wages chain are employed at will. It can work just fine....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAmen Lee. Why should the professoriate be exempt from the rules the vast majority lives with?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAt will employment won't work in this field any more than it would in, say, acting - you have to bind the parties to a definite term to avoid a lapse in service during the run of the play or, in the case of teaching, during the semester or entire school year.
That of course still doesn't mean that we need tenure. Still, a couple of points conservatives should consider: (1) Conservative teachers are a tiny minority with political views that are highly unpopular with their Left-leaning colleagues and administrators. Without tenure, conservative teachers could very well become extinct as the Left engages in systematic purges of conservative facutly.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse(2) Tenure isn't really the problem with our institutions, whether at the elementary, secondary, or college levels. A combination of intellectual rot (ethnic studies, Marxist English departments, etc.) and the fact that they are government-run is.
I get tired of hearing people crying all the problems of higher ed stem from tenured professors. People who cry for at-will employment are absolutely clueless about how universities work. Administrators administrate and budget and academics manage the teaching and research. A university cannot grant a degree without the recommendation of faculty. Tenure protects faculty from the whims of administrators who would pack students into classrooms with fluff instructors so they can collect federal dollars. Administrators are hiring large numbers of low level administrators, building buildings, coffee shops, sports teams recreational facilities while faculty take on poor quality students who will won't come to class and slap you with poor evaluations. As a faculty member, I flunk students who won't perform and my dean may threaten me with no raises or teaching the worst classes but he can't make me pass a poor performer.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI seem to recall filling out these worthless teacher evaluations. I once asked my professor if these things do any good and if they are properly used by the departments to gauge the professors' performance. He gave me a roundabout answer which has always left me with the impression that they don't mean squat. I think without tenure these evaluations will actually have a greater role in determining performance than they do now.
Pay for performance and a decline in wishy-washy courses that don't enhance learning or job prospects. I'm all for eliminating tenure and the messes that comes along with it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs a faculty member at a major university my feeling is that Tenure could simply be done away with if we stripped away all senior management and returned to the old collegial system in which faculty acted in council to govern the university. Admin should be reduced to functionaries who do the bidding of the collegium. At minimum this would save upwards of 30% of the operating costs of universities. Of course there would be a necessity for career managers, and exactly what relationship they ought to have to faculty is beyond my pay grade, but we must cut the fat and return authority back to where it belongs. At public universities rid of both faculty unions and the management trolls they love to spar with every two years, holding both faculty and students hostage as they negotiate for power under the pretense of fighting for poor oppressed working class academics. Should faculty set their own salaries? I don't like that any more than I like the current system and it's likely the nastiest part of the whole business. In my experience, given a limited but reasonable pie, faculty believe too wholeheartedly in the institution to kill it while padding their own pockets, but they might keep the cupboard pretty sparsely supplied. In a chartered institution there could be a publicly mandated or elected (but unpaid) commission of citizens who took care of cutting the pie up, while faculty make all the fine-grained decisions. From my brief time in a small private institution I can say, however, that faculty hold each other accountable much better than is done in the current system.
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