Chronicle: Your children need profs with tenure

[Doctor_J]

http://chronicle.com/article/Parents-Your-Children-Need/124776/

If you follow the news these days, you know that tenure is getting a bad rap. Fox News in particular will tell you that tenure shields radicals who are trying to indoctrinate your children to overthrow the government. In truth, it's hard to find any faculty member sending that message. No matter. It's a good scare tactic. But even the responsible press prefers editorials and op-ed essays claiming that tenure protects deadwood, preserves an aging professoriate, and costs too much money. Although each of those claims can be proved wrong, they have gained traction anyway.

The most recent federal statistics on the age of the faculty were released in 2004. They tell us that, at four-year colleges, the percentage of full-time faculty members aged 55 or older was 28 percent. How many were 65 or older? Only 7 percent. It doesn't appear that most faculty members are great-grandparents.

...

It's not faculty salaries that have grown so much over the years; it's the increasing number of administrators and their salaries—along with unnecessary building—that is breaking the higher-education bank. That's where your tuition money goes. Why? Because administrators set one another's salaries and pad their staffs.

...

Professors without tenure are nothing more than at-will employees. They can be fired tomorrow or whenever their contracts expire. One complaint from a student, parent, or politician is all it may take. What if a professor offends a parent or preacher by teaching evolution? What if a professor expresses sympathy for unpopular religious beliefs? What if a professor admits that he or she supports gay rights? What if a professor asks students whether the war in Iraq was in the national interest? Worst of all, what if a professor asks students whether the college really needs that fancy new administration building? Administrators who prefer to avoid controversy just won't send that professor a new contract.

....

http://chronicle.com/article/Parents-Your-Children-Need/124776/

Why do so many DUers believe Hate Radio and Fox "News" on this subject?

[LWolf]

1. Good question.

It seems like everybody needs to hate somebody. Everybody needs a group of "them" to blame. I don't know why so many DUers would rather scapegoat teachers than those who are out to destroy public education, and, consequently, the right to a free public education.

Thanks for pointing out the crucial support tenure provides.

[Goblinmonger]

2. Yep. I agree.

And then add on to that all the misperceptions of what tenure means in high school and you've pretty much summed up how stupid people are about what education is all about. Even plenty of people here on DU.

[Karia]

3. Thanks for posting this

The anti-tenure campaign is almost identical to the anti-union campaign. Attacking one helps destroy the other.

[teenagebambam]

4. Tenure for public school teachers is a very different thing

than tenure for college professors. As a college professor, I can assure you that the deadwood is still here. They won't retire because the economy is so bad. Nor will they behave in a collegial manner, make themselves available to students outside of class time, or even teach a full time class load (though they are getting paid for one).

One colleague (my age) received his tenure last year and IMMEDIATELY became confrontational, non-cooperative, and unavailable to his students.

The untenured junior faculty don't fear speaking up against the administration, airing unpopular political views to students, or anything of the sort - the only thing they fear is speaking out against their tenured colleagues (i.e. the people who will be making the decisions on THEIR tenure)

Achieving tenure in one's mid-30's might mean job security, but it also limits job mobility. After tenure comes promotion to Associate or Full Professor - but many, many Universities will only hire at the assistant level, meaning that if you want to change jobs you have to take a drastic pay cut. This leads to a lot of frustration and bitterness from what I've seen.

I am also a little bitter about the AAUP, because of their naked aggression against all college administrators - our local chapter nearly dismantled my division last year, based on accusations about our Dean from ONE faculty member - which proved to be false.

I say all this realizing that it's my own personal experience, and this is my first full-time teaching position. I have also just signed a tenure-earning contract after four years as an at-will employee. But my experience at this school has soured me on the tenure system forever, I wish it would be done away with (for universities - again, tenure for public school teachers is a very different thing)

[Recursion]

9. That's the perversity of tenure in higher ed

The untenured junior faculty don't fear speaking up against the administration, airing unpopular political views to students, or anything of the sort - the only thing they fear is speaking out against their tenured colleagues (i.e. the people who will be making the decisions on THEIR tenure)

Exactly. The price of senior faculty having "academic freedom" protected by tenure is that junior faculty (you know, the ones that actually teach classes) absolutely must toe the line for fear of pissing any of them off.

[frustrated_lefty]

5. There's an interesting review in Science magazine on this.

Rather than reflecting the views of hate-radio or Fox and the like, Science is generally considered one of the 2 or 3 most respected journals currently published. There are valid reasons to consider the elimination or revision of the tenure system. It doesn't achieve what it's designed to do (promote innovation), it creates a prohibitive bottleneck for younger career scientists, and it creates a degree of job security which almost begs for abuse. In any event, the entire article can be found at Taken for Granted: Making Book on America's Universities.

An excerpt:

"Two of this season's more widely mentioned tomes expressing this view are by prominent academics -- current or former tenured professors -- writing for the general public. Political scientist Andrew Hacker, professor emeritus of Queens College and formerly of Cornell University, teamed up with The New York Times journalist Claudia Dreifus to produce Higher Education? How Colleges are Wasting Our Money and Failing our Kids -- And What We Can do About It. Mark C. Taylor, who chairs the religion department at Columbia University, offers Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities .

Hacker and Dreifus focus on the failures of undergraduate instruction to maintain standards, provide high-quality teaching, adapt to the needs of a changing student body, and keep costs under control. The question mark in their title, they say, does "double-duty," expressing their doubts that the glorified vocational training offered on many campuses truly counts as education, and that much of it rises to a level that can "reasonably be called higher." Undergraduate studies lie beyond this column's purview, but Hacker and Dreifus's examination of tenure's effects is highly relevant. Rather than protecting faculty members' academic freedom, as the system's proponents claim, permanent appointments safeguard the income of "a percentage of professors … who haven't had an original idea in years, and who put forth the bare minimum of effort in their classes," they quote James Garland, former president of Miami University in Ohio, as saying. And, by indefinitely tying up major chunks of university budgets, the system condemns the much larger -- and rapidly growing -- number of non–tenure track academics to working for pittances. Providing "lifetime guarantees" for some "subverts the very enterprise are supposed to serve," Hacker and Dreifus write."

edited to correct hyperlink

[aikoaiko]

6. I need more data to agree with the premise that it is admin salaries that are the problem

When he says that most faculty are working making 60K or less, that's for 9 or 10 month contracts. Add two or three months and their salaries increase by 12 - 18K which brings them much closer to the rate of average admins. Plus, a lot of faculty make more money than their base salaries or get release time through extra duties.

Of course there are occasional very high salary for admins, but most are not making 6 figures.

Nevertheless, tenure is under attack. For every example of an exploiter of tenure, there is someone who was probably saved because of it. Accurate data for such things is impossible to generate.

[teenagebambam]

7. I'm making 45K for a 12 month contract.

And that's on the high end for my institution.

[aikoaiko]

8. Sorry to hear that. 45K is the starting salary for 9 months here

We're a master's level state university (public). How would you describe your institution?

[teenagebambam]

10. Private Liberal Arts University

Tuition driven.