Tenure: What do you think?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Tenure



Seems like we have a lot of people involved with education on these forums. They are acquiring it or rendering it on many levels.



Tenure is often discussed as something that both helps and harms education. So I thought I would toss it out here and see what you folks think. I'm sure we've all experienced learning under a bad teacher or two. Likewise, we've all experienced people who are completely irrational in an educational context either with regard to themselves or their children. Is tenure a good balance? If you don't think so what could it be replaced with? Is tenure abused or would the already sky high turnover rate for K-12 teachers go even higher if it were gone?



Nick

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    I've been thinking about this because I just got tenure myself. Next year will be my first year with tenure. The opinions expressed below only apply to university tenure, I don't really know anything about other situations.



    The main criticism I hear of it is that it gives a kind of job protection that you don't get in other jobs. But the truth is that tenured profs can be fired from their jobs. It's a myth that "you can't be fired" if you have tenure. And many non-tenureable jobs have protections against capricious firing. In that respect, tenure isn't as different from other jobs as it is sometimes portrayed.



    For that reason, I'd say I'm opposed to it, only because calling it "tenure" makes it sound like it's something dramatically different than other jobs.



    The other thing about tenure is that before tenure, you don't have any job security, and if you don't get it, you're essentially fired. How many other jobs are like that - that if you don't meet the level where they intend to keep you indefinitely, you're just fired? In most jobs you're not fired unless you actively screw up.



    Lots of people don't settle down - don't have kids, don't buy a house, etc. - before tenure, because there's a good chance you'll have to leave after your sixth year. Further, if you don't get tenure you're probably SOL and will have a very hard time getting a decent job elsewhere. So even if tenure itself is good thing, the flip side is that if you don't get it, your life is screwed up royally. Early thirties is (minimum) about when most people are going to be up for tenure - a time in most people's lives when they want to have settled down. Having that kind of uncertainty really sucks.



    Another thing that's odd about it is that its intent is (supposedly) to protect against politically-based action against you. In a way, I can understand that, at least for some fields. Like if a sociologist writes a paper critical of the state government's social policies, the governor could have you fired. But how many fields really have a political component like that? And how often would a state government really try to have someone fired for being critical of them? And couldn't you sue if it did happen to you? Is tenure really the answer to that problem?



    Oh another thing - the other side of tenure is that colleges have been hiring tons of non-tenureable positions in recent years. These people get treated like shit. In lots of places they get paid almost nothing. Whereas a new tenure-track professor might get paid $45,000, a non-tenure position, often with the same educational background and for doing the same amount of teaching, could get paid $10,000. It's truly sick what they do to these people. I'd be willing to give up tenure if they were no longer allowed to do that to people.
  • Reply 2 of 9
    xionjaxionja Posts: 504member
    From a students point of view:





    I think tenure is meant to be good, given that it provides more job security. But of course, meant to be good doesn't mean it is.





    I think it is good because:



    1. It is better to have long term teachers, if teachers floated from one school to another every few years like a restaurant worker (maybe) then they would not be very good teachers as far as developing a curiculum



    2. When you have a really good teacher, like amazing life changing teachers, its good to encourage them to stick around.



    And bad because :



    I've had some rotten teachers. burnt-out. Curriculum and handouts not changed since 1988, when I was born (this is really true in one case) These teachers need to be shown the way to the door. But most of them have been working at the same school for 25+ years and have tenure and will probably never be fired.







    So what it really comes down to is the integrity of the teacher.
  • Reply 3 of 9
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know if I'm on tenure track. I'll have to ask the chairman about that when we do the annual review. I'm on a clinical track which means that my primary focus is on servicing the hospital I work for. On that track promotion is easy because I just have to provide good service to the department. Which I think I do. I don't know if there is tenure involved.





    I've seen tenure not work. I know of one prof' that essentially disappeared from department after getting tenure. He was off working on chinese herbal medicine all the time. He was a physicist. IMO a complete waste of a faculty slot. We weren't the Department of Chinese Herbal Medicine. It just takes a position away from a younger faculty member.
  • Reply 4 of 9
    pfflampfflam Posts: 5,053member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BRussell

    I've been thinking about this because I just got tenure myself. Next year will be my first year with tenure. The opinions expressed below only apply to university tenure, I don't really know anything about other situations.





    Awesome . . . congratulations . . . somehow I thought you were a student: I was under the impressin that you were studying Cognitive Psych . . .oops

    Now you can just kick back and let your teaching slide completely . . .



    Just kidding . . . . now I'll finish reading your post and the rest of the thread.
  • Reply 5 of 9
    pfflampfflam Posts: 5,053member
    One very important aspect of tenure for higher education is the respect for research that it implies: you are expected to be able to provide unbiased, unforced, honest and focused research that is not hindered by the insecurities of an unstable and fickle job situation.

    But the last four places that I taught were research Universities and this seemed to really work so I might have a skewed image of it. I found that in schools where this was the premise the teaching quality was better: the faculty actually lived and breathed what they taught . . . I have recently taught at a 'teaching' university and the level of interest on the part of the tenured faculty is pathetic . . . they are the old boys that you always hear about: provincial and dull and they seem to care about the subject so little that it isn't getting taught, however, they do seem to care about teaching . . . but the teaching obviously gets in the way of the teaching -to torture Twain here







    BRussel, its funny but all the tenure track profs that I know seem to be in their early/late 40s . . \
  • Reply 6 of 9
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    A good union would do the same thing.
  • Reply 7 of 9
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by pfflam

    I found that in schools where this was the premise the teaching quality was better: the faculty actually lived and breathed what they taught . . . I have recently taught at a 'teaching' university and the level of interest on the part of the tenured faculty is pathetic



    I couldn't agree more. It's easy to get tenure at a non-research school. Teaching is easy. Research is what's hard about an academic position. People who can get tenure at high-level research schools are going to need to be really smart and motivated and engaged in their fields.
  • Reply 8 of 9
    dmzdmz Posts: 5,775member
    Main Entry: qui·es·cent

    Pronunciation: -nt

    Function: adjective

    Etymology: Latin quiescent-, quiescens, present participle of quiescere to be quiet -- more at QUIET

    1 a : marked by a state of inactivity or repose : tranquilly at rest : MOTIONLESS, QUIET <the quiescent melancholy of the town -- Arnold Bennett> b (1) : ARRESTED <quiescent tuberculosis> (2) : causing no symptoms <quiescent gallstones>

    2 of a letter : not pronounced : SILENT -- compare MOVABLE

    synonym see LATENT



    -------------------------------------



    Main Entry: la·ten·cy

    Pronunciation: ltns, -si

    Function: noun

    Inflected Form(s): -es

    Etymology: 1latent + -cy

    1 a : the quality or state of being latent : dormant condition <sprung from latency into expression -- H.B.Alexander> b : something that is latent <writers who know how to evoke these latencies -- E.C.Lindeman>

    2 : the state or period of living and developing in a host without producing symptoms -- used of an infective agent or disease

    3 : REACTION TIME <the latency of the reflex wink ... is notably short -- R.S.Woodworth>







    'Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (5 Jul. 2004).
  • Reply 9 of 9
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by pfflam

    One very important aspect of tenure for higher education is the respect for research that it implies: you are expected to be able to provide unbiased, unforced, honest and focused research that is not hindered by the insecurities of an unstable and fickle job situation.





    ...




    Well? Maybe. Before tenure you have to publish publish publish publish and then publish some more. So if you are off the beaten path research wise it can be hard to publish. There may not even be a journal that publishes what you want to research. So the bias is towards doing mainstream research. Another prof' that I know recently received an endowed position, he already had tenure. Not being tied to grant money that is based on publishing results freed him up to study some aspect of gene expression that may not get a lot of publications. Being off the "publish or perish" treadmill can free you up a lot. At the same time you also probably already have an entire research group to support with grants so ... you're still on the treadmill.
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