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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]the current system of tenure, which involves dedicating the bulk of the instructional budget to a few tenured individuals while the majority of credits are taught by non-tenured instructors (adjuncts, TA's, etc.) is unsustainable and represents a lot of what is wrong with academia today. [/quote]

Different poster:  I'm a tenured professor in a non-humanities area.  The original justification was that tenure protected professors from being fired for political reasons.  This is overstated.  However, several adjunct professors have been recently dismissed for minor slips that offended Black Lives Matter.

It is  efficient and sustainable to specialize.  My dean can find many lecturers or non-tenure-track faculty to cover courses cheaply.  Some of them are excellent teachers.  But you need people who are permanently committed to the school to recruit, hire, and nurture junior faculty, develop new programs, etc.  I am more committed to my field than my school.  If the school does not offer security, then I will act like an independent contractor.

The biggest threat is a dean.  My new dean wanted us to do cryptocurrency and blockchain.  Now wants climate change research.  Next year, it will be something else.  Deans don't last long.  They have incentive to cut expensive faculty and hire short-term lecturers to balance the budget.  After a few years, the whole curriculum deteriorates as new lecturers don't know what is in the curriculum and don't prepare students for subsequent courses.[/quote]

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