Reply to Texas proposal to eliminate tenure at universities: will destroy research in Texas.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think this is an example of a case in which kneejerk partisanship has crippled what could be a useful debate.

One example is COVID lockdown restrictions. Weighing the economic and non-economic costs and benefits of restrictions is important.  But, if the analysis process is purely a way for rule haters and special interests to lash out, it’s not useful. Neutral people end up thinking of all opponents of any restriction as evil or crazy.

Tenure might actually be doing more harm than good, by creating a population of super citizens who have enormous rights and a population of assistant professors and adjuncts who have no rights and no ability to settle down. Maybe there’s a better way to set things up. But, if the most visible people supporting elimination of tenure are mean people who want to chase The Libruls away, then that blocks what could be a useful discussion about how to reform a cruel and exploitative system. [/quote]

Tenure gives faculty a bit more power in discussions with admins who are often the ones creating a lot of the problems in academia.  Professors keep colleges focused on knowledge-building (both teaching and research).  If you get rid of tenure then admin calls all the shots and you have even more highly paid managerial types focusing on money and not academics and adjuncts proliferate.  This is what happens at any school without decent faculty governance even with tenure.  Professors are not as a rule overpaid, and you look at any kid's school experience and they have mainly loved their professors.  In my experience there are a few "dead weight professors" but as a whole they are hard-working, ambitious people who care about students.  If they have a light teaching load it's because they are doing research which also means mentoring often 20+ students in a lab every day and writing for grants to fund all of them.  It's a lot easier to teach a class than to mentor and fund a team of students doing research.  So the tenured profs who are teaching more classes are because they are not running a lab/getting research grants.  Many professors generate far more grant funds than their salaries--and that all goes to the school and to funding students--the profs don't get extra money (except summer funding for research) because they have a grant.

I think if you get rid of tenure you have the admins with more power without the check of the professors who actually are working in the fields you'll just exacerbate the trend of adjuncts that's already happening.  [/quote]

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