@profdad2021 +1.
Actually, Professors aren’t employees of the university in the same sense as an employee in a given corporation.
They are closer in many ways to equity partners in biglaw firms, accounting firms, co-owners of a startup, or becoming a member of a corporate board/CEO…cept their equity is mainly in the form of their established scholarship, ability to get grants, and academic reputation within their field/subfield within academia.
I will grant you that this was much more the case decades ago as changing trends in many universities/colleges with non-academic admins gaining more power in relation to the faculty over the last few decades are eroding all that.
@cobrat in that analogy, I don’t see how adjunct profs are treated that way, so perhaps only tenured profs are partners?
Yes
Only tenured professors are members of the facuity senate and sit on review committees. And theye are not at all like ordinary employees.
Professors do not buy into an equity in “the firm.” They do not own part of the university, do not vote on their own bonuses, and certainly wouldn’t have the right to dissolve the business (university) or have personal liability for the wrongdoings of the university. I don’t see them like equity partners at all.
If the are at a public university, they may be state employees with the same restrictions as other state employees. When our state passed new restrictions on state employees accepting gifts, they had to check to make sure it would still be okay for university employees, including professors, to accept education benefits, including state scholarships for their children.
So this guy is going to continue this hunger strike UNTIL what???
Reminds me of Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand for the national anthem UNTIL what???
Correct, only tenured Profs. Profs on the tenure track are similar to biglaw/accounting firm associates on the partner track.
Adjunct Profs who aren’t coming from industry doing it as a side job would be analogous to temp attorneys increasingly common in many biglaw firms.
Those coming from industry could be akin to of counsel…cept nowhere as highly paid unless they teach in a few fields where starting salaries are higher in order to attract adjuncts from industry with high salaries.
This Prof despite protestations is mainly doing it for himself because he was severely negatively impacted by the tenure denial which effectively means the academic career he was on the path for several years is effectively over unless he finds another university to offer him a job on the tenure track.
A denial which he knew was a possibility…especially considering serious questions raised about his teaching at a TEACHING CENTERED COLLEGE.
Kaepernick’s protest is mainly out of larger societal concerns about racial disparities and its negative…even lethal effects on African-Americans. Not because his career/personal financial interests were effectively jeopardized. In fact, Kaepernick has far more to lose by protesting over this larger societal issue than by conforming and thus…not protesting.
In the rare instances of merit raises, faculty often DO vote.