Should tenure for college professors be abolished?

[xiggi]

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I guess the question would be, how do you interpret these measures? Knowing that I teach ___ classes a semester and have an average of ___ students in those classes doesn’t really tell you anything about the quality of my teaching.

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I would ask questions about the constraints on education in the humanities if professors were being asked to consistently teach more than 3 seminar courses a semester with more than 25 students per seminar (I would read statistics for introductory courses differently).

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<p>I agree that the analysis of the finer points might not be that easy. However, it would be pretty easy to compare the load you describe as THREE courses per SEMESTER to the overall load at your school and ascertain how that compares with other teachers. In addition, I think that the relevance of comparing a typical load at a residential LAC to what happens at research universities that rely on the lecture+section model has never been greater. </p>

<p>I happen to agree that teaching three courses per semester is stretching the demands placed on teachers who believe in the elements you cited. On the other hand, I’d like to know more about the teachers who are combining sabbaticals and low loads to average a very small numbers of hours per year, including 1.5 rules for large lectures.</p>