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<p>That could be a safe bet, as the issues are not foreign to one another at the schools that rely on that … system of indentured servitute. </p>
<p>Tenure, in itself, is not the problem; the problem is what it helped create over time.</p>
<p>Well, what did it create? Hmmm. A productive class of scholars who also need to be involved in teaching and in the running of their universities. As someone who is very familiar with higher education in many other countries, let me tell you this: professors world wide are amazed at how much is required of professors in this country, where you have to publish or perish, where you have to spend a sizeable portion of your time on UNpaid campus activities, and where your promotion and salary can be determined by students who often act like spoiled and vindictive brats with overinvolved parents.</p>
<p>Are there bad apples? Hell yes. But that’s not the problem with tenure, nor is it a problem with “what it created” – whatever that is.</p>
<p>Look at your list and note the absence of … teaching. Perhaps, you only listed the activities you consider problematic, and overlooked the obvious. But what is easy to spot is the condescending tone used to describe parents and students. An attitude that permeates an entire education system that has lost track that its purpose is to serve the students (and the parents who pay the bills) and not and foremost the service providers. </p>
<p>Regardless, whom is to blame for the focus of the publish or perish model? And who are the beneficiaries of that model?</p>
<p>No. I’m a 61 year old college professor. I vote no. LOL.</p>
<p>xiggi, no, my list is comprised of (time consuming!!) activities required IN ADDITION TO teaching. And by the way, those teaching loads are going UP in most universities while the additional requirements are hardly decreased. Publish or perish is a system that guarantees that professors in this country aren’t the dead beats you think they are. And that have made American academia among the most productive on the planet.</p>
<p>Of course, to anti intellectuals that’s a giant so what. But then, so is literacy.</p>
<p>This was in our local news within the past few days. Although I don’t think this particular article says he is tenured, other articles have. Is his tenure protected even if he is convicted of an offense of moral turpitude?</p>
<p>[UGA</a> German Professor Charged with Prostitution - Athens, GA Patch](<a href=“http://athens.patch.com/articles/uga-german-professor-charged-in-prostitution]UGA”>UGA German Professor Charged with Prostitution | Athens, GA Patch)</p>
<p>“Tenure creates a sense of ownership that I believe is necessary for a successful institution”</p>
<p>I agree that the sense of ownership is necessary for a successful institution, but I don’t see a correlation between tenure and ownership in my real life.</p>
<p>I’m surrounded by university staff (counselors) who don’t even have 1-year contracts, much less with tenure. We are at-will employees. Yet I see people sweat blood for their students and the institution every day. I’ve seen tenured and non-tenured faculty members do the same, and others who do not do the same. If there’s a relationship there, I don’t see it.</p>
<p>GA20 mom, I don’t know about this case in particular, but I can tell you that tenured college professors have been fired for a lot less…</p>
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<p>First of all, why do you assume I think professors in this country are dead beats? Although I do believe that this system does not foster the dedication to teaching the students deserve, I hardly think our professors are unworthy or underperforming. They do exactly what the system forces them to do, and that is why for many the focus is leading research, publishing, and chasing the mighty dollar. Is such system the best an undergraduate could hope for? No, and by a long shot. </p>
<p>You obviously believe research to be important. And so do I, but not when it comes at the expense of teaching undergraduates and abdicating teaching duties to armies of TAs and graduate assistants, who just as their mentors consider that teaching is the evil side of their careers. </p>
<p>Finally, do I believe that all research is important? Not at all. The academic journals are filled with research that prompts a reader to wonder how such efforts could find the support and dollars to make it happen.</p>
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<p>Is that supposed to be a problem? Sounds like a good beginning! Perhaps the same could be expanded to the K-12, and see and end to the JJA syndromes. That stands for June, July, and August!</p>
<p>From <a href=“http://www.centerforcollegeaffordability.org/uploads/Faculty_Productivity_UT-Austin_report.pdf[/url]”>CollegeLifeHelper.com;
<p> 20 percent of UT Austin faculty are teaching 57 percent of student credit hours. They also generate 18 percent of the campus’s research funding. This suggests that these faculty are not jeopardizing their status as researchers by assuming such a high level of teaching responsibility.
Conversely, the least productive 20 percent of faculty teach only 2 percent of all student credit hours and generate a disproportionately smaller percentage of external research funding than do other faculty segments.
Research grant funds go almost entirely (99.8 percent) to a small minority (20 percent) of the faculty; only 2 percent of the faculty conduct 57 percent of funded research.
Non-tenured track faculty teach a majority of undergraduate enrollments and a surprising 31 percent of graduate enrollments.
The most active researchers teach nearly the average of all faculty; increasing teaching loads of others would trivially impact outside research support.</p>
<p>and </p>
<p>The Top Quintile
The 20% of faculty members (that is, 840 out of the 4200 faculty within our sample) with the highest teaching loads carry 57% of the total number of student credit hours taught at the University’s (or 55% of the total teaching load if we control for the part-time status of some faculty). These 840 faculty members teach, on average, 896 student credit hours and 318 students per year. Of these 840 faculty nearly 60% are either tenured or on tenure-track while just over 40% are non-tenured.</p>
<p>The Bottom Four Quintiles
On the other hand, the remaining 80% (or the remaining 3,360 faculty members) perform only 43% of the total teaching duties on the Austin campus (or 44% after controlling for the part-time status of some of the faculty). The faculty members falling in these four bottom quintiles teach an average of 167 student credit hours per year and an average of 63 students per year, the equivalent of about 1.26 3-hour courses per year with an average student enrollment of 50 students per course, or three courses with an enrollment of 21 students each.</p>
<p>I don’t see tenure as the problem, it’s what is valued as important for tenure that’s the problem.</p>
<p>I wish I had tenure. Without it, employees of a certain age (like me) are feeling less and less secure in their jobs.</p>
<p>I believe there was a time when tenure was extremely valuable in protecting professors and teachers who pushed boundries. Today it seems more of a tool to protect mediocre (or worse) instructors. The old “educational contract” of low wages + great benefits + short hours + tenure should be changed to eliminate tenure, make benefits equal to those available to other workers but increase salaries to reward performance. These are the real world variables that the rest of us work within.</p>
<p>I’m going with xiggi on this one … it’s not tenure that’s the problem, it’s the education administrators that have created an environment in which even fabulous teachers get labelled as lazy and uncaring because “they have tenure.”</p>
<p>Stated another way, if with a wave of your hand you eliminated tenure, how would that change things? Too difficult a question? OK, how about this … would you rather have college students taught by TAs or Professors? </p>
<p>PS, Just out of curiosity, what do you think college tuition would be if Anatomy was taught by Surgeons, Leadership by Fortune 100 CEOs, US Government by sitting Senators, etc?</p>
<p>Without tenure, the research stars who have the ability and desire to be good teachers will never prioritize it. </p>
<p>The argument against tenure of college professors seems to be a strange transmutation of the argument against tenure for elementary and high school teachers. It’s not analagous. </p>
<p>I’ve seen both cases–research stars who are excellent teachers and ones who aren’t and who don’t care at all about teaching. I’m not sure if tenure fits into the equation there.</p>
<p>This is a true story. One day we had a physics class at my undergraduate engineering school. The professor was a well known and respected researcher. He came into class and proclaimed that class would have to be canceled that day since there was no chalk for him to write on the board. For me, this is a personal example of a research oriented professor who taught only because he was forced to. </p>
<p>There is more to the story. An eager student raced from our class and promptly returned with a handful of chalk for the professor. I’m sure the student assumed he had impressed the professor immensely with his quick and decisive action. As the student walked away from the professor’s desk, the professor threw the chalk at him.</p>
<p>^ Not defending that jerk’s lamentable behavior at all … but eliminating tenure addresses this situation how? Oh-h-h-h I get it … the college would terminate that “well known and respected researcher.” Fantasy my friend.</p>
<p>englishjw, while your individual experience is regrettable, it ought not to be used as the basis for policy-making decisions unless we can uncover evidence that it is part of a larger trend that needs to be addressed. Abolishing tenure based on anecdotes would be as short-sighted as restricting access to students who want to rush a fraternity or sorority, or participate on a varsity sports team, due to the fact that just about every professor in the world has at least one horror story about a pledge or athlete completely disrespecting the educational mission of the institution.</p>
<p>While the plural of anecdote is not data, it might be helpful to reconsider the value of the collective power of the social media to collate this type of anecdotes. Obviously, the pitfalls of sites such as “ratemyprofs” is easy to ascertain. But here is a thought:</p>
<p>What would preclude schools to host websites that give precise information on the teaching performance of each teacher for the past five years, including number of classes taught, research led, research funding, sabbatical, use of TAs, and … grades. Allow for students to comment on a forum attached to each professor, but have their identity checked. </p>
<p>And, of course, make this site unrestricted for viewers, but restricted to members of the school for posting. </p>
<p>All in all, students, and especially prospective students, have little to no RELEVANT information about the school they attend or plan to attend. Students are impressed by the pedigree of big names (Nobel etc) but have no idea if they will ever see the teacher on campus, let alone attend one of his class or lecture. For all we know, the famous person might be spending all his time in DC or writing column for the NYTimes! Everything that is negative is buried under layers of secrecy, and only comes out when scandals are inevitable. People have to make decisions based on hearsay and reputational indexes that are rarely void of manipulations and gamesmanship. </p>
<p>Could schools offer additional transparency? Not only could they, but they should make it a priority. Will they? Based on history, that is a pipedream, as the academic model is based on a need-to-know basis and hushed discussion in ivory towers. </p>
<p>The good news is that, just as the communist leaders and recent dictators could not keep their citizens from global news, the new world built on social media will force them to improve. Anecdotes are usually forgotten quickly, but this changes when they are collated over longer period of time.</p>
<p>The experiment has been done.</p>
<p>Florida Gulf Coast University gives faculty members multi-year contracts rather than tenure. I don’t know that much about the university, but given that it doesn’t even have a forum on CC, it doesn’t look like it has turned into a shining light leading the way to a tenureless future.</p>
<p>Some European universities that are more established and prestigous also have multi-year contracts instead of tenure. At one that I am very familiar with, renewal is the default, and non-renewal tends to be the result of getting on the wrong side of a more powerful person rather than poor teaching or research performance.</p>
<p>xiggi, I respect your passion for undergraduate education, agree that prospective students and parents are not generally given the type of information that will help them make the best decision, and agree that certain important sectors of academic culture do downplay teaching undergraduates. </p>
<p>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. I strongly believe that good teaching in the humanistic fields (once you get beyond the most basic introductory classes that, for better or worse, have to help students address the content gaps that most of them have because of their high school preparation) depends on the creation of trust, connection and conversation among all seminar participants. The ability to create that sort of seminar environment is extremely difficult to measure, but I think that it is one of the strongest indicators of a quality teacher in disciplines like mine. </p>
<p>(Note: I’m not saying that other disciplines don’t value these skills, or that seminars are somehow done “best” by those in the humanistic disciplines. I don’t know if/how seminars are used in other disciplines, which is why I’m not commenting on them.)</p>
<p>It is also impossible to consistently create that sort of environment in large classes (my experience is it is doable, if not a bit unwieldy in the 17-20 range, a bit tricky in the 21-25 range and very hard to do in a group of more than 25). You can accomplish many important things in a large class–you can still teach a lot of content, and, if you are dedicated (or have assistance), you can still give students assignments that will help them work on their writing skills. However, you cannot educate students on an entire way of reading, thinking and talking about material with other people that, to me, is an important part of humanistic education.</p>
<p>Actually, in my experience–which should not be taken as definitive, but I put it out here to see what others think–teaching students in the intense writing/discussion seminar environment takes more mental and emotional energy, and often more time, than teaching a larger class. </p>
<p>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). Even an excellent professor would find it very, very hard to reach his/her optimum teaching performance under those circumstances. In other disciplines, you would probably interpret those stats differently. Furthermore, other people might not define good teaching in the way that I’m defining it (I obviously like my definition, or else I’d develop a new one, but I can’t claim that it is authoritative), and they would also look at the stats differently.</p>
<p>I think it’s a great idea to ask institutions to provide certain types of statistics, but I also think that, without conversations about what good education is, even the availability of those statistics might not help people make better choices.</p>