First impressions of report

I haven’t yet read the whole Univ. of Colorado tenure report. (The body of the report ends on page 161, with the rest being appendices. The appendices look well worth reading as well, but 161 pages is a little less daunting than 431 pages.)

However, I am pleased by my first impression.This is not some wishy-washy report, concluding that tenure has its good points and its bad points, etc. Rather, at least in its executive summary, it is a strong defense of tenure. Bravo!

math prof, at 11:05 am EDT on August 4, 2006

Tenure is obsolete

Unfortunately, tenure has done for higher education what unions have done for American manufacturing. It has limited growth and flexibility, while assuring that the obolete are as protected as the race horses. The midieval crafts guild model that it draws its intellectual roots from was highly touted by Karl Marx. The free speech rationization simply does not hold up and has caused decent, hard-working faculty to share a bunk with the unemployable. And relying of the University of Colorado as a trend setter is like calling on Hillary Clinton for marriage counseling.

GoFigure, at 2:45 pm EDT on August 4, 2006

Case against tenure

Actually, the case against tenure is a business case, which may be why you haven’t heard it before. The education industry has severely limited its opportunity for growth and relevance through tenure. You write research that no one reads (not even each others) in order to reach the holy grail of tenure. Then you coast. The research supports this statement. You do not even pass much of this research on to your students. Strip away tenure and it will allow the industry to change the faculty model in ways that will benefit both students and the industry. You probably can’t see this because of the fear that you can’t really cut it in a competitive market place. Your tenure actually breeds that fear. Billions are spent on research annually by business, most of it performed by brighter, more aggressive researchers who are not by university professors. You are no longer the first choice for good minds by most of those outside of your profession. So you smugly tell each other that you would not dirty your hands with corporate dollars. But then, no one invited you to that prom, did they?

If you find the reference to Hillary unnerving, choose your own. If your arguments only work when you speak to your kindred spirits, then continue to babble among yourselves.

GoFigure, at 5:55 am EDT on August 5, 2006

Argument vs. Opinion

First, I have yet to determine who the “you” of GoFigure’s comment is. I do not have tenure, nor have I yet pursued it. Bad assumptions cost more than any policy ever will.

The research is there to demonstrate a capacity. I know that I will never have cause to compute the time dilation problem that determines how long, provided instantaneous accelereation and negative acceleration, I would have to travel at 0.9C tomove 50 years into the future, but it was on a high school physics test. Furthermore, not all of tenure is based on the publish-or-perish model, and a failure to recognize that a significant shift is already underway to grant tenure based upon classroom results demonstrates a reallack of research on the part of the critic of tenure.

So-called News Flash #1: The U.S. is a debtoor nation because of all kinds of overspending, no shortage of which was Republican-funded garbage like “Star Wars.” Get off the partisan high horse and start considering the issue for a change.

So-called News Flash #2: You can tell me that Strawberries are popular, so aronia juice will sell well. Term limits for politicians is not the same as tenure, and any attempt to equate the two in any meaningful fashion fails at its most basic level. See faulty analogy for more.

So-called News Flash #3: Try complete sentences. Give up on the “get used to it” tag line. It’s old and tired, much like the non-arguments so far presented for the abolition of tenuure.

Come back when you have an argument that actually has something to do with tenure instead of talking points devoid of substance.

Andrew Purvis, at 5:00 pm EDT on August 5, 2006

Rights

What someone has a right to do (real or perceived) does not equate to being the best thing to do. Making ad hominem attacks, blind assaults on character, and gross generalizations all produces no argument. A claim that there is “financial exigency” behind this only serves to illustrate the commenter’s incredible lack of connection to the reality of higher education: take a look at how the doollars are really spent before blaming the economic woes on faculty.

It is time to let the ump call this one at the plate. Three failed attempts to find an argument in favor of the removal of tenure: struck out looking. Time to go home.

Andrew Purvis, at 6:00 am EDT on August 6, 2006

tenure

I have tenure at a small college that values good teaching first and treats research almost as an option. We have a small faculty that is about half tenured and has very little “dead wood.” The vast majority of tenured faculty are principled people of integrity who continue to do good work because they take pride in what they do.

First, pushing a corporate model on academe fails to recognize the problems inherent in that model. Corporations are scandal-ridden, short-sighted entities in which apparently unscrupulous people seek their exclusive self-interest rather than the public—or even shareholder—good.

Second, if JBM thinks that the taxpayer should not fund higher education, then shut down all of the state institutions. We at private colleges and universities will be happy to take in the thousands of students who will suddenly be looking to spend their tuition dollars elsewhere to get an education.

Tenure may not be perfect, but it is the best thing we have so far for ensuring the possibility of a liberating education for the greatest number of people. (BTW, an education cannot be liberating without the student’s having to hear a few opinions that are different.)

E. J. Mask, prof of religion, at 12:45 pm EDT on August 6, 2006