Lord, I wish I could agree with you, but I can't. I have been in this business three decades and have seen any number of careers saved by the rules.
I am not trying to maintain the status crow, one of the reasons I am on FR is that this is one place where I can say what goes on in academe and people will listen.
If you really want to do something to change the status quo, then find out who is being hired at your local college and raise hell about it. The deans do the hiring and they are almost always far-left. Put pressure on the hiring process, demand accountability by the board, hell, try to get a seat on a board as a community representative.
If you are inclined to be an activist, get the voter registration records from your courthouse. Almost all, if not all, of the members of your English, History, Political Science, Philosophy, Religious or Theology Department, Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology departments will be Dems or Greens. Then go to the newspapers and raise ugly questions. Send the results to state legislators.
Otherwise, if you do away with tenure, almost every conservative in academe will come under the gun to shut up or be fired by their deans. THERE ARE ALMOST NO PEOPLE INSIDE THE SYSTEM WHO WILL SAVE CONSERVATIVES. THERE ARE MANY WHO WILL SAVE LIBERALS. THE COMMUNITY HAS NOT A CLUE AS TO WHAT HAPPENS.
That is the way it is. I wish I could give you another answer. I can't.
McVey
You're talking about change -- without changing anything, particularly the infrastructure that supports the status quo.
I'm talking about change that is fundamental -- doing something entirely differently, which is the possibility of rethinking learning with today's capabilities. Education, along with mainstream mass media, is one of those functions the technologies of today have made obsolete and redundant.
Here, we talk a lot about the increasing irrelevance and demise of the mainstream press, but close behind are the other institutions of information and communications -- the schools and universities. That's the next playing field to be leveled.
Progress and evolution is not something that happened only in the past -- and now we shouldn't change anything but accept things as they are.