According to the Fox report, Prof. Drapela had been teaching at Oregon State for ten years, which suggests, along with his title, that he was a tenured professor. This assumes, of course, that Oregon Law and/or a collective bargaining agreement provides for tenure. If so, then I don’t understand how he can be terminated except for financial reasons or the elimination of his position, and even then, most tenure laws and collective bargaining agreements would allow him to apply for another positon within the state university system at the expense of someone with lower senority.
No, a lot of adjunct teach year after year. I have a colleague who’s about 67, has taught as a full-time, non-tenured instructor at various schools for 40 years, including more than 20 at our institution. He gets a full salary and benefits. The salary is lower than what tenured-professors get but it’s far better than what the sessional lecturers (hired a course a time, semester at a time, no benefits) get. Some of the sessional lecturers may teach a number of years in one place but rarely for 10 years.
If he had been tenured they can’t simply fire him. You can be fired for cause, even with tenure, but they have have a very series case against you.
He certainly was not tenured. His title is not a title given to tenured professors.
They can always claim that he was not renewed because of financial problems.
Correction. Some sessional lecturers may teach for 10 or more years in one place but they do so because they have a spouse who is earning a full salary and they put up with the meager wages (in our institution, 4500.00 a course, at many places 3000.00 or even less, no benefits) because they can’t move to a different place or don’t want the full-time load that a “senior instructor” like this guy would have. Full-time but non-tenured faculty get full salaries (lower than tenured) but usually have much heavier teaching loads, making it hard to get research published which is the ticket on to the tenure-track. Once you spend a half-dozen years either as sessional lecturer or in a FT non-tenure-track position, you usually are stuck there for life. But it is possible to make a living in the latter, because it does carry benefits and a full, if low, salary.
Sessional lecturers can’t live off their pay. They have to have a spouse who’s earning. They can stitch together 4 or 5 courses a semester, usually at more than one school (our school won’t permit them more than 2 courses a semester because beyond that they could sue to get unemployment and health benefits because they’d be sorta full time). But they won’t get any research done and, after 5 years or so, they are finished on the academic job market.
Especially in the sciences, there’s a category of non-tenured full-time, fully-paid, benefited “clinical” or “lab faculty” who teach the huge, drudge-work required courses. That might be what this guy was, but then again, might not.