Posted on 01/04/2022 12:18:07 PM PST by karpov
A bill making its way through the South Carolina legislature may have a tremendous impact on the state’s public higher education system. And if successful, it may prove as a model for other states looking to get a handle on their hard-to-control higher education systems.
House Bill 4522—the “Cancelling Professor Tenure Act”—will end tenure for newly hired professors at South Carolina’s ten public institutions of higher education, including such well-known schools as the University of South Carolina, Clemson, and The Citadel. Faculty who have already been granted tenure or who have already been hired with the expectation of receiving tenure will have their current status “grandfathered” in, however.
Tenure is a condition of employment granting privileges to those who have obtained it. It is conferred by a consensus of one’s departmental colleagues, although it ordinarily requires the approval of trustees as well. Few other professions have such powerful job security protections. According to the American Association of University Professors—the main professional organization for college faculty—“a tenured appointment is an indefinite appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency and program discontinuation.” Its “principal purpose … is to safeguard academic freedom.”
Among other safeguards provided by tenure is the right for faculty to be given a hearing of their peers before they can be fired. And Carol Harrison, the president of the University of South Carolina chapter of the AAUP, told “The State” newspaper that “the point of tenure is to prevent political, corporate, or other interests from interfering in research or steering the curriculum.”
South Carolina would be the first state to eliminate tenure for new faculty at its public universities, although tenure’s presence on U.S. campuses has been diminishing for other reasons in the past few decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
“principal purpose … is to safeguard academic freedom.”
Doesn’t seem to have worked very well. Lol. I haven’t seen any evidence of academic freedom in years. Unless it’s the freedom to make up woke fakery.
Why not make retention of all tenured positions contingent on breaking rocks in the hot sun. At least they’d have skin in the game.
Once you get tenure you should not be allowed to vote on new tenured positions.
This is how liberals keep conservatives out.
When I was in college back in the seventies, we had another word for tenure. Retired.
As long as people do not pay for their own education, political/activist professors will be in control
Well, to any half-assed observer, it has failed miserably.
Tenure is PATHETIC, but even tenure doesn’t protect professors who the students decide to ‘take out’, by making Kavenaugh-type accusations.
It’s the academic equivalent of being a made man.
There’s almost no academic freedom left and ironically it is due to communist and Islamonazis getting tenure and then harassing and intimidating Jews, Christians, and anybody not singing or shouting Marxist slogans
[Tenure’s] “principal purpose … is to safeguard academic freedom.”
~~~~
As recent events demonstrate that might be tenure’s biggest drawback.
Academic freedom...
Snort.
This is about cost control.
Permanent visiting adjunct perfessers.
Bwah hah hah hah hah!
Why only Communist, who are using education as front to disseminate leftist propaganda, get tenure?
Why don’t roofers, electricians, framers, cab drivers and everyone else in the private sector get tenure?
Could be a good thing. Could be used by leftist students to get the few conservative professors fired.
Well, that was the original purpose.
To ensure that a professor could continue to teach controversial things even if nearly everyone was offended.
It’s only a drawback if you disagree with them.
Tenure *should* be strong enough to protect even the most ardently conservative professor in the most liberal college.
The problem is with the implementation.
The underlying idea of “No matter how much you HATE what a professor is teaching, they have a right to teach it that is irrespective of your prejudices” is a sound one.
“There’s almost no academic freedom left and ironically it is due to communist and Islamonazis getting tenure and then harassing and intimidating Jews, Christians, and anybody not singing or shouting Marxist slogans.”
That is absolutely the case.
If we can eliminate tenure for politicians, tenured teachers won’t last very long. :)
This is the first step.
The next is to broaden “diversity” to include diversity of thought. Require them to hire gun toting and gun rights supporting, anti abortion, limited government, pro American, patriots in line with their share of the population.....because y’know, we need an educational establishment that looks like America. In effect this means “you cannot hire a Leftist for about 25 years until your faculty and administrators are balanced instead of being overwhelmingly Leftist”.
Hey, we’re all for “diversity” right?
And make the colleges be the guarantee for the guaranteed student loans, while you are at it.
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