Scholars say tenured professors are rarely fired

Boulder Daily Camera ^ | 6/27/06 | Elizabeth Mattern Clark

[mcvey]

If it is any help, I ran a small business for years. I did some adjuncting for my local university and then found that I enjoyed the give-and-take of the classroom. Real live work experience is not very helpful. Academe is still a lot like a monastery. Most people get there young and the only language and the customs they know relate almost entirely to academe. Often times my discourse is not on line and they make certain judgments that are not very bright. >>> Story <<< A young professor who grew up in academe and has no experiences out of it was in my office one day and made a remark about priests and pedophilia. I was looking down at that moment and he started to say, "pedophilia is . . . " when I looked up at him in shock and then amusement. But he certainly had revealed what he thought of an old geezer who had gone on tenure-track at 40. To make it even weirder, I have been published in two of the top three journals in my field and he has had one article published (in some lesser journal) in the last six years. So . . . get the right set of feathers so you will blend in.

I now do a whole lot of different things in academe, but still commit the great bulk of my time to teaching and research and the next bulk to service--mostly to senior citizens.

[rwfromkansas]

That is my problem...I am a history major. The pay for that area is awful unless you get to a huge university, so it is just not worth it to get the phd and try to become a prof.

I am trying to decide between teaching high school history/govt. and going into journalism to start out with after college; the latter would require getting a master's, but it would be worth it because I would advance more quickly to an okay wage (would likely start at 27,000 instead of 22,000 or so and would advance to 35 or so much more quickly). The pay for journalism would be really bad, but it would be worth it only having to take 2 more years. Having to take 4 more years to become a history prof with similar pay is not worth it.

I do wonder what journalism prof pay is like, but since it would be a humanities area, it is probably pretty low.

I guess if I want money, I do have two alternatives I may consider down the line if necessary: technical writing or public relations. Both would fit my personality well and actually pay a good wage.

But, being a professor is probably not for me. I wish you good luck in your career, however. We need conservative profs!

[eleni121]

You ought "to do things" without the necessity of tenure...an anachronistic feudal holdover.

[mcvey]

Well, you are passionate. But if you can't teach the kids because some left-wing kook has decided that you are a throwback . . . .

Something else happens without tenure. Even if you don't get fired, you will find it hard to get on the committees that determine the direction of the school. With tenure, we few conservatives have a source of authority which we can use.

By the way, it was because Hus's friends did not have tenure that he was burned . . . .

[eleni121]

Tenure is being used as a tool to maintain a left wing secular outlook among the elites in higher ed. Dare to question or disagree, and the professor become a pariah with all the attendent negatives that that status brings.

Even worse (if anything could be), it maintains the status quo of incompetence, self serving aggrandizement, and a forum or leftist propaganda...notice that conservatives rarely if ever exploit their classroom authority to foist their agendas on students.

Tenure has got to go!