Posted on 08/17/2015 9:50:34 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
I would say, over time, that tenure and promotion are far less about ideology---that is for the hiring decisions---than they are about old boy/old girl networks. I can think of people who, regardless of their ideology, had no business getting tenure or ever being promoted. But once you get in, make friends, it's hard to get rid of anyone.
I don't know about "ideological stature." Certainly there are number in economics departments that are of a high level: Robert Fogel of U of Chicago, for example, Gordon Wood in history. I have met Dr. Williams, and respect his work, but academically I don't think too many would put him in the top tier. He does more "pop" economics as does Thomas Sowell (and as I do in history now). Our stuff is aimed at explaining concepts to ordinary people, not making a minute research breakthrough that will get cited in a footnote---and believe me, I've had a few of those.
The problem is, as soon as you get to that level, you try to get OUT of departments and into a think tank where all you have to do is write. That's Thomas Sowell, for example. Not sure how much teaching, if any, Victor Davis Hanson does now.
Well, one strategy-—which I used-—is do not get involved in any “faculty governance” if you can help it. No committees, no Academic Senate stuff. It only saps time and reduces your research, which is ultimately the ONLY thing that they care about. They will tell you they value teaching, but I have seen people with crappy teaching #s and SOME research get tenured, or, if tenured, get promoted. But I’ve seen people with virtually no research get canned, even with adequate teaching. So from my perspective, your son is doing the right thing.
I have seen one conservative hired in our department in the last 10 years, but I would say it came because of the topic of his research, not because people even recognized his ideology. It was one of those “fit” things.
It was indeed a screech heard round the latrine.
Regular publication, no matter how great something was 10-20 years ago, keeps you up on the recent scholarship, hence refines your arguments for or against.
There are actually students now and then who do know stuff who will raise things like, "What about what person x said?" So a small amount of ongoing research is a necessity.
Every time we have sought to "improve" our process with more "qualitative" measures, it ends up with unqualified people who have made friends having those friends put forth a blizzard of "other contributions," mostly in the vein of service or proposing "new classes" that no one signs up for. I favor the tried and true.
True. As I tell wanna-be historians, hang in til you get tenure, then you can write what you really want.
Where are these hordes of professors going for better jobs? is there some university system with enough openings to accommodate an "exodus?" I doubt it.
Barzun actually argued for the likes of you, Sowell, and Williams. His argument was that UNLESS you could make ‘esoterica’ accessible to people, you weren’t worth much.
In most fields, the foundational principles are pretty approachable. Anything theoretical becomes doughy and needs artificial, highly conceptual scaffolding around it just to figure out the solid truth at the core of it. Once you get to that core, however, the bridge from ‘old thinking’ to ‘new thinking’ becomes pretty solid and easy to traverse over time.
I have a Boy Scout Troop, and we have started to tell our kids that college, as a goal, shouldn’t be their first option any more. It doesn’t pencil out financially like it used to. However, Cisco Engineers, HVAC guys, plumbers, dental assistants, nurses, and people with skills other people need to get by on a daily basis get jobs.
This came by way of a vote of the parents. We all sat around afterward looking at each other and wondering, “What did we just do?”
Value discipline, the idea that a product is either a) excellent, b) least expensive, or c) most customer intimate, is beginning to dawn on the university/college world.
I loved and got great value out of the classic, four year college educational experience in engineering. It is tragic that at the end of it I could not claim that I had enough knowledge to add value to any other enterprise beside the military (I graduated from one of the federal academies).
As for tenure, my biggest problem with sending my kids to a modern university is the ideological brainwashing that awaits them there, on my nickel. Everything is political now, especially science, and even medicine. I don’t know if tenure helps universities meet legitimate needs in the labor market or not any more. Universities feel like re-education camps more than they do places to get a career skill.
I’ve got three that will be showing up at some campus within the next five years. One is looking at ‘Hard Work U’ - College of the Ozarks if she can get in. Another is looking to work in diabetes (he’s a diabetic since 19 months). The middle kid? Who knows.
I’ll likely push the middle kid to learn a skill he can be competent in that he may not love while he figures out what it is he CAN love.
Anyway, I hate what we are leaving behind for our kids.
Lets see how well this works when they TRY and live in the REAL Berkeley, CA.
“What do you mean housing is $2M+?”
>>So tenure, in my instance (and that of many other conservative profs) has been a firewall to enable us to argue against the liberal system.<<
That cuts both ways though. That same tenure “firewall” has protected the 90% who typically support liberal causes. Better to dump tenure and let the chips fall where they may. Eventually, then, we’d have schools run by liberal and schools run by conservatives.
And, as with cities and states, I know which group would be performing the best, both financially and academically.
This is all overblown anyway. Wisconsin was one of the only states to enshrine tenure in state law. The legislature removed the grant of tenure from state law. Tenure still exists, and will continue to exist, so long as the governing board continues to keep it.
So professors leaving WI will be going to other schools with essentially the same level of tenure protection as the UW System now offers.
That said, if they’re too dumb to figure that out, better that they leave.
-—legislature is working on legislation doubling the number hours a professor is expected to teach
Doubling zero hours is still zero.
I attended UW Madison for 19 years. I'm not really slow, I earned three degrees there and worked in Madison between degrees.
I can say from experience that there is a ton of dead wood in the faculty there, and any threats of en masse departures are probably a good thing. Before the media swallows such a claim whole, you should look at the age distribution of the faculty, their tenure in cumulative years at UW, and look at the size of the cohort at the time they started, average attrition rates, etc. There could be a large number of folks hitting a magic number in their pension formula, their stock portfolios may have recovered enough that it is time to head to AZ or FL, etc. etc. etc. There could be many reasons why there are a large number of departures coinciding, which have nothing to do with proposed tenure changes or Gov. Walker's administration.
Anyone who has been around that University for any period of time has seen a great deal of funds wasted - there is room to pare back the budget, and to redesign the University to deliver an education utilizing technologies that will provide the same (or greater) benefit to more students for the same budget, perhaps less. So, good riddance to those who claim to want to leave on account of Walker and his proposals!
BIG EDUCATION is a funding mechanism for Democrats.
Routing borrowed money to schools to overpay legions of profs and admins who donate to Dems.
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