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Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate

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Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate

#71

Post by tombert »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #67
tombert wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the likelihood of paying professors appropriately to be very unlikely; it's not like non-tenure-track professorships are making bank. I mean, it's not apples to apples, but I do part-time adjunct stuff in NYC, and the extra income is nice enough but even if I extrapolated it to full time, I'd barely have enough to pay my mortgage.

Adjuncts get treated like dirt everywhere, afaik

I mean, they treat me fine I think; everyone has been polite to me, I'm just a lecturer.

It just doesn't pay well enough to survive. I mostly enjoy teaching, but honestly I don't think that I will be doing it again next semester.

It's tough to say if I'm a "good" lecturer obviously, especially I think it's borderline impossible to fail a teaching evaluation here, but I do know that it's trivial for me to find work that pays more than twice as much in the private sector, without a ton of extra work.

Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate

#72

Post by tasty_freeze »

Some are arguing that the tenure system is broken. Maybe. If this change was done in good faith to make the system stronger, it is worth considering. But there is little evidence that that is what is going on. Conservatives have been beating the drum for decades that colleges brainwash their kids into being liberals, and so they want control to fire any academic that doesn't confirm to their views.

edit: I'm speaking as a 19 year resident of Austin, Texas who has watched countless other power grabs, including Governor Perry installing biblical literalists to oversee Texas school books that deny evolution and rewriting history -- too much Jefferson and not a mention of Phyllis Schlafley (not joking). The same legislature has pushed a law requiring every K-12 schoolroom to display the Ten Commandments.

Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate

#73

Post by natpalmer1776 »

bsder wrote: post #51
mkl95 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't plan on staying in academia forever, tenure vs no tenure shouldn't really matter.

Tenure matters if you happen to be teaching American history and have a bunch of people who want you fired because you had the temerity to talk about slavery. Tenure matters if you happen to be teaching English literature and have a bunch of people who want you fired because you have the temerity to point out that Chaucer's characters have the symptoms of syphilis. Tenure matters if you happen to be teaching biology…

I'm tired of responding to folks caught up on the wrong shit, so here's what I should have said in the first place:

In my personal experience I've seen or heard of more professors espousing their personal views as fact than most online and academic discourse would have otherwise led me to believe possible.

I think removing tenure is a net loss for research because professors now have to worry about politically motivated reprisal for their research, whereas I believe it to be a net gain for student education since professors can then be held accountable for failing their basic responsibility of teaching factual information to the best of their knowledge based on the available research in their field of study.

Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate

#74

Post by tiedieconderoga »

nextos wrote: post #41
quantified wrote: post #2

Not the law yet, but as Scott Aaronson (I'm positive along with others) has pointed out, this would make their universities vastly less attractive to various incoming faculty. Whether that would be as impactful in STEM as in the humanities or human-interest areas like law remains to be seen.

IMHO, right now, tenure is the only edge Academia has in many areas of STEM compared to industrial labs. Other countries have suppressed tenure in the past, Denmark comes to mind, and this scared tons of great faculty.

Even with tenure, you would need to be extremely passionate about education or research to go into academia in fields like software or mech/chem/EE. The opportunity cost is easily 6 figures/yr, for your entire career.

The hours are long, the pay is laughable, the kids are not alright, you must publish or perish...maybe these universities are intentionally selecting for professors who will have a high tolerance for abuse.

Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate

#75

Post by thebooktocome »

edrxty wrote: post #37
satysin wrote: post #4

So the Texas Senate just passed a bill that makes it more likely that Texas faculty hires will be from a smaller and no doubt lower quality pool of candidates? Why take a job without the possibility of tenure vs anywhere else in the US that has the option available to you?

Getting rid of tenure is fine but they'll need to pay much more to stay competitive. The calculous is fairly simple. Tenure track and then have an easy work life but less money, or go to industry and make lots of money but work more. Nothing wrong with either but if you get rid of the upsides to academia expect to replace them with something. That's just how market economies work. The issue isn't stem so much as the…

I made more two years into my industry job than any of the tenured professors at my Tier 2 mathematics department (comparable to A&M).

There’s no way Texas state govt can stomach paying competitive salaries for non-tenured professors. They can’t even stomach investing in critical infrastructure.

Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate

#77

Post by ok_dad »

orange_joe wrote: post #9

I’m skeptical that tenure is good for students, I knew so many teachers that just didn’t much care for their work and probably would have been fired if not for tenure. I understand the arguments in favor of tenure, particularly when it comes to recruitment, but given the bloated pipeline into academia, I’m not sure they hold.

Tenured researchers shouldn't be teaching, IMO. They can be doing research full-time, and leave teaching to those who care to teach. I, personally, dislike research, but I would love to become a CompSci professor and teach the next generation of software developers and technologists. The problem is, I do NOT want to do research. Give me a Master's in CS with some sort of "teaching extension" on it and I'll go teach and the researchers can go do important work researching!

Edit: for the upper division courses, researchers certainly should have some involvement, I agree with several of you on that point!

Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate

#78

Post by squokko »

Going to be tough for UT, which regularly hires people who are among the best in the world, and was essentially at the Berkeley/UCLA/UMich level of public university. They will still be able to hire, of course, but they won't be able to get Nobel Prize-level people without offering tenure.

Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate

#80

Post by thebooktocome »

nme01 wrote: post #47
tombert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not college, but my wife is wrapping up her teaching certification soon. We have both considered moving to Florida (we both have family that live there), but there is no chance in hell that we are moving to Florida and teaching; the infamous "Don't Say Gay" bill is so broad and idiotic (and she would be teaching biology ), that Florida is a complete non-starter for us since neither of us really have any desire to be…

I’m not from US but I’m curious what is the situation in other states? Are there situations like that occurring elsewhere (even if the bias is in the opposite political direction e.g. in California or somewhere) or is Florida a “lonely island” here with regard to free speech limitations on universities?

It’s getting pretty common in conservative states. Just this year there were (in various states) hundreds of laws passed against public expressions of LGBTQ+ identities, including some that affect public sector employees (e.g., state university professors).
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