Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by eslaught » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #108

kevinmchugh wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the university level, good teaching is a value only some institutions hold. They'll all say they care, but research schools are paying way more attention to grants, publications, parents, etc than to student evals. There are universities that prioritize teaching over research and, unsurprisingly, they tend to have better teaching professors. I went to a school that didn't emphasize research and never had a TA teac…

How much research do we need? Sure there are advances to make in physics, but do we really need another paper explaining why Richard III wasn't completely evil, or whatever similar activity English professors research? How much more research into the real nature of the Greeks do we need? Don't get me wrong, both are interesting subjects, and the thinking that goes into those papers is worth teaching/knowing. However…

How much do you know about research funding?

For example, the fields you mention (sciences/engineering, medicine) pull in vastly more money that humanities. Because they have more money, they hire more faculty, and they also train and graduate more PhD students.

I knew a few humanities PhD students while I was in grad school, and none of them were funded by research grants. If they were lucky, they got fellowships. That's a stark contrast to engineering where both grant and fellowship funding was relatively plentiful (though I've got a few horror stories there too).

On top of it, humanities jobs are really hard to find (even more difficult than fields like physics that are already known for multiple postdocs, etc.), making it a bad deal all around for PhD students in those fields.

Overall, I think things are already allocated more or less the way you expect, and I don't think we need to piss on humanities for this. They already have it hard enough.

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

#132

Post by kpw94 » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

tiedieconderoga wrote: post #74

nextos wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ab…

Since Texas is the topic: university salaries are public and used to be published in a Texas Tribune. A visiting professor at a Texas university, with probably no intention of tenure based on his career, was paid $340k/y back in the 2010s:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-creator-of-C++-Bjarne-Stro...

Of course he's not a nobody, but if Texas universities pay that kind of money to superstar professors, for small stints, this could attract people from industry that in the end are much more up to date on the industry's state of the art (vs the research state of the art).

The top 5 other professors (but probably many tenured) were making in the ~$200k range at that time too. In that part of the country, it's huge.

Ultimately tenure has a price. if there's no tenure, higher salaries would be offered.

Now the impact on student's tuition could be interesting, but if most of it goes to administrative staff anyways, who knows?

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

#133

Post by yawnxyz » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

as far as I know, Australia doesn't have tenure either. But with the contract system they do have, it feels like a combination of "you'll be taken care of" and "...but you still have responsibilities".

That said, it seems stressful for new professors though

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

#134

Post by KerrAvon » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #42

> Public-college boards would be able to create “an alternate system of tiered employment status for faculty members” that’s not tenure, the legislation states. But that system would require faculty members to go through an annual performance evaluation. That sounds closer to how most jobs work. Honestly, I've never understood the purpose of tenure; it seems like an archaic tradition. If it's to give professors freed…

The problem is, as others have said, this severely degrades Texas's desirability as a career destination for academics as long as only Texas is doing this and other states are not.

Put another way, these are the people Texas doesn't want in the state:

- LGBT+ - women - academics

Are they trying to have a student population composed of just cis crypto bros and assorted incels? Because this is how you get there.

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

#135

Post by csa » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

squokko wrote: post #78

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.

> but they won't be able to get Nobel Prize-level people without offering tenure

I’m fairly certain that most Nobel Prize-level people are not worried about tenure. They will be gainfully employed as long as they want to be.

If they are looking for a delayed retirement, they can just move to a tenured spot when they reach a certain age.

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

#136

Post by DrSAR » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

542458 wrote: post #93

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree but only, specifically, academia's already broken system. Tenure takes the heat off an academic such that they can deeply, deeply study a system. Academia's still stuck in lines-of-code style measuring sticks of performance so the rush to tenure is often pumping out salami slices worth of papers to secure future funds.

The thing that I don’t understand is that: * Academics say publish or perish is terrible and produces warped incentives. * Academics say they need tenure to protect senior researchers from the publish or perish system. * But academics seem to be the ones building grant and advancement systems that enforce “publish or perish”. I don’t get it - it certainly sounds like tenure mostly protects senior academics from syste…

I think your incorrect assumption is that tenured faculty are running and shaping the universities. Much has been written about the rise of different class in the academy: administrators. For a somewhat extreme position look here [1]. And even tenured faculty are subjected to the performance assessments that can seriously hinder their research agenda. As the saying goes: Tenure has never protected those who really needed it.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardvedder/2018/05/10/kill-a...

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

#137

Post by kashunstva » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

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.

> I’m skeptical that tenure is good for students,

I’m more skeptical of the motives that animate these decision makers. After all, these are the same people who ban books, insist on revisionist history in Texas school textbooks, and engage in all manner of opposition to free inquiry. Perhaps by some stroke of luck, it will be a net positive for students in Texas institutions of higher learning, but of all the ways of promoting the academic and economic well-being of students this would be among the most tangential.

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

#138

Post by noisenotsignal » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

ok_dad wrote: post #77

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 a…

My university had lecturers that were precisely this (masters in CS, focused on teaching intro undergrad courses).

However, I think there is still a lot of benefit from having researchers teach upper level courses. Firsthand experience in research brings an additional dimension that can be appreciated by students who are beyond the introductory level.

There are also tenured professors who are good at both research and teaching!

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

#139

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

beambot wrote: post #105

nextos wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note some good US universities pay entry-level FAANG salaries to assistant professors. If you can negotiate a low teaching load, it might be OK in some cases. Nonetheless, I agree with what you say. I'd add there is a ton of nasty politics, bullying, etc. which might be hard to avoid while you are on tenure track chasing tenure.

Please give an example of such a university?

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by ano-ther » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:02 PM UTC

Scott Aaronson who has tenure in Texas describes the effect as this:

> […] it would be the end of UT Austin and Texas A&M as leading research universities. More precisely, it would be the immediate end of our ability to recruit competitively, and the slightly slower end of our competitiveness period, as faculty with options moved elsewhere. This is so because of the economics of faculty hiring. Particularly in STEM fields like computer science, those who become professors typically forgo vastly higher salaries in industry, not to mention equity in startup companies and so on.

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7243