tenure was supposed to allow professors to be able to speak their mind without fear of being fired
but apparently modern bureaucracy has evolved to get around this
Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate
141–150 of 326 posts
Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate
#142Earlier 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…
Considering the number of near-poverty retail workers trying to pay off college debt, I think it's a good idea for the government to focus more on improving the quality of teaching, even if that comes at the cost of diminished research output. As it stands, the system saddles undergrads with tons of debt and not much to show for it, with socially disastrous results. If a university wants to focus on research and does…
You found the symptom, but prescribed the wrong treatment.
> Considering the number of near-poverty retail workers trying to pay off college debt
> As it stands, the system saddles undergrads with tons of debt and not much to show for it, with socially disastrous results.
If you have a degree, and are working retail, and are near-poverty, then you screwed up somewhere. Your degree is objectively useless if this is the only prospects available after graduation - so why did you get that degree? Why didn't you continue into postgrad or change degree paths?
Perhaps we should stop offering student loans for useless degrees. Still offer them, but no loans allowed. That would go a long ways towards solving the diagnosed problem.
We've spent decades telling everyone they must get a degree to live a successful life - then we puppy-mill them into garbage/completely-useless degree programs, and are surprised when they go back to the same job they held in highschool. Now, we're going to forgive all those poor choices, because we think we did everyone wrong, but we're going to change not one thing to prevent it from happening again. Brilliant.
Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate
#143I’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.
If tenure goes away, then you have to pay more to compensate. If you're getting rid of tenure while keeping wages low, you'll still have bad teachers but for that reason instead.
A lot of people want to have their cake and eat it too: No tenure AND low wages. It won't work out.
Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree, but it's still a bit puzzling beyond the just "political theater"/"retributional politics" approach: * if they don't control the administration of the schools, this only serves to make it harder to hire anybody and easier to fire those who the administration doesn't agree with . Presumably conservatives. That's a net loss. * if they do control the administration (or have a path to getting that contr…
> * if they don't control the administration of the schools, They control the purse strings.
Sure, but if that's very leveragable control, isn't "hire conservative faculty members who are protected from future changes in the political winds by tenure" better than "make all faculty easier to fire"?
Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate
#145I’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.
How important is teacher performance for students though?
What are we even measuring when something is good/bad for students? Obviously anything akin to directly abusing students would be bad for students, but I imagine we're talking about the quality of the education they get based on the quality of their professor's teaching ability.
If we are just talking about learning qualities, isn't the selection of students in higher level academic programs already heavily curated and biased towards students who have proven they are good at learning? Shouldn't this cohort of proven learners be resistant to any fluctuations in the teaching quality of professors?
Forgive me if my question shows a higher level misunderstanding, but I stumbled into my career in tech without any post-secondary education - so I don't have firsthand experience with any real academic settings.
Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
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The false positive rate for students reporting “my professor is teaching critical race theory!!!” is outlandishly high. CRT is also not “political pop science propaganda” so I’m not convinced you can recognize it either. It’s a legal theory. About law.
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Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate
#147So 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?
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…
you should definitely move to a state that suits your political background, its fair to say you might not like florida. but that "don't say gay bill" is really just a "don't teach sex ed til 4th grade" bill. i'm understanding of people who don't like it nonetheless but there's other place for you to go, there's plenty of blue states and big cities that support left-wing agendas over right-wing ones, just go there instead, no?
Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering the number of near-poverty retail workers trying to pay off college debt, I think it's a good idea for the government to focus more on improving the quality of teaching, even if that comes at the cost of diminished research output. As it stands, the system saddles undergrads with tons of debt and not much to show for it, with socially disastrous results. If a university wants to focus on research and does…
US government should focus on making higher education more affordable. In Australia for example college debt is managed through the taxation system allowing people to invest in the careers in the early days and then pay off their debt when their taxable income reaches a high enough threshold.
America has affordable higher education; state schools and community colleges are generally very affordable. The problem is when naive highschool students get lured into taking on huge amounts of debt by expensive private schools that have no intention of teaching undergrads well, but nevertheless assert that pretense to lure in more suckers.
Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate
#149I’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.
Skepticism re teaching is fine, but tenure at this point is not given or denied based mainly on teaching but rather on research. Yes, UT Austin and TAM teach a lot, but tenure is driven very strongly by research performance and promise.
Re: Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 motiva…
>Tenure hurts if you happen to be teaching biology and have a bunch of people who want you fired because you teach politically motivated Critical Race theory.
Considering that CRT is a legal and historical theory, not a biology theory, I think that's a fair concern. Similarly, tenured European history professors should be called on the carpet for requiring reading and homework on perturbation theory in quantum electrodynamics.
Your first point is not really coherent. Do you mean to say that some professor should be fired for overemphasizing slavery's role in American history? Or underemphasizing?
An actual example that's come up: tenure hurts if a law professor is critical of a dominant industry in your state, and you want to fire her for saying so in a professional capacity[0].
I can't speak to the impact on STEM, but this will 100% hurt Texas' ability to operate law schools, and it will likely also impact its ability to provide basic general-studies curriculum as is generally considered necessary for a bachelor's degree.