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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

#151

Post by fn-mote »

Someone1234 wrote: post #143
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.

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.

> A lot of people want to have their cake and eat it too: No tenure AND low wages. It won't work out.

Sure you can. That's what the current system of adjuncts is like.

The problem is that you lose the people who are the most competent. Those who know what they are doing, have valuable skills, etc.

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

#152

Post by Alupis »

threeseed wrote: post #130
stametseater wrote: post #90

Earlier 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.

There's an awful lot of students that held no job during college, and instead relied 100% on student loans to buy Taco Bell, pay rent, and put gas in the car.

The huge numbers you see tossed around almost always include living expenses. "$120k for a state school!" sort of thing.

The failure in reporting is those living expenses would have been incurred regardless if the person attended university or not.

As a society, I think we need to encourage people to work at least part time, if not full time during university - and take a slower path toward their degree. The result will be more experienced, mature graduates that have had time to evaluate their future.

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

#153

Post by bjt »

ano-ther wrote: post #140

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 f…

While I think he's right, I wonder if that might still be a tradeoff worth making. Or at least, a sane person could argue that it is. Competition between universities for rankings skews a lot of what happens in higher ed. The state of Texas could rationally think "we want to spend our tax dollars subsidizing the education of Texans, but we're not super interested in spending those dollars to fund the academic rat race."

The people who want to win that rat race will go somewhere else. UT will be greatly impacted but I don't think the overall scientific output of the USA will.

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

#154

Post by alsodumb »

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.

In Engineering (especially robotics and ML/AI), it’s definitely not the tenure that’s making people apply for assistant professor roles. Almost everyone I met did it only because they want the freedom to pick the research direction and work on challenging problems. A few genuinely like teaching, but that’s about it.

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

#155

Post by vkou »

majormajor wrote: post #144
vkou wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * 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"?

No, it's not.

You have vastly more power in society by being able to remove your political enemies, than by being able to appoint your friends.

There's a lot of ways in which the latter can screw up - your friends might turn out to be less pliable than you wanted, someone might have been appointed who turned out to be a trojan horse, someone might have been appointed who was palatable to your goals a decade ago, but is now causing trouble, someone might have been appointed under your opponent's watch, etc, etc.

When you instead hang a sword of Damocles over their collective necks, they have no choice but to toe the party line.

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

#156

Post by uberman »

fn-mote wrote: post #151
Someone1234 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> A lot of people want to have their cake and eat it too: No tenure AND low wages. It won't work out. Sure you can. That's what the current system of adjuncts is like. The problem is that you lose the people who are the most competent. Those who know what they are doing, have valuable skills, etc.

Adjuncts and lecturers dont do research nor do they typically do service. If one wanted to be educated by lecturers then they could attend a community college. That is of course a viable option but no tenure will be the kiss of death to any institution who thought they were going to do research at the R1 level.

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

#157

Post by usrusr »

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…

I believe that this is yet another case of middle ground being the best: leave the bulk of teaching to specialists, but keep the research professors doing courses close to their actual field. Don't underestimate how educative teaching can be for the teacher. But this is certainly no big insight. Or are there places that do not, at least to some amount, do it like this?

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

#158

Post by ghufran_syed »

tombert wrote: post #104
ghufran_syed wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you help me understand what aspect of teaching biology in grades k through 3 would be against the provisions of the law in Florida? I studied biology to age 16 in England (“o-levels”) and don’t recall anything even up to that age that would be covered under this law? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Parental_Rights_in_E...

Because it's not just grades K through 3 anymore [1]. The law is pretty broad and moreover the legal costs default to the defendant. Even if my wife didn't do something that was officially illegal, we'd be stuck counter-suing to reclaim legal costs. [1] https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/florida-education-board-ap...

Thanks for the info - but this implies that following the state curriculum would be a pretty easy defence, wouldn't it? So if a teacher wanted to teach about "sexual orientation and gender identity", even outside of the "existing state standards", they could still do so as part of "reproductive health instruction that students can choose not to take" [1] [2].

The closest reference I can find for the legal stuff is here: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/er/...

Everything in that text talks about the parent taking legal action against the school district, not the teacher [3] - same as when citizens sue "the cops", they are usually suing the city that runs that police department, not the individual police officer. So if a teacher is following the rules laid down by their employer (which one assumes would be in accordance with state law), they would presumably be provided counsel by their employer in order to ensure that the employer can actually mount a legal defense? So it sounds no different to being a state employee in a lot of places. Or am I still missing something?

[1] "The rule change would ban lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity through 12th grade unless required by existing state standards or as part of reproductive health instruction that students can choose not to take"

[2] "Educators have said they don’t expect a major change in lesson plans given that teachers adhere to state education curriculums"

[3] "If a concern is not resolved by the school district, a 129 parent may: ... (I) [elided] (II) Bring an action against the school district to obtain a declaratory judgment that the school district procedure or practice violates this paragraph and seek injunctive relief. A court may award damages and shall award reasonable attorney fees and court costs to a parent who receives declaratory or injunctive relief. "

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

#159

Post by PuppyTailWags »

natpalmer1776 wrote: post #146
thebooktocome wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

> I don’t care what CRT is academically

Wut? Aren't you explicitly talking about an academic context? Wouldn't that matter a heck of a lot what class your brother was getting taught? Like, hypothetically I can disagree with feminism but I'm just being stupid if I go to a feminism 101 class and get mad the professor is teaching feminist theories.

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

#160

Post by frob »

stainablesteel wrote: post #147
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…

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 ins…

It's not just through 3rd grade anymore. It's all the way through the end of high school.

https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/florida-education-board-ap...

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