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

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

#161

Post by fmajid » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:19 PM UTC

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.

And even tenured UT or A&M professors will seek to move out to tenured positions elsewhere because no one wants to go down with a sinking ship. This is a singularly bad idea as Texas had successfully transitioned from being a resource extraction economy to a technology and medical one.

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

#162

Post by linuxftw » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:20 PM UTC

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…

This comment presumes that public universities are the proper venues for this type of research. They're not.

The only reason people are foregoing higher salaries to work at universities is because universities have pushed private research almost completely off the map.

And even if public research is necessary, it doesn't need to be part of the university system. Ever heard of the NSA? They do research, yet somehow they're able to exist without being a university.

(Not saying OP is disagreeing or agreeing with the statement from the article).

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

#163

Post by rayiner » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:22 PM UTC

Centigonal wrote: post #31

majormajor wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's somewhat interesting is that this is a move being made by people who simultaneously claim to want more freedom of expression in general. It's obvious to see how there could be non-Republican-friendly results of faculty being easier to fire for, say, a controversial twitter post. So what's the thinking here? Seems like it could be... * pure political theater, without really focusing on long-term affects * the r…

I think nearly everyone who says "I want more freedom of expression" leaves out the quiet part, which is "...for people who think like I do." There are many, many examples of supposed "free speech advocates" trying to silence dissenting voices or criticism. Under that assumption, it makes perfect sense that Texas conservatives, believing colleges are liberal bastions that spread ideas they disagree with, would see an…

I don’t think “nearly everyone” is a correct assessment. The current conservative coalition includes a lot of Gen X and Millennials. In 2022, the D advantage among voters 30-44 in 2022 was down to 4 points: https://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/.... These are folks who grew up in the 1990s in a much more permissive free speech culture. These are not necessarily the same folks as the ones in the Texas Senate.

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

#164

Post by uberman » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:23 PM UTC

kpw94 wrote: post #132

tiedieconderoga wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sti…

You might be able to cherry pick some outliers for sure. Just like at any company or institute. I can tell you from personal experience though that the going rate for a new hire full STEM professor with tenure at a prior institution was 95k at UT Austin in that time period.

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

#165

Post by natpalmer1776 » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:23 PM UTC

petsfed wrote: post #150

natpalmer1776 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 electr…

[deleted]

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

#166

Post by ok_dad » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:24 PM UTC

moab wrote: post #99

ok_dad wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don't know what you're talking about. Research and teaching at the upper-division level can and should be two sides of the same coin.

I agree with your point that upper division courses need researcher involvement, but please try to be less rude about how you say things. This is a comment thread, so there’s no need to act like that, you could make your actual point in a nicer way and I would have seen it like the commenter above you and agreed that I overlooked this case. have a great weekend.

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

#167

Post by squokko » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

csa wrote: post #135

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.

I'm talking about the people who seem like they could win a Nobel Prize someday when they're just finishing their PhD, not the people who already have one.

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

#168

Post by giantg2 » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

uberman wrote: post #156

fn-mote wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"If one wanted to be educated by lecturers then they could attend a community college."

I'd argue that the vast majority of classes at a state school (what this rule affects) are already taught by non-research personnel.

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

#169

Post by rayiner » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

ghufran_syed wrote: post #158

tombert wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 he…

> they could still do so as part of "reproductive health instruction that students can choose not to take"

Wait, so it’s okay to teach about sexuality in the class where it’s most likely to be a relevant topic of discussion?

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

#170

Post by runnerup » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

ajford wrote: post #92

So as a Texan I'm on the fence here. I wasn't directly involved (as a student and TA), but spent a fair while in academia, and was rather close personal friends with a number of adjunct professors, tenure-track profs, post-docs, and grad students. I was looking at staying in academics so I had many long discussions about the state of things (at least at the time, about a decade ago). There was a lot of concern in the…

I also feel like if achieving Tenure then allowed profs to stop "playing the game" and start "focusing on the students"...that getting rid of tenure means no one can ever stop "playing the game" and will never be able to "focus on the students".

Personally I feel there are two different jobs in academia that need to be split up: Teaching students, and doing research. I feel that professors should be able to apple for jobs specifying a 60/40, 50/50, 75/25, 100/0, 0/100 split between those two roles. Don't make people research who just want to teach. And dont force students to suffer professors who don't want to teach them.