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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

#201

Post by Alupis »

petsfed wrote: post #178
Alupis wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I worked retail for 2 years after completing a master's in condensed matter and transistor physics. It just happened to be during a time (~2014) when that degree alone was insufficient in getting me a job, even an entry-level one. I think barring student loans is part of the strategy. Also, focusing on financial literacy prior to high school graduation. If we must have student loans, then colleges need to publish dat…

Speaking to your situation - I've come to think that degree programs that only "pay off" after a certain level is obtained (masters, phd, credential, license, etc) - then there should not be an option to get out of the program until it's completed.

By that I mean eliminating the intermediary and largely useless degrees. You would instead enter into the Condensed Matter Program, which at the end awards a phd, and nothing in between.

This sort of program could still offer minors/concentrations and elective/exploratory classes, but the main degree program would only result in the final destination.

I could be persuaded this is a terrible idea - but the idea here is to eliminate the ability for someone to footgun themselves after dedicating 6-8 years to a degree that ends up being worthless.

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

#202

Post by natpalmer1776 »

thebooktocome wrote: post #181
natpalmer1776 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Why bother removing it? You're not under the impression that misrepresenting your brother's anecdote matters. I'm happy we drilled down and got to what really happened, which as far as I can tell was something along the lines of, "my professor said something about race once and it hurt my feelings." In Florida (and probably in Texas, too, or soon enough I imagine), I think that's a felony now!

I removed it because I'm tired of responding about the individual anecdotes without anyone actually acknowledging the root argument. I don't want to write a three page essay on how I verify information that affects my general outlook of the world, and then dismiss and forget the details surrounding the verification of information as immaterial to the view I now hold.

I'm not an academic, I'm just a regular guy who happens to have had bad experiences with professors abusing their positions of authority. I don't have sources to cite, and this belief holds such a small peripheral place in my world view that I don't have the level of detail available to deal with this level of... whatever the hell this was.

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

#203

Post by abdullahkhalids »

natpalmer1776 wrote: post #73
bsder wrote: post #51

Earlier 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…

The replacement for tenure track faculty is teaching only faculty, which is already happening across the world.

Teaching only faculty have even less incentive and time to stay on top of research progress. 10 years out of their PhD, the teaching only faculty is hopelessly out of touch of the state of the art in any super active field.

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

#204

Post by mbreese »

bjt wrote: post #153
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 rac…

The point of hiring faculty isn't to have a collection of impressive faculty doing cutting edge work. Otherwise, you'd get the same effect by funding corporate R&D research. I mean, yes, they can collect more federal grant resources, but that's not why a state government wants to fund it. Prestige is one factor, but it's not the only factor... because you're right, funding the rat race isn't the point.

The point is to hire faculty doing cutting edge work is that they train students. They teach others in a field. Then you get to grow the local knowledge base about a particular method or field. Hopefully, you're training citizens of the state, who then will stay locally instead of going to a different state (avoiding a brain drain). Or just as likely, you're trying to draw in students from out of state or internationally. And then (hopefully) those people will want to stay within the state, either for more research, or to start/join local companies.

It's not the primary effect of the faculty that you want... that's nice, but it's the second order network effects that a state really wants to encourage.

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

#205

Post by screye »

While the intentions of this change are admittedly malicious, I support the move away from the traditional concept of tenure.

Tenure is about exploiting researchers through their 20s as PhDs/post-docs and 30s as assistant-professors, with tenure being a possibility at 40. In the best case scenario, these researchers hit 40, and enjoy what is really an early retirement. Reality is, many will find that nothing is good enough to get tenure at an R1 institute.

With the industry moving as fast as it is, professors become obsolete rather quickly. Just look at the huge number of new professors in crypto and NLP, whose entire labs have become obsolete overnight. Honestly, the over-production of PhDs is a big problem today. Hopefully these changes will be the much-needed slap in the face needed for a whole generation of new PhDs to look elsewhere for employment. Tenure is a winner take all system, where the small number who succeed, do it at the expense of the far-too-late disillusionment of the majority.

There are broadly 2 different types of academics. The economically productive ones and the money sinks. The money sink academics (Non-stem, non-business) are doomed to a life in academia, irrespective of tenure. They aren't employable in their profession elsewhere, effectively captives of the system. The economically productive ones will be given great 'deals' by the university anyway. These people are important, and universities will raise wages, give work-life balance deals, allow them to have their own practice and give them long contracts. Tenure is a flaky lever used liberally today, but forcing universities into offering more concrete deals is probably better for the employees overall. College basketball doesn't need to offer tenure to $$hire$$ the very best coaches .

Tenure's main benefits were that professors were unfireable. In 2023, we see professors being practically bullied into submission by students. We see professors lose creative control over their departments with administrative takeover. Professors are slaves to their funding sources, in a manner that is no different than working in industry. The only appeal of tenure is thus idea of 'early academic retirement'. But that too is a lie, because the system will have squeezed every bit out of you. You might as well be a 65-yr-old in a 40 yr old's body by the time you get tenure.

Tenure won't just go away. It will be replaced by more flexible deals. I for one, am looking forward to a change in academia, that adjusts to the death of honor based systems and the realities of a completely messed up supply-demand equation between universities and candidates.

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

#206

Post by subpixel »

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 was accepted to a UT Austin graduate program. After being accepted, I flew on my own dime to meet with the director and associate director, and several professors, because I couldn't imagine dedicating several years of my life and career path based on some paperwork alone.

The director was unfamiliar with my published work, which had gotten some acclaim and been featured _alongside his own_ at two industry events that summer. At one of them, I had introduced myself! It was a tense, 'look kid, why are you here?' meeting, that made it clear he had no idea who was coming to study in his tiny department and didn't care.

The associate director didn't show up to her office for our meeting, she was out of town. This was before the era of calendar-RSVPs, but she had confirmed via email a little more than a week prior.

That department may have been more of a mess than others, I never spent time in academia after all. But both of those folks had tenure, and I think it contributed to the zero shits they had to give.

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

#207

Post by malshe »

tombert wrote: post #71
kevinmchugh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I think @kevinmchugh meant that the adjuncts are exploited everywhere.

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

#209

Post by 0xBDB »

bjt wrote: post #153
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 rac…

As a practical matter I doubt UT and A&M will be affected at all. They're two of the richest universities in the United States thanks in large part to the Permanent University Fund (i.e., oil money). They'll 1) raise pay substantially and 2) tap their big-money donors to create professorial sinecures that amount to unofficial tenure.

If you get fired because of the legislature's antics, but still get your salary and have access to quasi-university resources (grad assistants and labs), were you really fired?

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

#210

Post by medler »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #85

Clarifying a bad headline: it's not that tenure can't be offered (only) to new faculty. It's that henceforth nobody would be given tenure, even if they were already employees. Existing employees who are already tenured would be grandfathered. And obviously only for public institutions.

> It's that henceforth nobody would be given tenure, even if they were already employees.

If I’m understanding you correctly, I think this is not true? “The legislation would apply only to faculty members hired by Texas colleges after January 1, 2024. Professors who have tenure, have applied for tenure, or are on the tenure track would not be affected.”

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