Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate

chronicle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 326 posts

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

#281

Post by UncleMeat »

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.

This isn't a property of tenure. This is a property of schools not caring about teaching. Tenured faculty can still be fired for shitty performance. Eliminating tenure will not change the systems that encourage research output over other kinds of work.

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

#282

Post by UncleMeat »

eslaught wrote: post #131
bluGill wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. T…

Yeah I always laugh when I see people complain about people in the humanities scooping up grant funding. Like, NEH is already basically defunct. When I was in grad school for CS I was on a seven figure grant. My wife is a history professor. Her grants regularly run like $3,000. There is already no money being funneled to the humanities, but people choose to shit on it them incessantly because they haven't the faintest clue how funding works or even what the research output of the humanities looks like.

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

#283

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

The big problem is that the teaching faculty are paid like absolute garbage and have no job security or continuity between semesters. They are widely abused by universities and often are paid at or below wages you'd get working the cash register at Target.

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

#284

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

A good friend of mine is an assistant professor of CS at MIT. He is among the most premier researchers in his field. I'm paid about three times what he is paid working in industry. My wife is a professor of history at a well respected R1 institution. I'm paid like nine times what she is paid. If we compare my salary to the adjuncts at her institution, I'm paid more than 10x what they are earning. All this after the pay cuts for remote work.

Paying Bjarne a lot of money is not remotely representative of the state of academic salaries.

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

#285

Post by skissane »

tombert wrote: post #214
ghufran_syed wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure, but when there’s zero repercussions to a frivolous lawsuit, there’s likely to be a frivolous lawsuit. If a parent can easily lie and try and extort money, it can still be an awful, expensive, exhausting process for my wife. Even if it doesn’t cost us any money directly (which to be completely honest I don’t buy), there’s still the exhausting and awful process of having to defend herself in court. Edit: I would…

> you understand why this would be an immensely unappealing thing for a prospective teacher

Does how it is experienced depend on which “tribe” the teacher is more aligned with? I imagine a teacher who feels closer to the “blue tribe” is going to experience this as an attack on them and their profession, while a “red tribe” teacher is more likely to feel that the target is someone other than them, and may even agree with the law (or at least the intention behind it).

I know US teachers (and public school especially) tend to skew more “blue” than “red”, but I think the latter group are likely a larger percentage of them than many would think, especially in “red states”.

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

#286

Post by RhodesianHunter »

drstewart wrote: post #69
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically people who can say what they want because they have no fear of losing their jobs. Pretty rich coming from the party of "free speech".

>Specifically people who can say what they want because they have no fear of losing their jobs. Ah, like the Supreme Court. Good thing we don't see anyone suddenly wanting to do away with lifetime appointments there, otherwise there might be some hypocrisy floating around.

You're comparing the ability to speak truth to power to the powerful being able to do whatever they want. I'm not sure how you reached the conclusion these are the same.

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

#287

Post by culopatin »

nostrademons wrote: post #196
bjt wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I struggle to see how this benefits Texas , though. Education is an investment in the future; encouraging the best professors to go elsewhere is like saying you want the future to happen elsewhere. Maybe that's what Texas wants, but universities usually bring startups and high-tech jobs along with them. It kinda reminds me of how Texas wanted to get in on the blockchain hype, so they passed legislation making it extr…

Does tenure really make the best professors? In my experience it only creates an incentive up to the point of getting tenure, then most of them hibernate until retirement and take up space without producing much because they have no need to. IMO a good professor is great even without tenure. If they are just trying to fake it til tenure pushing cheap research to then have them take up a slot and resources to sit around, I rather ban tenure.

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

#288

Post by etempleton »

culopatin wrote: post #287
nostrademons wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle to see how this benefits Texas , though. Education is an investment in the future; encouraging the best professors to go elsewhere is like saying you want the future to happen elsewhere. Maybe that's what Texas wants, but universities usually bring startups and high-tech jobs along with them. It kinda reminds me of how Texas wanted to get in on the blockchain hype, so they passed legislation making it extr…

Does tenure really make the best professors? In my experience it only creates an incentive up to the point of getting tenure, then most of them hibernate until retirement and take up space without producing much because they have no need to. IMO a good professor is great even without tenure. If they are just trying to fake it til tenure pushing cheap research to then have them take up a slot and resources to sit arou…

I think you could have more non-tenure track faculty, but eliminating it entirely is a bad ideas unless you are willing to compete on price for top researchers, which colleges are largely opposed to doing.

The up-shot is faculty are going to look elsewhere for jobs.

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

#289

Post by zamnos »

ModernMech wrote: post #271
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opportunity cost is still likely 100k/yr for the rest of your life, even with the FAANG salary to assistant professors. consider this: You can be a new grad, get hired at Apple, and earn an entry-level salary[0]. Let's say we won't include the bonus and you get 130k/yr. You colleague is a new grad and goes to a PhD program at Duke University[1] where they earn 33k/yr. In your first year, your PhD program colleagu…

I appreciate all the research you did, but you're missing several key aspects of how faculty are compensated that changes your analysis. First, faculty salaries as reported are typically 9-month. There's an extra 3 months of earning potential for professors, where they are effectively free agents. They can spend that doing research, or any number of other activities. Or nothing Second, professors own their work produ…

> Indeed, most FAANGs have a clause in their contracts stating that they basically own all ideas you think of, whether on or off the clock

They can claim that all they want, but in California, that's not exactly true. What you do, on your off time, on your own hardware, that isn't related to a work project, is yours.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

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

#290

Post by tombert »

ModernMech wrote: post #277
malshe wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The adjuncts in my department are all there willingly and they seem pretty happy if you listen to them tell it. They are all retired engineers and project managers from a local technology firm. They got bored with retirement and like to come around and supervise projects in the capstone. We pay them a couple grand a semester for it, it's not a lot of work. They like it, our students like it, the faculty like it. Ever…

Yeah, I largely agree; I’m not retired (only in my 30s), but I think for the part time work that I am doing (6 teaching hours a week), I am actually paid reasonably enough. It does bother me that full time professors (tenured or not) are getting paid less than half of what they could easily get in industry though.
Post reply on HN