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

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

#291

Post by onetimeusename » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 3:34 AM 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…

those who become professors typically forgo vastly higher salaries in industry

I don't think this is generally true. I can think of a few cases of tenured faculty who could earn 10x their salary in private consulting but in my opinion it's generally not true. I think a good comparison would be to look at the average salary of something like Microsoft Research employees who are PhDs versus the average salary of tenured faculty of Computer Sciences at a highly ranked school like UT Austin. I suspect it won't be substantially different (based on job offers I have seen).

Although I don't know what a vastly higher salary means here, I suspect that the largest entrants in private industry for quantum computing would not pay vastly higher salaries than Scott Aaronson's ~$270K for work in that field.

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

#292

Post by ModernMech » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 3:35 AM UTC

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…

Once you get tenure you still need to make full professor. The bar there is that you have to have made a name for yourself, and that doesn’t happen if you hibernate.

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

#293

Post by ModernMech » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 3:41 AM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #283

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…

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.

You may be confusing adjuncts, which are part time temporary features, sort of line substitutes; and teaching faculty, which are full faculty members without research responsibilities. They are certainly paid better than Target cashiers.

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

#294

Post by ModernMech » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 3:56 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #285

tombert wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

When the anti-woke mobs come for teachers, they won’t care about their political affiliations. Leopards eat all faces.

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

#295

Post by ModernMech » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 3:58 AM UTC

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #203

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…

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.

Wouldn’t the incentive be to stay relevant?

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

#296

Post by ModernMech » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 4:01 AM UTC

runnerup wrote: post #170

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…

These roles already exist. The standard one is 25/75 teaching research split. Then there are teaching faculty who do all teaching, and research faculty who do all research. I’m kind of 50/50 in my role.

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

#297

Post by abdullahkhalids » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 4:15 AM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #295

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn’t the incentive be to stay relevant?

Always, ask what is the economics of things.

Full time teaching faculty teach 3 courses every semester, for it to make financial sense to pay them for full time salaried role. Trying to teach a course well takes at least 12-15 hours of work every week, if not more. That's already more than 40 hours per week. Add a few hours of service requirements to this as well.

Where is the time or the mental energy to learn new stuff? At best they will supervise an undergraduate thesis or two every year, where perhaps the students will teach them some new stuff.

It's only the gifted, who are able to keep up. The average faculty member just falls further and further behind.

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

#298

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 4:48 AM UTC

nextos wrote: post #270

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Other countries have suppressed tenure in the past, Denmark comes to mind I could be wrong but I don't think it's correct https://employment.ku.dk/tenure-track/tenure-track-at-ucph/ any links on that?

They call it like that, but you can be fired anytime, even if you are a full professor.

Ok I did some more research and I guess you're right although I haven't found anything exactly authoritative about what exactly it means

http://www.informationsordbogen.dk/concept_comment.php?cid=6...

https://www.forskerforum.dk/aktuelt/2022/august/tysk-forsker...

however in Denmark there is more protection in general against getting fired than in the U.S although not as much as other European countries, also a period when you've been let go you have severance, I think most I.T jobs are 3 months although I have seen some situations where it's 4 months. Maybe it's longer for academia.

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

#299

Post by tombert » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 4:52 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #285

tombert wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

The thing that concerns me is that there’s very little consequence for outright lying. Even if we did buy into the groomer conspiracies and play everything exactly how Ron Desantis wanted, that won’t necessarily stop an unscrupulous parent from just outright lying and making our lives difficult.

I don’t think a majority of parents would do that (conservative or otherwise), but all it really takes is one to make our lives frustrating.

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

#300

Post by tombert » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 5:06 AM UTC

bsder wrote: post #279

drstewart wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes

You would be wrong. I chose those scenarios specifically because I know the teachers and professors who had gadflies coming after them. My own father used to have to deal with things as a high school English and history teacher due to a local Catholic priest. Tiny-ass town, practically all Caucasian population, rural as hell. And even he had to deal with these kinds of idiots. Tenure meant he could effectively tell t…

I teach CS, so I haven’t had any threats or disputes with local churches or anything. However, I have had to deal with angry parents screaming at me because they just don’t understand why their kid is failing. One of them even pulled up my LinkedIn and tried to tattle on me to the chairperson [1].

If I’m getting complaints like that from parents in a pretty un-controversial thing like programming, I suspect people teaching evolution or history have it way worse.

[1] They seemed to think it was some smoking gun that I had another job, in addition to teaching, and thought that the chairperson should be informed. The chairperson called me into their office and asked what it was about, I showed them the previous email correspondence, and they laughed, since I had already been pretty straightforward about my current work.