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

111–120 of 326 posts

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

#111

Post by natpalmer1776 »

tombert wrote: post #94
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…

> actively retaliate against students who try to stand up for their faith. Outside of chain emails and the movie "God's Not Dead", has this really happened? Anecdata, but when I took an intro to philosophy course my professor was pretty open to religious people talking about their justification for stuff. For that matter, I took a "religious ethics" class, which spent a not-insignificant time talking about Christian…

[deleted]

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

#112

Post by zoolily »

aborsy wrote: post #81
tristor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The change in academia is largely correlated with the fall-off of tenured positions in favor of adjunct faculty and the explosion of administration. I don't think it indicates that there is no need for tenure, but rather that tenure provided a bulwark against the very outcomes we now are seeing.

In some sense, everyone is adjunct. People who work in industry have fixed-term renewable contracts. If job security is to be offered, extend it to other professions as well, as French do (with their CDI contracts). The main point is, professors don’t need life-time protection in many fields where research is increasingly focused on obtaining results in short term, and has become money driven. The gap between the typ…

Most industry positions are much better than adjunct positions. Adjunct faculty are temporary part-time workers who teach one or two classes per term. They are paid $1000-4000 per class without benefits, which is less than minimum wage when you count time to prepare for class, grade, and interact with students outside of class. A quarter of adjuncts depend on public assistance programs like food stamps to survive.

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

#113

Post by Kevin_S »

aborsy wrote: post #6

Honestly, it may not be a bad thing. Tenure was meant to protect the academic freedom, and pursuit of the long-term scientific research. Today, most academics chase money, grants, trends, citations and status. It’s a job like any other, and doesn’t need protection, at cost to those outside the ivory tower (unless perhaps for a very small subset).

But removing tenure will only increase the incentives of chasing those things.

And I don't understand how others in this thread are saying academic freedom isn't necessary anymore/doesn't matter. The entire purpose of the republican party attacking tenure is so they can explicitly attack academic freedom.

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

#114

Post by [deleted] »

nextos wrote: post #83
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…

Note some good US universities pay entry-level FAANG salaries to assistant professors. If you can negotiate a low teaching load, it might be OK in some cases. Nonetheless, I agree with what you say. I'd add there is a ton of nasty politics, bullying, etc. which might be hard to avoid while you are on tenure track chasing tenure.

[deleted]

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

#115

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#116

Post by vkou »

majormajor wrote: post #88
Centigonal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disagree, but it's still a bit puzzling beyond the just "political theater"/"retributional politics" approach: * if they don't control the administration of the schools, this only serves to make it harder to hire anybody and easier to fire those who the administration doesn't agree with . Presumably conservatives. That's a net loss. * if they do control the administration (or have a path to getting that contr…

> * if they don't control the administration of the schools,

They control the purse strings.

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

#117

Post by zimzam »

bluGill wrote: post #108
kevinmchugh wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the university level, good teaching is a value only some institutions hold. They'll all say they care, but research schools are paying way more attention to grants, publications, parents, etc than to student evals. There are universities that prioritize teaching over research and, unsurprisingly, they tend to have better teaching professors. I went to a school that didn't emphasize research and never had a TA teac…

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…

In my experience Humanities professors cared way more about the classes they taught. It was the Engineering / "Hard Science" professors cared way more about the research and treated teaching undergraduates as a chore and/or an afterthought. (Though there were a couple of exceptions)

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

#118

Post by Kevin_S »

kjksf wrote: post #58
ModernMech wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems to me that something so simple couldn't possibly work... Well, what kind of knowledge do you have of university internals? Most people here on HN who want to get rid of university admin are on the outside looking in, and find it very hard to understand what all the admin do. In my experience, when I start to explain that a university is more like a town than a school, and "admin" are in fact the people who…

Here's the problem with your "admins are so absolutely necessary" argument. Per https://mndaily.com/193678/uncategorized/statistics-show-inc... between 1999 and 2010 admin jobs increased 75% across universities. Per https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-... over the last 20 years, the number of managerial and professional staff that Yale employs has risen three times faster than the undergraduat…

OK but you also have to measure the services the university provides to students through the increase in administration. Things listed already in this thread articulate that students desire these services.

I think if you seriously looked at the difference in the level/sophistication of services over those 20 years, it explains the vast majority of the bloat.

Students are getting what they pay for, and ultimately they demand greater services.

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

#119

Post by thebooktocome »

natpalmer1776 wrote: post #101
thebooktocome wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the real world of academia, CRT is a legal theory, not a biological one.

[deleted]

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.

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

#120

Post by threeseed »

bluGill wrote: post #108
kevinmchugh wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the university level, good teaching is a value only some institutions hold. They'll all say they care, but research schools are paying way more attention to grants, publications, parents, etc than to student evals. There are universities that prioritize teaching over research and, unsurprisingly, they tend to have better teaching professors. I went to a school that didn't emphasize research and never had a TA teac…

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…

Well thankfully people like you are in the minority and can be safely ignored.

Because learning more about our history and the world we live in furthers humanity in immeasurable ways often only appreciated years and decades in the future.

Post reply on HN