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

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

#191

Post by giantg2 » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:38 PM UTC

stametseater wrote: post #148

threeseed wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US government should focus on making higher education more affordable. In Australia for example college debt is managed through the taxation system allowing people to invest in the careers in the early days and then pay off their debt when their taxable income reaches a high enough threshold.

America has affordable higher education; state schools and community colleges are generally very affordable. The problem is when naive highschool students get lured into taking on huge amounts of debt by expensive private schools that have no intention of teaching undergrads well, but nevertheless assert that pretense to lure in more suckers.

And when they want to live away from home.

The living arrangements are getting more expensive. My college tore down their old, low cost dorms. They replaced them with suites that cost twice as much.

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

#192

Post by verall » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:38 PM UTC

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #128

nextos wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 get your using glassdoor and citing sources, but it's even worse, because someone competent enough to go straight into an associate prof position after PhD would guaranteed be making more than $200k at 6 years tenure at Apple, probably closing in on $300k.

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

#193

Post by spaceman_2020 » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

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'm not sure if the core duty of a professor at a research institution should even be teaching vs research...

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

#194

Post by robwwilliams » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #128

nextos wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Great analysis and arguably much too conservative. But the assumption is that positions in industry are equally stable. In the world of startups not so much. And Google and Facebook making even FAANG look volatile.

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

#195

Post by giantg2 » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

gammarator wrote: post #190

giantg2 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Correct. But universities want researchers because they bring in research grants (which provide the university 50%+ in overhead: slush funds).

It seems the state schools don't have as much incentive for that. The university president decided to build a conference center while I was at school. They didn't have all the money secured, so the state jumped in to pay a lot and tuition. Went up substantially. They're already cheap so the have no competition pressure and they know the state will bail them out.

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

#196

Post by nostrademons » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

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…

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 extremely friendly to Bitcoin mining, which happens to be the most competitive, low-margin, environmentally damaging part of the crypto ecosystem. Meanwhile most of the high-margin profit centers (exchanges, DeFi protocols, new blockchain technologies) remained in the Bay Area. It's like Texas is awfully fond of setting up selection filters and then selects for the mediocre.

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

#197

Post by robwwilliams » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

DrSAR wrote: post #136

542458 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that I don’t understand is that: * Academics say publish or perish is terrible and produces warped incentives. * Academics say they need tenure to protect senior researchers from the publish or perish system. * But academics seem to be the ones building grant and advancement systems that enforce “publish or perish”. I don’t get it - it certainly sounds like tenure mostly protects senior academics from syste…

I think your incorrect assumption is that tenured faculty are running and shaping the universities. Much has been written about the rise of different class in the academy: administrators. For a somewhat extreme position look here [1]. And even tenured faculty are subjected to the performance assessments that can seriously hinder their research agenda. As the saying goes: Tenure has never protected those who really ne…

Ahmen!

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

#198

Post by abdullahkhalids » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

edrxty wrote: post #37

satysin wrote: post #4

So the Texas Senate just passed a bill that makes it more likely that Texas faculty hires will be from a smaller and no doubt lower quality pool of candidates? Why take a job without the possibility of tenure vs anywhere else in the US that has the option available to you?

Getting rid of tenure is fine but they'll need to pay much more to stay competitive. The calculous is fairly simple. Tenure track and then have an easy work life but less money, or go to industry and make lots of money but work more. Nothing wrong with either but if you get rid of the upsides to academia expect to replace them with something. That's just how market economies work. The issue isn't stem so much as the…

> Tenure track and then have an easy work life

Most faculty works much longer hours than the private sector. It's not easy by any means.

People become professors for exactly the same reason why some people become doctors and others real estate agents - they enjoy it or their personality matches the profession.

Money is not everything.

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

#199

Post by Cyph0n » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

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.

Here is how I look at it.

Major universities have two functions: (1) teaching and (2) research. Teaching is further split between (1a) undergrad (basic) and (1b) graduate (advanced).

You could definitely sustain (1a) without the incentive (or carrot) of tenure. This is how most community colleges work.

(1b) and (2) currently rely on the existence of tenure. Teaching advanced courses (1b) requires research experience. Finding people willing to spend their lives in research (2) requires some kind of incentive, especially in STEM fields.

As others have mentioned, to eliminate tenure, you need to provide an equivalent incentive. If you don’t, you’ll end up with a race to the bottom and a very probable exodus of academics to either other states or - even worse - other countries.

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

#200

Post by yodsanklai » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 9:44 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…

> More precisely, it would be the immediate end of our ability to recruit competitively,

I wonder. For one thing, tenure can be replaced by higher salaries. Who knows, maybe these universities will get more bang for their bucks that way. After all, there are industrial research labs that play in the same league as the top research universities.

And there are other forces that make people want to pursue academic careers. Academics are very ego-driven, they measure their success in prizes, grants, publications, so if these universities give them the means to do that, they'll still attract top talent.