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With only 8 percent of private employees belonging to trade unions, job security outside government employment has become a sometime thing. One group of employees, however, does have nearly total job security: tenured university professors. Faculty tenure is under attack as never before in the past 50 years. I like tenure, but why should my group of workers get special protections against the vicissitudes of demand for our “product?” Self-interested arguments about job protection are unsatisfactory. I recently “debated” a journalist on this issue, with the resulting short video from the Texas Tribune:
I believe higher education is a special case—without tenure we would not be Socrates’s “gadfly on the body politic.” But with gadflies increasingly unwelcome, our protections are in danger of being removed at all but the fanciest private institutions.
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In my mind it’s a red flag when anyone argues against accountability. Why are they afraid of it?
I’m sure some academics have valid concerns about how their performance would be evaluated if they were to lose their tenure today. However, in a competitive industry the institutions that do a poor job of evaluating talent would eventually fail because they will let good employees go and retain bad employees. The institutions that understand how to evaluate good talent, whether it be teaching talent, research talent, or some balance of the two, would succeed.
I see no problem with that.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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By all means hold academics accountable for academic integrity, but anything more subjective than that will simply be a means for the political class to put their thumbs on the scale of research.
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While I enjoy and respect Dr. Hamermesh, I must take exception to what he says at the 5:08 to 5:36. I work at a high-level state supported research university with tenure, and as far as teaching goes, the average level of teaching at research universities is remarkably low. The ability to do research and to write for peer-reviewed publications is an entirely different skill set from the ability to impart knowledge effectively in a classroom setting. I have been told by colleagues point blank that “teaching doesn’t matter.” The majority of faculty at a research university don’t have much motivation to apply their teaching skills any more than the bare minimum necessary. When I teach courses at my university (please note I am NOT a tenured-track faculty), my students write in my reviews that they appreciated the fact that my teaching style is so noticeably different from their other faculty. Certainly part of the reason is that as a career educator, I focus on what I can do to make the material easier to acquire. Most of my colleagues are simply focused on making the course material difficult to present the illusion of rigor, but in the end they curve the scores and wind up with the same grade distribution I have. However at the end of the course, the students have a much lower estimation of the subject, the faculty, and often themselves.
To address Dr. Hamermesh’s first two points – the problems are lack of funding and the failure of managers to manage: First, the funding debate is too large for this space, but let me just say that at my university, while there may be a funding problem for specific initiatives or programs, there is not any visible systemic funding problem. Second, it is highly difficult for managers (Deans presumably) to manage when a) most of them lack managerial skills and b) the managers have no controls over the managed. The tenure system makes faculty very non-responsive to the leadership of their deans, because there are no serious consequences to failure to follow. Most dean’s take a kid-glove approach to their faculty with the knowledge that there are few levers available to them to control their behavior.
I would like to say a lot more about this, but as a non-tenured university employee, I need to get back to performing my primary job functions, lest I risk termination.
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If the problem is that tenured research professors make poor classroom instructors, perhaps the solution is to split apart the two functions. Instead of trying to fire people because they can only perform well at one of two completely different jobs that have been conjoined over the years, perhaps professors who teach well can be rewarded separately from their research performance. Make it clear that the part of their compensation tied to instruction is dependent on their performance in instruction. If they perform poorly they will get “fired” as an instructor, but not as a tenured research professor.
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Splitting apart the two functions would be a logical approach, but you cannot approach it because it is part and parcel of the tenure system. Faculty don’t want to give up the teaching portion of their job because it justifies their existence to the outside world. For technical subjects like computer science or engineering where there is a lot of funding available for research, there are a lot of pure researchers, but in subjects with a less practical applications (examples: English, Literature, Art History) teaching is the only option available. Also, if a professor could be “fired” for poor performance as an instructor without losing their tenured research profession, many would actively court that circumstance.
To my original point, though, my complaint is that Dr. Hamermesh maligns faculty at smaller universities and colleges, calling them “second rate,” when the reality is often that faculty at smaller universities can be as good or better than faculty at major research universities, because the incentives for each are aligned quite differently. He is perpetuating a stereotype with no supporting data, and in my personal experience is contrary to the reality I see.
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The problem isn’t tenure, the problem is student based teaching evaluations. Clearly a professor (tenured or not) can easily game the system by dumbing down the material and entertaining the students.
Tenure originated from the concept that proven professors would feel free to engage in more abstract and/or long-term pursuits only if they were able to do so without fear of losing their job. Just look at the biological sciences – constant need to obtain grant money leads to PIs spending very little time doing science as well as focusing on short-term goals that can be easily published rather than long-term or abstract science. I’d argue that science is weakened as a result – more science can be done if our best scientists are able to do science, not writing grants, and if they can think big picture more often.
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Funny, but all the biologists I know talk about how important it is to choose a research program that can be guaranteed to take three decades to complete. There are often interim steps that permit publications, and a few work more than one project, but everyone I know is looking for career-long research ideas, with the goal of becoming “the” expert on some detail.
This is true, but at the same time a biologist better be able to produce meaningful results along a long series of small interim steps. You want to spend 10 years thinking and writing the Origin of Species? Nah, we can’t encourage that, gotta do something that can be broken up into little chunks that you can show progress on each one.
Toothy makes a great point about generating grants. The other part of the financial argument is the tuition of professional grad programs. If you’re going to reward lawyers, MBAs, and doctors with huge salaries, then you need to get qualified people in there to teach them. To get qualified people in there, you’ve got to pay them enough. Our pay is based on what we could get in the private sector to the same sort of work. I’d guess that academia gets faculty at a steep discount to market price, when you look at science, engineering, business, medicine, and law, faculty at research schools. Now, once you get into other disciplines, the economic arguments get shakier.
In response to WR – you seem to have no clue about how research schools work (which is OK – most university students and alum don’t have a clue, either). Your comment would be apt, if you replaced “university” with “community college.” The “books and research papers” that you dismiss as the “rest of the time” is the actual currency for the game that we play. If you want a teacher, you can bring in an adjunct for maybe 25% of what tenure-track faculty get paid. But you will get a mercenary, who will probably teach adequately, but do nothing else (and nor should they, for what they are paid). Adjuncts shouldn’t get tenure – there’s no need for that. That’s the community college model. But for research, projects can often take years. You need to have something that allows for the long game. Tenure is part of that design.
I’m a junior faculty member at a research-ish school (one of those 2nd tier research schools that say they are moving toward Tier I). I’ll end up getting tenure somewhere (even if it’s not at my current institution), as my research is solid (though not necessarily spectacular). So, personally, I’m all for tenure. That said, I could see some tweaks being worthwhile. For example, changing around workloads for those who are not “research active,” even if they have tenure. But from what I’ve seen, research productivity actually goes up with tenured professors (these folks are the best and brightest, and generally have that intrinsic motivation that you want). I’d guess that for most faculty in science, engineering, and business, that even if you changed tenure from a life-long guarantee into something like a series of 10-year renewable contracts, that you’d have virtually the same folks doing well.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I think we should change this system. The current system might benefit you, and you might prefer to call yourself a “university professor” instead of “researcher at a think tank”, but your attitude about teaching students is appalling.
Universities exist, first and foremost, to teach students. That’s why they were formed. That’s why we use tax money to support them. That’s why we send our children there.
We don’t send students to the university so that you can write books or conduct research. You can write books at home; you can conduct research in a separate, non-teaching institution. There’s nothing magical about the university environment that helps you do these things.
There is something special about the university environment for teaching students. Or, there used to be, before people like you decided that teaching could be left to poorly paid, temporary adjuncts, instead of being a specialized, important skill set that ought to be prized, well-paid, and well-protected.
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“Universities exist, first and foremost, to teach students. That’s why they were formed. That’s why we use tax money to support them. That’s why we send our children there.”
Well, no. Some universities exist first and foremost to teach students. Others exist first and foremost to do research. This is quite explicit — tax money (research grants) is given specifically to do research. Where do you think all the science in this country gets done?
“We don’t send students to the university so that you can write books or conduct research. You can write books at home; you can conduct research in a separate, non-teaching institution. There’s nothing magical about the university environment that helps you do these things.”
Maybe research *should* be done in separate non-teaching institutions, but the fact is that for basic science research at least, it isn’t. The university is the primary location for such work in the US. Students are free to go to universities that focus primarily on teaching if that’s what they want to do. If they choose to go to a research university, they should recognize that that’s what they’re doing.
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Dear “enter your name,”
Actually, you don’t know anything about my attitude toward teaching students. You know why? Because I didn’t say a thing about my attitude toward teaching. If that’s “appalling,” then it’s only because you’re filling in the blanks with whatever your preconceived notion was. My comment was (or at least intended to be) about how if teaching was the main goal of an institution, then it’s a lot cheaper to bring in adjuncts (or non-tenure track faculty). You’re the one implying that adjuncts are unskilled. I’d argue that many of them are really good at what they do. The point is, you can put a lot of people in front of a classroom. Not nearly as many can conduct legitimate research, and at a research university, that’s the job. There are teaching schools, who are in the business of teaching students. These schools range from community colleges, to for-profit schools like Phoenix, to vocational schools, to teaching schools. The quality of the classroom education varies, I would imagine, as well. We’re not talking about those places. At a research school, as non-tenured faculty, we are asked to basically: a) do research, and b) not suck at teaching. As tenured faculty, we are asked to basically: a) do research, b) serve on committees and serve as mentors, and c) not suck at teaching.
Furthermore, I’d suggest that having more real academics (and not adjuncts) in front of a classroom is a good thing. How often do you have adjuncts guide independent studies? Or advise students? Or offer service to student organizations? Or serve on dissertation committees? That’s where tenured and tenure-track faculty come into play. Someone who is tenured or on tenure-track will bring students into the fold for research, be a mentor, etc. A hired gun (adjunct) doesn’t get paid nearly enough to do that stuff. That’s one of the the major differences between an undergrad education at a university and going to a community college. And again, my personal observation is that tenured faculty do better here, because they have that intrinsic motivation.
One aspect people are failing to recognize is that not all university professors have the same outside options. Economists, unlike many other social scientists, can find lucrative jobs outside academia. Likewise, many engineers and hard scientists are able to do the same. I am a PhD student in economics; and tenure and the lifestyle of academia are usually what draws my peers and professors to those jobs. I would worry that if tenure were to be eliminated, faculty in certain disciplines might flee to the private sector.
And this would harm society how, exactly?
If you’re interested in doing X, and you do X at a university, or X at a think tank, or X for the government, or even X for a private corporation, society still gets the benefit of you doing X. The only difference is that only the first arrangement requires you to pretend to care about students while you’re doing what you actually care about, while the others don’t.
We need to give our colleges and universities back to the students. We need to re-structure our universities so that teaching the undergraduate student is the #1 priority.
One small point: I’m not certain that colleges and universities were ever focused on teaching undergraduate students. There should be a greater focus so that we may reduce the production of college graduates who have little practical knowledge and an ability to contribute to society that is unchanged or has worsened since graduating high school. But how many present faculty possess the ability to do that? For those who have not returned to academia after a life in the private sector, I would guess that the number is extremely low.
To my original point, though; one can’t “give back” something to someone who never had ownership of something. Placing the student at the center of higher education is a completely novel concept for most institutions.
Well, we’ll start with the observation that you’re clearly not a historian.
If you look at the origin of the university, which occurred in the early Medieval era, teaching students was not only the “primary” task of the professors, it was their “only” task. This was hundreds of years before the Gutenberg printing press was invented. “Publish or perish” was still centuries away. A university was defined by and existed for its teaching, not for research programs or patents. Teaching involved the direct interaction between professors and students. Lectures and discussions were (by far) the primary methods of teaching.
The notion of the university as a desirable location to conduct basic research is the largely invention of the 20th century. Even by the mid-20th century, when WWII forced research to become a significant component, we still had full, tenured professors who believed that teaching — meaning teaching undergrads, including introductory courses, not just supervising a couple of graduate students — was the university’s critical mission.
So putting the student at the center of education is only “completely novel” if you mean “something I personally have not encountered during my own career” rather than “something that never happened”.
Great post, Mallory.
I’m kind of tired of people these days being up in arms about these sorts of protected classes of the workforce that have more security and an ostensibly better life than they do, which help retain the middle class (or at least mitigate the downward spiral of it). The reality is our society–and private industry for that matter–benefits a lot from tenure and the research that goes on in universities. But when unemployment is high, then anyone enjoying tenure is called into question, or job-secure folks in public unions are brow-beaten by scared, “disposable” private sector workers. Well, if your neighbor has it better than you, strive to match him by moving yourself up, not by bringing him down.
Somehow tenured professors have become the R&D labs of private industry, paid for (at least in part) by students’ tuition. They teach hardly at all. This is a puzzle.
I remember when there were real R&D labs funded by companies that made profits from the products that were developed–Westinghouse, Sylvania, GE, RCA, Bell Labs. Some of these still exist but they have been hollowed out and now act mainly as a conduit from the university to the factory.
Historically the company-college wall came down for the effort of winning WWII, but they never got separated after the war.
Better that the companies should run their own universities.
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At my university, the R&D is done overwhelmingly for the US Federal Government, and not private companies. Companies running their own R&D labs doesn’t seem to be economically viable anymore, as the cost of R&D has become so high that corporations can’t bear the entire cost themselves with dedicated R&D staff.
Mr. Jones’ argument above speaks to the difference between science and technology. Let’s call technology “applied science,” creating “things” that can enhance a person and/or the company, then that’s great work for the private sector to do (keeping in mind, also, that private research tends to remain private–and should–until ‘enough’ profit has been gained).
But how does pure science, which advances the knowledge of humanity–usually without a clear path to profit–get funded? In the US, some cutting-edge science and technology is at pure government labs (think nukes and military applications), while the rest is government grants out to any lab that wants to apply to do it–with universities seeming to take the majority of those. This use of taxpayer $ is justifiable under the “rising tide raises all ships” theory, plus without the profit motive, gov’t funding and philanthropy are the only real funding options available for pure science.
If the evolution of the pure science “industry” (and arts industry) has included job security for the chief researchers, we should not be quick to dismiss that evolution. It’s possible, and even likely, that both the freedom to pursue long term projects AND the freedom from institutional pressures were BOTH good reason in support of the evolution of tenure.
Those who do not study history, are doomed to repeat it. I have noted that most academics and university administrators are both liberal and at this point in history conservative teachers ( a minority) are more in danger of losing their jobs than liberals. That is probably why many professors question the value of tenure. However, the pendulum of hisory does swing. That is why we need tenure. To protect the free expression of ideas that are unpopular. Remember that Gallileo was censured for suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun .
Academics is very different, I think, than, say, working for Wal-mart. In academics, you are almost required to offer your opinion, show your take on things, etc. If not, if it’s all just “the facts, ma’am,” then we can have computers do that job for us. By definition, a real education is more than just regurgitating the facts. Thus, a history professor is required to do more than just give us the names and the dates. He offers views that help us better understand the MEANING of those facts.
If I work at Wal-mart, my opinion is not really necessary. At the worst, Wal-mart may not get to take advantage of some efficiency I might suggest. But in college, a failure to offer my own take at appropriate points, not only homogenizes education, but FAILS the student by not forcing them to see things from different perspectives.
THAT MUST BE PROTECTED. If a professor isn’t giving me his viewpoint, then he’s giving me someone else’s…. It might be the viewpoint of some vast right-wing conspiracy…or some far left vegan groups…or it might even be some mainstream American viewpoint. But it is the diversity of opinions that force students to think, confront, wrestle…and become educated.
Tenure ensures that the people that SHOULD have opinions, that SHOULD be teaching our children to think outside the box, are protected so that they can continue to force our students to get out of lock-step, to see that there is a wider, bigger world, that there are many questions not yet as settled as the Democrats or Republicans would have us think.
Just as the press must be protected, since there are powers that do not want the press to report certain information, so, too, must professors and teachers be protected to speak their minds.
At the same time, tenure should not protect abject laziness, libel/slander, and clear impropriety. But as far as academics is concerned, tenure should be largely inviolable.
The University, if it wants, can protect an atmosphere of tolerance for dissenting views by choosing not to fire people for expressing them and making clear that it’s their policy not to.
There is no way to prove whether someone is being fired for expressing a dissenting view or being fired for something else, so tenure systems, like all “closed shop” union clique situations, results in giving a blank cheque to whoever’s been there the longest and can game the system the best.
Consequently, the academic freedom of younger professors, or those less willing to commit social manipulation/pandering, is supressed, and the University has no means of demanding better peformance from the older and more socially manipulative older professors who achieve tenure. We pay may for fewer results and less academic freedom.
And, while tolerance for dissenting views is usually a good thing, in terms of private funding, it’s not an absolute. It’s no one’s obligation to fund their intellectual enemies. It’s not the obligation of businesses, or the public, or the University, to subsidize ideas that will lead to their own destruction. You have a right to speech, not to force others to provide an audience or a microphone.
Consequenty, the possibility that the University might fire professors for expressing a dissenting view doesn’t give the most senior professors the right to hold everyone else hostage in order to prevent this.
There’s always the possibility that someone is going to fire or otherwise break ties with you for reasons you consider illegitimate. In a free society, both parties have the right to look elsewhere if this happens. The solution isn’t to give one arbitrary power over the other.
I’ve been in school a long time, and I can say unequivocally that I have had a better much better experience in classes taught by tenured faculty than by lecturers, etc.
Intellectual freedom is not just about protecting “controversial” views, it is about allowing professors to be unique, interesting individuals.
Fair enough, but by holding tenure out there until the professors have years with the university, aren’t we quashing the academic freedom for both “dissenting opinions” and “interesting individuals” early in their career? As well, tenure makes it difficult to fire one of these interesting individuals even when they do something that richly deserves firing.
I’m with Derrick. Far better to make it a policy not to fire people for their opinions or interesting behavior, so long as they continue to do work in their chosen field. Then everyone, not just the gray-beards, have academic freedom.