Comments on: What About Tenure?

By: Ingolf Gruen

Ingolf Gruen — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 19:25:01 +0000

While I generally agree with your analysis in your original blog, I disagree with your reply on the first commenter’s tenure comment: If you compare faculty to CEOs and legislators, and the universities’ administration to board members and the public who can “fire” CEOs and legislators, respectively, then you have it upside down! CEOs and legislators are on the top of the “foodchain” while faculty are at the bottom of their respective food chain (see the assistant prof comment!). The proper comparison would be if the middle manager in a corporation criticizes the CEO and the legislative aid criticzes the legislator, or to enter your world, the journalist criticizes the editors’ decisions. And I am not even getting started on who sits on boards of corporations and who are the CEOs of these corporations? Ever noticed that the board is made up mostly of CEOs or other corporations? And since you looked at the “ignorance” of faculty when it comes to using IT in the classroom, how about the level of “being informed about politics/ignorant of politics” by the general public that supposedly can kick legislators out of office, faculty are verocious IT adopters in that comparison.
You are correct in your last comment though, “I don’t need to be fed by the same hand I am biting”; faculty try to do that too, by setting themselves up as consultants, but that’s for their research/expert knoledge not their teaching knowlege, and there is no good teaching venue yet (with some notable exceptions) where you can make money and be independent of an institution. Setting up “lectures on-line for people to pay for to see” is done via institutions but rather difficult to do on your own, and free blogs have to remain free – (as you know better than I do) the journalistic enterprise is greatly struggling with a similar issue of trying to sell hard-copies of newspapers whent the content is principally available for free on-line – attempts to get people to now pay for it is rather difficult.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:52:53 +0000

I think the true escape from corporate ethos is found in DIY. As a journalist I am free to air my most incendiary opinions here on this blog–under a pseudonym if I want–and they will attract a readership. I don’t need to be fed by the same hand I am biting.

By: Patrick McEvoy-Halston

Patrick McEvoy-Halston — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:59:46 +0000

The movement to make universities seem (just another) corporations has been about undermining the powerful sense that they were abodes of safely ensconced, securely removed, very liberal professors, who were entitled to — who willy-nilly, presumptively, arrogantly would — go about reshaping the world in a liberal direction. It’s about a hollowing out of an opponent, an unnerving of them, a squabble of ethos: leaving us more and more with a world where there is NO escape from corporation ethics — who are “you” to expect anything different. Every last one of you is someone who can be fired on the spot — keep this is mind when you speak your mind: this is what the corporation model now is, not CEO accountability. Tenure does seem a bit old school, but in this climate, I’m more in the direction of wondering how exactly certain journalists could get tenure. If it’s just the market model, I have little faith that even now seemingly useful truth-tellers like you will avoid finding themselves banished to the nervous fear of Wall-mart existence, so we can sense a little more “thank you sir, may I have another” readiness to buckle in your subsequent journalistic forays.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:35:01 +0000

Ok, so tenure exists so the university professors will be protected from the consequences of making unpopular decisions about how to run the university itself? I still don’t get why they should receive special protection in that way.
Managers of a corporation, including even the CEO, have to make decisions every day about how to run it. If the public/ shareholders/employees don’t like those decisions, the managers can be fired and the CEO asked to step down by the board. Same goes for legislators who make decisions and serve at the public’s pleasure. Why should university professors have more protection from the consequences of their opinions than senators?

By: Martyn Smith

Martyn Smith — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:12:00 +0000

But journalists do not actively criticize the institution in which they are a part. New York Times reporters may comment on strategy as news worthy point, but would not play a role in directly challenging management’s decisions.. or they would get in trouble. In many universities the school is faculty run, and that means there must be faculty who stand up and voice opinions unpopular with the president. I am not yet tenured, and you won’t see me sticking my neck out. But tenured faculty can do that.. and take the heat for an unpopular opinion. If all we did was show up and teach, then sure, tenure would be a lot less important. But then the institution of the university would be structured a lot more like a for-profit corporation, with an empowered CEO making market choices. The resistance to that model is in tenure.