{"id":37984,"date":"2017-02-25T14:57:25","date_gmt":"2017-02-25T22:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=37984"},"modified":"2017-02-25T14:57:25","modified_gmt":"2017-02-25T22:57:25","slug":"two-states-remove-tenureretroactively","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/two-states-remove-tenureretroactively\/","title":{"rendered":"Two more States remove tenure\u2026retroactively"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"protecttenure\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The mainstream media\u2019s narrative really seems to be that tenure, and not the takeover by administrators (and social justice warriors), is a big part of the collapse of higher education.<\/p>\n

Hey, I realize that \u201cjob for life\u201d does sound like it has immense potential for abuse but compared to the abuse administrators already deliver to higher education, every single day, it\u2019s hard to be concerned about tenure.<\/p>\n

It takes at least 7 years of perfect scholarship to even have a chance of tenure, while administrators get endless promotions and pay raises no matter how horrifically they fail<\/a>. Even if tenure weren\u2019t already a dying institution (most teachers in higher ed are poverty-wage-no-benefits adjuncts as it is<\/a>), it\u2019s still not a concern, as tenure isn\u2019t \u201cjob for life.\u201d Even with decades of service, you can still lose your job in higher ed quite easily, all admin has to do is provide a reason<\/a>\u2026and the reason can really be as flimsy as \u201cadmin doesn\u2019t want you to have a job anymore.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Not content to simply wait for the faculty with tenure to simply die off, states are now terminating the tenure laws, replacing them with, literally a strongman to take over<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two more states are looking to kill tenure, retroactively even:<\/p>\n

A bill in Missouri would end tenure for all new faculty hires starting in 2018 and require more student access to information about the job market for majors. Legislation in Iowa would end tenure even for those who already have it.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The usual arguments against tenure are trotted out, with little in the way of counter-argument. Ok, a few counter-arguments are expressed in the comments, but I want to mention some things that just never seem to get said.<\/p>\n

A government representative explains why we need to get rid of tenure:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re doing the right thing as a professor and teaching students to the best of your ability, why do you need tenure?\u201d asked Representative Rick Brattin,<\/em><\/p>\n

This is little different than a usual government request for your private information: if you\u2019ve done nothing wrong, you\u2019ve nothing to hide, right? The problem of course is that private information might someday be used against you by someone unethical, with access to government information.<\/p>\n

Similarly, tenure isn\u2019t necessary when your boss is honest\u2026but that\u2019s a rarity in higher education today. I\u2019ve seen so many honest faculty members, possessing integrity and ethics, blasted off campus for trying to do their job with honor. Sure, yes, doing an honest job with honest bosses would negate the need for tenure but\u2026honest bosses?<\/p>\n

My blog has around two hundred posts now describing administrative corruption in myriads of ways. From fiefdoms with multiple (independent) embezzling schemes occurring in them<\/a>, from cover-ups of generational academic fraud programs<\/a> to simple plundering<\/a> (to give a tiny sample of what goes on)\u2026and this representative says we should just trust admin not to do it anymore?<\/p>\n

Doing the right thing and doing your best work means nothing when you\u2019re working for a guy who makes his money by abusing the vulnerable, whether it be students or faculty. A tiny bit of job protection is too much to ask. Really?<\/p>\n

Next comes a better argument against tenure:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat other job in the U.S. has protections like that?\u201d Brattin said of tenure.<\/em><\/p>\n

–this guy serves one term and gets full salary retirement benefits for life. A bit of hypocrisy here, I think. Hey, give me full salary with benefits for life after teaching one year, and I\u2019ll stop defending tenure.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the surface, this is a good point but\u2026scholars aren\u2019t the same thing as truck drivers (the most common job in the US<\/a>), waiters, or burger-flippers. I again point out that tenure is typically rewarded after a decade or so of scholarship\u2026but there\u2019s more to it than that.<\/p>\n

That fast food restaurant on the corner? It probably won\u2019t be there in 30 years, and those big trucks don\u2019t stay in service for 30 years or more, either. Universities, however, are far, far, more enduring, and universities lasting centuries, even a thousand years<\/a>, are far more common than most every business around. Universities, even more so than governments, have a sense of permanency to them\u2026thus it\u2019s not so unreasonable to give scholars some level of permanency as well.<\/p>\n

But wait, there\u2019s more.<\/p>\n

Universities have (more accurately, \u201chad\u201d) a strong record of integrity to them, and, at least in the past, took their responsibilities to preserve, generate, and spread knowledge very seriously. They honestly helped humanity, and did good work. It\u2019s quite common for people to give huge gifts to universities\u2026say, how often has someone died and left a few million bucks to a local McDonalds?<\/p>\n

On the other hand, such gifts to universities are common, and, in the past, the gifts were used to further the university mission. Now, you can literally give $4,000,000 to a university, and administrators will spend $100,000 on the mission, and fritter the rest away into their checking accounts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tenured faculty, bound to the institution, would invest those gifts wisely, because tenured faculty were scholars dedicated to the institution, interested in doing more than merely helping themselves. Our institutions are controlled now by an administrative caste that wanders from institution to institution, plundering as much as they can before moving on.<\/p>\n

The only thing that\u2019s kept even a small amount of integrity in higher education is the remnant of dying tenured faculty, keeping a death grip on integrity and standards\u2026it\u2019s cutting into the plundering.<\/p>\n

So, yes, tenure isn\u2019t in most other jobs\u2026but other jobs don\u2019t last a thousand years, and don\u2019t do work good enough to generate gifts, which over time can add up to billions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Joe Gorton, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Northern Iowa, said he thought arguments in favor of either bill betrayed a serious ignorance about how academe works.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a terribly dangerous idea,\u201d he said of eliminating tenure. \u201cTenure doesn\u2019t prevent termination for just cause, but it prevents the discipline or termination of a faculty member who teaches or conducts research in areas that are controversial or politically unpopular.\u201d<\/em>
\nI\u2019ve seen faculty fired for asking admin to steal even a little bit less, but let\u2019s pretend that\u2019s not, ultimately, what this is about. Tenure is even more important today than it has been in the past.<\/p>\n

Our campuses have turned into echo chambers, reciting fake news as it\u2019s been fed to us by established fake news sources. Because tenure is dying, there\u2019s a culture of terror<\/a> on campus that tells faculty repeatedly \u201cdon\u2019t dare speak out against the echo.\u201d There are literally entire series of articles<\/a> by academics so terrified to speak out against what\u2019s going on in higher education that they must speak anonymously.<\/p>\n

I suspect that if we brought tenure back to where it used to be common, instead of driving it to extinction, our campuses would return to being places of open discourse and true investigation of actual knowledge\u2026instead of scholars skulking in the shadows secretively doing what little they can.<\/p>\n

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mainstream media\u2019s narrative really seems to be that tenure, and not the takeover by administrators (and social justice warriors), is a big part of the collapse of higher education. Hey, I realize that \u201cjob for life\u201d does sound like it has immense potential for abuse but compared to the abuse administrators already deliver to […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":37985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[12469],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-37984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-tenure"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTwo more States remove tenure\u2026retroactively - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/two-states-remove-tenureretroactively\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Two more States remove tenure\u2026retroactively - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The mainstream media\u2019s narrative really seems to be that tenure, and not the takeover by administrators (and social justice warriors), is a big part of the collapse of higher education. 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