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Can someone please explain to my why tenure is needed? I've had some professors attempt to do it to me in the past and I never got it. I maybe understand it fo

Can someone please explain to my why tenure is needed? I've had some professors attempt to do it to me in the past and I never got it. I maybe understand it for a humanities subject, but for STEM no chance for me. I don't have tenure when it comes to working in the industry. If I'm a good enough employee I'll stay on, if I'm a bad enough employee I'll be replaced. Tenure just seems to protect mediocrity. Can someone help paint this in a different light to me?

cheez 10y ago
Tenure is also a way to say "go do the crazy things you wouldn't be able to do otherwise".
- gravypod 10y ago
  I thought that was a job in research and development? I know people in private companies that do this. If your work is so crazy that it is completely inexplicable to another person and you cannot articulate it's value, then how are you going to find people to help you? This seems like a really really uncommon situation. In my college, there are professors who are in a nontenured position who do this sort of work. The difference is they can communicate the value of their work, set milestones for their research, and explain to people why they have or have not reached them. If that cannot be done, or it falls on death ears, you have a much bigger problem at hand: the problem of academics not being able to recognize ground breaking research.
  - jccalhoun 10y ago
    I'm in the humanities and at least in my situation (and that of the people I know who are in similar situations) is that I have no time to do research. I'm paid to teach 5 classes a semester. Last semester I had 5 classes with 3 different topics, one I had never taught before, 3 classes with 24 students each, one with 32, and a lecture with 70. After the first couple weeks of the semester I got zero writing done. So this summer I spent nearly every day working on getting something submitted to a journal (and there's no guarantee it will get published. the paper I spent last summer working on got rejected). I enjoy teaching but I didn't get my phd so I could spend my entire career doing nothing but teaching entry level courses. So I need to get a tenure-track job so my teaching load is less and I will be able to teach higher-level courses. But to get a tenure-track job I need to get published. But to get published I need time to write which I don't have because I don't have a tenure-track job... So I'm giving it one more year before I give up on the career path I've been working towards for over 15 years at this point.
    - gravypod 10y ago
      I think the problem is not being solved by the existence of tenure. It's masking the problem. Shouldn't everyone be hired with the intention that they do research in their field? It's not like universities don't have the money to have you teach 4 classes a semester and give you teacher assistants. The profit margins have room for expenses like this. I think my big issue is that I'm on the brunt of what happens when tenure gets to run wild. I'd also love it if you could email me some information about your research, I'd like to understand what topics there are available for study in the humanities realm.
  - audleman 10y ago
    > I thought that was a job in research and development? The type of research R&D shops perform is (reasonably) constrained by the profit motive. There is value to society by empowering individuals to pursue topics in a broader sphere. Even economic benefits, though I philosophically disagree that for an idea to have merit it needs to be profitable. Just a random example; modern cryptography comes from "the mathematics of the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_curve_cryptography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_curve_cryptography Somebody was reading up on that field of research and discovered it could be used to encrypt messages. Out of that blossomed a whole new sector of the economy. But the mathematicians who initially pioneered the work had no idea it would ever be used that way. They were just happily studying one of a thousand random and seemingly pointless avenues of mathematical exploration.
    - arghnoname 10y ago
      In fact, as I heard it the fact that number theory was completely academic as far as anyone knew and was not at all applicable was a point of pride for some of its theorists. Crypto changed all that of course.
  - cheez 10y ago
    > I thought that was a job in research and development? I know people in private companies that do this. They don't realize it, but they are auto-constraining themselves to research that may eventually produce a profit. Example, IBM's research journal: https://www.research.ibm.com/journal/ https://www.research.ibm.com/journal/
bachmeier 10y ago
When you work in industry, your job is to do what you're told. When you do research, your job is to learn new things and tell others about them, no matter who doesn't like those results. If you're studying earthquakes in Oklahoma, the oil companies won't like it. If you're studying evolution, certain segments of the population won't like it. Tenure is one way of protecting academic freedom. You seem to be thinking of it in terms of job security. As many tenured professors that have been fired over the years for reasons like the university having financial difficulties can tell you, tenure does not provide job security. Of course there is a correlation between the two.
- gravypod 10y ago
  This makes sense, but are we not at a time where you can simply do all of those things and people won't crucify you? > When you work in industry, your job is to do what you're told. You are told to publish, are you not? It's the same principle except your job has extra steps. I'd also like to point out colleges aren't the end all be all of R&D. The industry does R&D as well and they do crazy R&D without tenure. I've met people who have started companies just so they could do what they want, moved to companies just so they could research one thing, or even convinced their current boss as to why a certain piece of research would be of value. I think this is a much more complete answer then what I've been told before, but it's still quite fishy.
  - bachmeier 10y ago
    "are we not at a time where you can simply do all of those things and people won't crucify you?" Are you in the US? I'd say it's pretty clear you can get crucified for stating an unpopular opinion. "I'd also like to point out colleges aren't the end all be all of R&D." And they shouldn't be. They should primarily do work that the private sector is not willing to fund. "I think this is a much more complete answer then what I've been told before, but it's still quite fishy." There are no doubt advantages and disadvantages of tenure. Whether tenure is a good system is definitely up for debate, but the tradeoff is that some research will not be done and some topics will not be addressed in the classroom. There's little incentive to risk your career by jumping into controversial situations. Perhaps we are willing to move to a different model.
maverick_iceman 10y ago
Academic freedom, especially the freedom to pursue unpopular ideas.

cheez 10y ago

Tenure is also a way to say "go do the crazy things you wouldn't be able to do otherwise".

gravypod 10y ago
I thought that was a job in research and development? I know people in private companies that do this. If your work is so crazy that it is completely inexplicable to another person and you cannot articulate it's value, then how are you going to find people to help you? This seems like a really really uncommon situation. In my college, there are professors who are in a nontenured position who do this sort of work. The difference is they can communicate the value of their work, set milestones for their research, and explain to people why they have or have not reached them. If that cannot be done, or it falls on death ears, you have a much bigger problem at hand: the problem of academics not being able to recognize ground breaking research.
- jccalhoun 10y ago
  I'm in the humanities and at least in my situation (and that of the people I know who are in similar situations) is that I have no time to do research. I'm paid to teach 5 classes a semester. Last semester I had 5 classes with 3 different topics, one I had never taught before, 3 classes with 24 students each, one with 32, and a lecture with 70. After the first couple weeks of the semester I got zero writing done. So this summer I spent nearly every day working on getting something submitted to a journal (and there's no guarantee it will get published. the paper I spent last summer working on got rejected). I enjoy teaching but I didn't get my phd so I could spend my entire career doing nothing but teaching entry level courses. So I need to get a tenure-track job so my teaching load is less and I will be able to teach higher-level courses. But to get a tenure-track job I need to get published. But to get published I need time to write which I don't have because I don't have a tenure-track job... So I'm giving it one more year before I give up on the career path I've been working towards for over 15 years at this point.
  - gravypod 10y ago
    I think the problem is not being solved by the existence of tenure. It's masking the problem. Shouldn't everyone be hired with the intention that they do research in their field? It's not like universities don't have the money to have you teach 4 classes a semester and give you teacher assistants. The profit margins have room for expenses like this. I think my big issue is that I'm on the brunt of what happens when tenure gets to run wild. I'd also love it if you could email me some information about your research, I'd like to understand what topics there are available for study in the humanities realm.
- audleman 10y ago
  > I thought that was a job in research and development? The type of research R&D shops perform is (reasonably) constrained by the profit motive. There is value to society by empowering individuals to pursue topics in a broader sphere. Even economic benefits, though I philosophically disagree that for an idea to have merit it needs to be profitable. Just a random example; modern cryptography comes from "the mathematics of the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_curve_cryptography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_curve_cryptography Somebody was reading up on that field of research and discovered it could be used to encrypt messages. Out of that blossomed a whole new sector of the economy. But the mathematicians who initially pioneered the work had no idea it would ever be used that way. They were just happily studying one of a thousand random and seemingly pointless avenues of mathematical exploration.
  - arghnoname 10y ago
    In fact, as I heard it the fact that number theory was completely academic as far as anyone knew and was not at all applicable was a point of pride for some of its theorists. Crypto changed all that of course.
- cheez 10y ago
  > I thought that was a job in research and development? I know people in private companies that do this. They don't realize it, but they are auto-constraining themselves to research that may eventually produce a profit. Example, IBM's research journal: https://www.research.ibm.com/journal/ https://www.research.ibm.com/journal/

bachmeier 10y ago

When you work in industry, your job is to do what you're told. When you do research, your job is to learn new things and tell others about them, no matter who doesn't like those results. If you're studying earthquakes in Oklahoma, the oil companies won't like it. If you're studying evolution, certain segments of the population won't like it. Tenure is one way of protecting academic freedom. You seem to be thinking of it in terms of job security. As many tenured professors that have been fired over the years for reasons like the university having financial difficulties can tell you, tenure does not provide job security. Of course there is a correlation between the two.

gravypod 10y ago
This makes sense, but are we not at a time where you can simply do all of those things and people won't crucify you? > When you work in industry, your job is to do what you're told. You are told to publish, are you not? It's the same principle except your job has extra steps. I'd also like to point out colleges aren't the end all be all of R&D. The industry does R&D as well and they do crazy R&D without tenure. I've met people who have started companies just so they could do what they want, moved to companies just so they could research one thing, or even convinced their current boss as to why a certain piece of research would be of value. I think this is a much more complete answer then what I've been told before, but it's still quite fishy.
- bachmeier 10y ago
  "are we not at a time where you can simply do all of those things and people won't crucify you?" Are you in the US? I'd say it's pretty clear you can get crucified for stating an unpopular opinion. "I'd also like to point out colleges aren't the end all be all of R&D." And they shouldn't be. They should primarily do work that the private sector is not willing to fund. "I think this is a much more complete answer then what I've been told before, but it's still quite fishy." There are no doubt advantages and disadvantages of tenure. Whether tenure is a good system is definitely up for debate, but the tradeoff is that some research will not be done and some topics will not be addressed in the classroom. There's little incentive to risk your career by jumping into controversial situations. Perhaps we are willing to move to a different model.

maverick_iceman 10y ago

Academic freedom, especially the freedom to pursue unpopular ideas.