4 ms·

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

by cheez 10y ago

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/

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

by cheez 10y ago

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

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/