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Over the past few decades, the tenure system in US higher education has eroded [pdf]
- cs702 6y agoThis plot, "Trends in the Academic Labor Force," shows that the percent of academics in tenured or tenure-track positions in the US declined from 39% (29% tenured, 10% tenure-track) in 1975 to 29% (21% tenured, 8% tenure-track) in 2015: https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/Academic_Labor_Force_Trends_1975-2015.pdf https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/Academic_Labor_Forc... The relative number of tenured positions declined by much more (-28%) than the relative number of people in tenure tracks (-20%), so the latter have been facing more and more competition for a shrinking pool of tenured positions.
- croissants 6y agoIs this obviously a bad thing? My understanding of the argument for tenured faculty teaching courses is that tenured faculty are (or have been) actual researchers in their field, so they have deep knowledge. But I'm skeptical that deep knowledge is really necessary to teach random undergrad courses. Seminars, sure. But since the number of people going to college has also grown since 1975, it seems...reasonable? to hire more teaching faculty.
- detaro 6y ago> the argument for tenured faculty teaching courses is [...] That's not the argument made in the link.
- croissants 6y agoI commented based on the headline. Shame on me!