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Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate

154 points by gautamcgoel 4y ago

bdcravens 4y ago
In terms of bills that are coming out of the Texas legislature these days, this is pretty mild.
quantified 4y ago
Not the law yet, but as Scott Aaronson (I'm positive along with others) has pointed out, this would make their universities vastly less attractive to various incoming faculty. Whether that would be as impactful in STEM as in the humanities or human-interest areas like law remains to be seen.
- whitemary 4y ago
  > this would make their universities vastly less attractive to various incoming faculty ...but given the flood state of the academic labor market, still rather attractive.
  - michaelhoffman 4y ago
    I doubt they will have much problem finding people who are qualified to teach. But it's going to make it more difficult to continue hiring people who are seen as some of the best in the world in in-demand areas.
    - wlesieutre 4y ago
      But will it affect their football recruiting?
      - whitemary 4y ago
        That is the real question.
    - Beldin 4y ago
      > I doubt they will have much problem finding people who are qualified to teach. There's some ambiguity there. In my experience, it's not necessarily hard to find someone whose credentials match job requirements wrt. teaching. Finding a good teacher for an academic position can be quite hard though.
- nextos 4y ago
  IMHO, right now, tenure is the only edge Academia has in many areas of STEM compared to industrial labs. Other countries have suppressed tenure in the past, Denmark comes to mind, and this scared tons of great faculty.
  - tiedieconderoga 4y ago
    Even with tenure, you would need to be extremely passionate about education or research to go into academia in fields like software or mech/chem/EE. The opportunity cost is easily 6 figures/yr, for your entire career. The hours are long, the pay is laughable, the kids are not alright, you must publish or perish...maybe these universities are intentionally selecting for professors who will have a high tolerance for abuse.
    - nextos 4y ago
      Note some good US universities pay entry-level FAANG salaries to assistant professors. If you can negotiate a low teaching load, it might be OK in some cases. Nonetheless, I agree with what you say. I'd add there is a ton of nasty politics, bullying, etc. which might be hard to avoid while you are on tenure track chasing tenure.
      - beambot 4y ago
        Please give an example of such a university?
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        nextos 4y ago
        According to levels.fyi, a typical entry-level FAANG job (L3 SWE at Google) pays $140k base salary. An assistant prof. position at UCSD I was looking into a few weeks ago was paying $115-145k to identical roles in the department. I know Google has some other benefits, like stock and bonus. Plus, compensation will grow more rapidly. And there are tons of high-paying SWE jobs, whereas good academic positions are scarce. In Academia, it's hard to exceed $200k. Some professors often get $200-300k from consulting. But those I know that earn so much on side gigs are frequently gaming university IP rules.
- notch898c 4y ago
  I would think a top performer would like least the tenure system, as they're in demand but their job outlook stunted by (perhaps numerical minority) crusty elements that can't be supplanted.
  - tedivm 4y ago
    The few people I know with tenure are just happy to be out of the academic grind, as it's absolutely brutal. Being tenured also doesn't lock you into a specific university- one of my professors had tenure but took a job elsewhere on a tenure track.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    I would disagree but only, specifically, academia's already broken system. Tenure takes the heat off an academic such that they can deeply, deeply study a system. Academia's still stuck in lines-of-code style measuring sticks of performance so the rush to tenure is often pumping out salami slices worth of papers to secure future funds.
    - 542458 4y ago
      The thing that I don’t understand is that: * Academics say publish or perish is terrible and produces warped incentives. * Academics say they need tenure to protect senior researchers from the publish or perish system. * But academics seem to be the ones building grant and advancement systems that enforce “publish or perish”. I don’t get it - it certainly sounds like tenure mostly protects senior academics from systems they built themselves. If publish or perish is so bad why don’t senior members of departments build advancement opportunities that don’t rely on impact factor? Cynically, it almost feels like tenure is enforcing publish or perish, because those with tenure set the rules and the current system protects those who are tenured. Furthermore, I don’t see why the sort of “deep study” research that the idealized tenured researcher does would need special protection. If the researcher has a track record of success surely the department would tolerate a brief lull in publications while they work on their Magnum Opus? Private industry frequently does multi-year deep research projects without the need for tenure systems.
- fmajid 4y ago
  And even tenured UT or A&M professors will seek to move out to tenured positions elsewhere because no one wants to go down with a sinking ship. This is a singularly bad idea as Texas had successfully transitioned from being a resource extraction economy to a technology and medical one.
themitigating 4y ago
This is the republicans punishing groups of people they don't like.
- RhodesianHunter 4y ago
  Specifically people who can say what they want because they have no fear of losing their jobs. Pretty rich coming from the party of "free speech".
  - drstewart 4y ago
    >Specifically people who can say what they want because they have no fear of losing their jobs. Ah, like the Supreme Court. Good thing we don't see anyone suddenly wanting to do away with lifetime appointments there, otherwise there might be some hypocrisy floating around.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - RhodesianHunter 4y ago
      You're comparing the ability to speak truth to power to the powerful being able to do whatever they want. I'm not sure how you reached the conclusion these are the same.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  Indeed, the state shouldn't be able to silence free-speech regardless of how one feels for the content [1, 2]. One should use reason and logic to counter arguments instead of force [3]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/desantis-florida-college-diversity-inclusion-ban-education-curriculum-political-agendas/672919/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/desantis-f... [2] https://time.com/6258304/florida-bill-ban-dei-crt-universities/ https://time.com/6258304/florida-bill-ban-dei-crt-universiti... [3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/florida-covid-data-scientist-raid-desantis-b1767723.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
satysin 4y ago
So the Texas Senate just passed a bill that makes it more likely that Texas faculty hires will be from a smaller and no doubt lower quality pool of candidates? Why take a job without the possibility of tenure vs anywhere else in the US that has the option available to you?
- Fauntleroy 4y ago
  [flagged]
- mkl95 4y ago
  If you don't plan on staying in academia forever, tenure vs no tenure shouldn't really matter.
  - bsder 4y ago
    Tenure matters if you happen to be teaching American history and have a bunch of people who want you fired because you had the temerity to talk about slavery. Tenure matters if you happen to be teaching English literature and have a bunch of people who want you fired because you have the temerity to point out that Chaucer's characters have the symptoms of syphilis. Tenure matters if you happen to be teaching biology and have a bunch of people who want you fired because you had the temerity to teach about DNA and evolution. Shall I continue? Yes, there is enough oversupply of PhDs that Texas will still fill the roles. They'll just have to fill them over and over as people will leave the first chance they get.
    - drstewart 4y ago
      [flagged]
    - natpalmer1776 4y ago
      I'm tired of responding to folks caught up on the wrong shit, so here's what I should have said in the first place: In my personal experience I've seen or heard of more professors espousing their personal views as fact than most online and academic discourse would have otherwise led me to believe possible. I think removing tenure is a net loss for research because professors now have to worry about politically motivated reprisal for their research, whereas I believe it to be a net gain for student education since professors can then be held accountable for failing their basic responsibility of teaching factual information to the best of their knowledge based on the available research in their field of study.
aborsy 4y ago
Honestly, it may not be a bad thing. Tenure was meant to protect the academic freedom, and pursuit of the long-term scientific research. Today, most academics chase money, grants, trends, citations and status. It’s a job like any other, and doesn’t need protection, at cost to those outside the ivory tower (unless perhaps for a very small subset).
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  Even assuming you’re right, that’s only true until the next step the Texas legislature takes, because any benefit will be contrary to their goals, which is to hurt higher education.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  Doesn't matter really, what it does is make Texas public schools second rate. They will fail to attract top qualified candidates, and that's all there is to it. They are cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
- tristor 4y ago
  The change in academia is largely correlated with the fall-off of tenured positions in favor of adjunct faculty and the explosion of administration. I don't think it indicates that there is no need for tenure, but rather that tenure provided a bulwark against the very outcomes we now are seeing.
  - all2 4y ago
    What if we started an institution that automated most of the admin, hired and based admissions on pure skill/ability/talent? It seems to me that something so simple couldn't possibly work...
    - majormajor 4y ago
      "hired and based admissions on pure skill/ability/talent?" Nobody agrees on what this looks like. So you're just asking for a big fight about that - exactly the kind that already happens for admissions.
dwighttk 4y ago
how many tenure track positions are hiring these days? I have the impression that they are pretty rare anyway.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Substantially more than "zero".
- some-guy 4y ago
  My wife just got one straight out of her PhD, but it's not super common unless you're 1) very cutthroat competitive and 2) willing to move far (in our case, 5 hours from the Bay Area).
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  It’s not just about tenure though. It’s the fact that the people who have the power to control everything about the public universities in Texas have shown that they will damage them, specifically by targeting faculty. Even if I’m a non-tenure track faculty member I would probably require a Texas university to offer a significant premium over a competing offer from a CA university, for example, before I decide to establish my career there.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  Our CS department has been hiring for TT roles continuously since at least when I joined in 2010.
orange_joe 4y ago
I’m skeptical that tenure is good for students, I knew so many teachers that just didn’t much care for their work and probably would have been fired if not for tenure. I understand the arguments in favor of tenure, particularly when it comes to recruitment, but given the bloated pipeline into academia, I’m not sure they hold.
- tgv 4y ago
  If you want to become a good researcher, go to university to learn from good researchers. If you want to become good in some other task, go to a school.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- y-curious 4y ago
  Much like the lifetime appointment of Supreme Court judges, tenured professorship is a great idea that gets warped in practice.
  - mgbmtl 4y ago
    Prof jobs might be researched-focused, teaching-focused, or a mix of both. Some universities really pushed research, in order to go for grants and donations. It also helps attract grad students. They usually make less enjoyable undergrad experiences. Then again, having profs that only teach, not research, can become very disconnected after a while. You may as well have a grad student repeat from the book. I know a few tenured profs (and my partner is one). I think most of awesome ones are those not pressured to run after grants constantly, and those that brag about them are red flags.
    - robwwilliams 4y ago
      Agree. One major difference is between: 1. Technical TRAINING to do job X (rote-style) 2. Conceptual LEARNING to think creatively about solving problems and asking and answering novel questions—big or small. Many of us on Hacker News understands the huge difference between this teo modes that has been so elegantly captured in Richard W Hammings “The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn”. If you want to be TRAINED then sure, go to an institution that does no research. If you want to LEARN then go to an institution that does some research, better yet, a great deal of research. I was an undegrad at UCSC in the 1970s—-no grades and great faculty who loved both teaching and research. I learned to learn and I still live to learn. Now I am expected to TRAIN first year med students human genetics that will allow them to pass their boards. The boards demand insufferably ancient genetics—a cut-off date of 2001 would be fine-wonderful. But there has been a bit of progress in genetics in the last two decades. I tried to teach them a hybrid of the “classics” but with 50% of time devoted to cutting-edge modern genetics. I hate TRAINING to the test. You can imagine my reviews as a professor. Who is at fault?
karaterobot 4y ago
> Public-college boards would be able to create “an alternate system of tiered employment status for faculty members” that’s not tenure, the legislation states. But that system would require faculty members to go through an annual performance evaluation. That sounds closer to how most jobs work. Honestly, I've never understood the purpose of tenure; it seems like an archaic tradition. If it's to give professors freedom to do research without fear of reprisal, it's not working, at least not optimally: there are plenty of ways to punish tenured researchers. The professors I know personally have no expectation of ever getting tenure. Imagine that: Ph.D. in your field, work 30 years, never even seriously entertain the possibility of getting the brass ring. Something's broken there. The best professor I had at university was in his sixties when I took his courses, and he never got tenure despite being really good at his job. The people who get tenure seem to be people who bring a lot of attention or a lot of money to the university. Both of those are only a professor's "job" if you look at universities as cynical money-making machines (a disenchantment I have slowly come around to). I guess what I'm saying is, I have no problems with Texas throwing a grenade into this situation. I am somewhat skeptical of the likelihood of them replacing it with a better system in practice, though. Still, some better solution must be found if we expect higher education to continue as an institution into the future. If this bill passes, I wish them good luck, and will be looking at this as an interesting experiment.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  The problem is, as others have said, this severely degrades Texas's desirability as a career destination for academics as long as only Texas is doing this and other states are not. Put another way, these are the people Texas doesn't want in the state: - LGBT+ - women - academics Are they trying to have a student population composed of just cis crypto bros and assorted incels? Because this is how you get there.
  - karaterobot 4y ago
    Given that universities already select which professors get tenure, how would removing tenure help or hurt any groups, relative to the present system?
SomaticPirate 4y ago
If there are trying to reduce entitlement spending, maybe they should start with their own state pension system. Maybe start with state representatives and move from a guarantee benefits system to a 401k or similar system where benefits aren’t guaranteed.
Willish42 4y ago
Getting stronger academics in Texas universities has been an uphill battle for quite awhile. I don't think this will make things any better, and I struggle to see any genuine argument for why this isn't the politically-motivated intent.
telotortium 4y ago
https://archive.ph/ECOij https://archive.ph/ECOij - the page wasn't loading for me for some reason.
tasty_freeze 4y ago
Some are arguing that the tenure system is broken. Maybe. If this change was done in good faith to make the system stronger, it is worth considering. But there is little evidence that that is what is going on. Conservatives have been beating the drum for decades that colleges brainwash their kids into being liberals, and so they want control to fire any academic that doesn't confirm to their views. edit: I'm speaking as a 19 year resident of Austin, Texas who has watched countless other power grabs, including Governor Perry installing biblical literalists to oversee Texas school books that deny evolution and rewriting history -- too much Jefferson and not a mention of Phyllis Schlafley (not joking). The same legislature has pushed a law requiring every K-12 schoolroom to display the Ten Commandments.
ShadowBanThis01 4y ago
I'd like to be open-minded and optimistic about this, but Texas is a noted enemy of education.
squokko 4y ago
Going to be tough for UT, which regularly hires people who are among the best in the world, and was essentially at the Berkeley/UCLA/UMich level of public university. They will still be able to hire, of course, but they won't be able to get Nobel Prize-level people without offering tenure.
- csa 4y ago
  > but they won't be able to get Nobel Prize-level people without offering tenure I’m fairly certain that most Nobel Prize-level people are not worried about tenure. They will be gainfully employed as long as they want to be. If they are looking for a delayed retirement, they can just move to a tenured spot when they reach a certain age.
  - squokko 4y ago
    I'm talking about the people who seem like they could win a Nobel Prize someday when they're just finishing their PhD, not the people who already have one.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
CWuestefeld 4y ago
Clarifying a bad headline: it's not that tenure can't be offered (only) to new faculty. It's that henceforth nobody would be given tenure, even if they were already employees. Existing employees who are already tenured would be grandfathered. And obviously only for public institutions.
- medler 4y ago
  > It's that henceforth nobody would be given tenure, even if they were already employees. If I’m understanding you correctly, I think this is not true? “The legislation would apply only to faculty members hired by Texas colleges after January 1, 2024. Professors who have tenure, have applied for tenure, or are on the tenure track would not be affected.”
- malshe 4y ago
  That's my understanding too. I was surprised to see the headline because we have a couple of assistant profs in my department going up for tenure next year and I was told that if this law passes they won't be able to do that anymore. Edit: Looks like it applies only to new hires. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/20/texas-senate-tenure-universities/ https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/20/texas-senate-tenure-...
fzeroracer 4y ago
Texas has been rapid firing bills and actions that destroy local communities ability to self-govern as well as actions like these to try and spite what they view as the opposition. It's not going to end well for Texas (and is the reason why I left the state in the first place), but none of the ghouls in charge care because they'll be dead and / or get their payday before the problems come to roost. Much like Ken Paxton being a criminal that hasn't been put behind bars yet.
ajford 4y ago
So as a Texan I'm on the fence here. I wasn't directly involved (as a student and TA), but spent a fair while in academia, and was rather close personal friends with a number of adjunct professors, tenure-track profs, post-docs, and grad students. I was looking at staying in academics so I had many long discussions about the state of things (at least at the time, about a decade ago). There was a lot of concern in the field about how tenure was an incentive and a solid goal to strive for, but it left much for the administration to abuse. Between the politics and bureaucracy and constant jockeying for tenure track, it made it hard to focus on the students. Since you had to "play the game" or get cut or tossed out, that forced non-tenure profs to spend time outside of teaching. Then you had the shitty profs that just wanted that tenure protection so they could avoid teaching and just do their own personal research. And since it was so easy to cut adjuncts, they had little to no bargaining position and were often given shitty pay. So I'm all for ditching Tenure or otherwise reworking that pile of garbage. But on the other hand, I don't trust anything coming out of the TX lege right now. Especially if it's got Dan Patrick excited. They're trying their hardest to create an authoritarian theocracy using the same playbook as DeSantis, and this seems like another step in controlling education in Texas to paint the narrative they want.
- runnerup 4y ago
  I also feel like if achieving Tenure then allowed profs to stop "playing the game" and start "focusing on the students"...that getting rid of tenure means no one can ever stop "playing the game" and will never be able to "focus on the students". Personally I feel there are two different jobs in academia that need to be split up: Teaching students, and doing research. I feel that professors should be able to apple for jobs specifying a 60/40, 50/50, 75/25, 100/0, 0/100 split between those two roles. Don't make people research who just want to teach. And dont force students to suffer professors who don't want to teach them.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    These roles already exist. The standard one is 25/75 teaching research split. Then there are teaching faculty who do all teaching, and research faculty who do all research. I’m kind of 50/50 in my role.
xmddmx 4y ago
Tenure is to Academia as Venture Capital is to Entreprenureship. You give resources (money, which buys time, office space, equipment, support staff...) to a bunch of promising individuals, hoping that some of them will do amazing things, but knowing most of them will not.
currymj 4y ago
in the humanities there is a glut of excellent scholars who would be happy to have a non-tenured professorship which is nevertheless a real job with decent pay, benefits, and working conditions. in applied technical fields it will be really hard to hire people as tenure and academic freedom are the only reason people deal with the BS of academia over industry. so this will probably have the opposite effect of what the legislature wants, the pool of left-leaning humanities professors won’t change much, while STEM will be hugely weakened.
yawnxyz 4y ago
as far as I know, Australia doesn't have tenure either. But with the contract system they do have, it feels like a combination of "you'll be taken care of" and "...but you still have responsibilities". That said, it seems stressful for new professors though
ano-ther 4y ago
Scott Aaronson who has tenure in Texas describes the effect as this: > […] it would be the end of UT Austin and Texas A&M as leading research universities. More precisely, it would be the immediate end of our ability to recruit competitively, and the slightly slower end of our competitiveness period, as faculty with options moved elsewhere. This is so because of the economics of faculty hiring. Particularly in STEM fields like computer science, those who become professors typically forgo vastly higher salaries in industry, not to mention equity in startup companies and so on. https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7243 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7243
- bjt 4y ago
  While I think he's right, I wonder if that might still be a tradeoff worth making. Or at least, a sane person could argue that it is. Competition between universities for rankings skews a lot of what happens in higher ed. The state of Texas could rationally think "we want to spend our tax dollars subsidizing the education of Texans, but we're not super interested in spending those dollars to fund the academic rat race." The people who want to win that rat race will go somewhere else. UT will be greatly impacted but I don't think the overall scientific output of the USA will.
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    I struggle to see how this benefits Texas, though. Education is an investment in the future; encouraging the best professors to go elsewhere is like saying you want the future to happen elsewhere. Maybe that's what Texas wants, but universities usually bring startups and high-tech jobs along with them. It kinda reminds me of how Texas wanted to get in on the blockchain hype, so they passed legislation making it extremely friendly to Bitcoin mining, which happens to be the most competitive, low-margin, environmentally damaging part of the crypto ecosystem. Meanwhile most of the high-margin profit centers (exchanges, DeFi protocols, new blockchain technologies) remained in the Bay Area. It's like Texas is awfully fond of setting up selection filters and then selects for the mediocre.
    - trilbyglens 4y ago
stainablesteel 4y ago
tenure was supposed to allow professors to be able to speak their mind without fear of being fired but apparently modern bureaucracy has evolved to get around this
every 4y ago
Hey, when you've got a political base to whip up and make crazy, consequences don't matter...
screye 4y ago
While the intentions of this change are admittedly malicious, I support the move away from the traditional concept of tenure. Tenure is about exploiting researchers through their 20s as PhDs/post-docs and 30s as assistant-professors, with tenure being a possibility at 40. In the best case scenario, these researchers hit 40, and enjoy what is really an early retirement. Reality is, many will find that nothing is good enough to get tenure at an R1 institute. With the industry moving as fast as it is, professors become obsolete rather quickly. Just look at the huge number of new professors in crypto and NLP, whose entire labs have become obsolete overnight. Honestly, the over-production of PhDs is a big problem today. Hopefully these changes will be the much-needed slap in the face needed for a whole generation of new PhDs to look elsewhere for employment. Tenure is a winner take all system, where the small number who succeed, do it at the expense of the far-too-late disillusionment of the majority. There are broadly 2 different types of academics. The economically productive ones and the money sinks. The money sink academics (Non-stem, non-business) are doomed to a life in academia, irrespective of tenure. They aren't employable in their profession elsewhere, effectively captives of the system. The economically productive ones will be given great 'deals' by the university anyway. These people are important, and universities will raise wages, give work-life balance deals, allow them to have their own practice and give them long contracts. Tenure is a flaky lever used liberally today, but forcing universities into offering more concrete deals is probably better for the employees overall. College basketball doesn't need to offer tenure to $$hire$$ the very best coaches . Tenure's main benefits were that professors were unfireable. In 2023, we see professors being practically bullied into submission by students. We see professors lose creative control over their departments with administrative takeover. Professors are slaves to their funding sources, in a manner that is no different than working in industry. The only appeal of tenure is thus idea of 'early academic retirement'. But that too is a lie, because the system will have squeezed every bit out of you. You might as well be a 65-yr-old in a 40 yr old's body by the time you get tenure. Tenure won't just go away. It will be replaced by more flexible deals. I for one, am looking forward to a change in academia, that adjusts to the death of honor based systems and the realities of a completely messed up supply-demand equation between universities and candidates.
Simulacra 4y ago
I think at SOME institutions this is needed. Professors who have stopped teaching and just waiting for retirement weigh down universities. Students learn from professors who have a vested interest in their learning. What incentivizes tenured profs?
Gabriel54 4y ago
As a TA at a certain public institution in Texas, the level of some students' incompetence by the time they reach their final year in undergraduate studies is shocking and saddening. And yet, almost no one fails, because there is pressure to pass everyone. One would literally have to do nothing in order to fail. Few professors have the time or energy to deal with these issues, so standards get lower and more students pass without knowing their subject. The only thing protecting professors from retaliation (not acquiescing to pressure from administrators / deans to pass students) is tenure. We can see clearly what will be the effect of this legislation.
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/ECOij https://archive.ph/ECOij
APhoenixRises 4y ago
This is a larger blow to smaller universities like UTSA and UTD that finally have budding research programs. I really wish the Texas government would stay out of people's lives. This is just another bill in the long line of bills this year intended to kill "wokeness". Our government doesn't give a single care about education. As long as they think they can get conforming, uninformed youth out of something, they'll do anything.
musicale 4y ago
This might possibly provide some benefits for adjunct faculty (at the expense of tenure lottery winners): Demolishing the tenure class system may reduce the social stigma of being an adjunct vs. tenured faculty member. A noted elsewhere, a mythical possibility of future tenure may become slightly less usable for luring faculty into accepting lower pay. And since everyone is now an adjunct, adjunct salaries (which are usually terrible) may have to rise overall. Although it will probably still be much lower than traditional faculty salaries, as UT may attract more adjunct applicants. Adjunct hiring might change from a per-term model (which is terrible) to a yearly model or even longer. The result could possibly (hopefully?) be higher social status, higher pay, and better job security - for the lucky few adjuncts who manage to get faculty jobs at UT.
pcvarmint 4y ago
https://archive.is/ECOij https://archive.is/ECOij

154 points by gautamcgoel 4y ago

In terms of bills that are coming out of the Texas legislature these days, this is pretty mild.

Not the law yet, but as Scott Aaronson (I'm positive along with others) has pointed out, this would make their universities vastly less attractive to various incoming faculty. Whether that would be as impactful in STEM as in the humanities or human-interest areas like law remains to be seen.

whitemary 4y ago
> this would make their universities vastly less attractive to various incoming faculty ...but given the flood state of the academic labor market, still rather attractive.
- michaelhoffman 4y ago
  I doubt they will have much problem finding people who are qualified to teach. But it's going to make it more difficult to continue hiring people who are seen as some of the best in the world in in-demand areas.
  - wlesieutre 4y ago
    But will it affect their football recruiting?
    - whitemary 4y ago
      That is the real question.
  - Beldin 4y ago
    > I doubt they will have much problem finding people who are qualified to teach. There's some ambiguity there. In my experience, it's not necessarily hard to find someone whose credentials match job requirements wrt. teaching. Finding a good teacher for an academic position can be quite hard though.
nextos 4y ago
IMHO, right now, tenure is the only edge Academia has in many areas of STEM compared to industrial labs. Other countries have suppressed tenure in the past, Denmark comes to mind, and this scared tons of great faculty.
- tiedieconderoga 4y ago
  Even with tenure, you would need to be extremely passionate about education or research to go into academia in fields like software or mech/chem/EE. The opportunity cost is easily 6 figures/yr, for your entire career. The hours are long, the pay is laughable, the kids are not alright, you must publish or perish...maybe these universities are intentionally selecting for professors who will have a high tolerance for abuse.
  - nextos 4y ago
    Note some good US universities pay entry-level FAANG salaries to assistant professors. If you can negotiate a low teaching load, it might be OK in some cases. Nonetheless, I agree with what you say. I'd add there is a ton of nasty politics, bullying, etc. which might be hard to avoid while you are on tenure track chasing tenure.
    - beambot 4y ago
      Please give an example of such a university?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - nextos 4y ago
        According to levels.fyi, a typical entry-level FAANG job (L3 SWE at Google) pays $140k base salary. An assistant prof. position at UCSD I was looking into a few weeks ago was paying $115-145k to identical roles in the department. I know Google has some other benefits, like stock and bonus. Plus, compensation will grow more rapidly. And there are tons of high-paying SWE jobs, whereas good academic positions are scarce. In Academia, it's hard to exceed $200k. Some professors often get $200-300k from consulting. But those I know that earn so much on side gigs are frequently gaming university IP rules.
notch898c 4y ago
I would think a top performer would like least the tenure system, as they're in demand but their job outlook stunted by (perhaps numerical minority) crusty elements that can't be supplanted.
- tedivm 4y ago
  The few people I know with tenure are just happy to be out of the academic grind, as it's absolutely brutal. Being tenured also doesn't lock you into a specific university- one of my professors had tenure but took a job elsewhere on a tenure track.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  I would disagree but only, specifically, academia's already broken system. Tenure takes the heat off an academic such that they can deeply, deeply study a system. Academia's still stuck in lines-of-code style measuring sticks of performance so the rush to tenure is often pumping out salami slices worth of papers to secure future funds.
  - 542458 4y ago
    The thing that I don’t understand is that: * Academics say publish or perish is terrible and produces warped incentives. * Academics say they need tenure to protect senior researchers from the publish or perish system. * But academics seem to be the ones building grant and advancement systems that enforce “publish or perish”. I don’t get it - it certainly sounds like tenure mostly protects senior academics from systems they built themselves. If publish or perish is so bad why don’t senior members of departments build advancement opportunities that don’t rely on impact factor? Cynically, it almost feels like tenure is enforcing publish or perish, because those with tenure set the rules and the current system protects those who are tenured. Furthermore, I don’t see why the sort of “deep study” research that the idealized tenured researcher does would need special protection. If the researcher has a track record of success surely the department would tolerate a brief lull in publications while they work on their Magnum Opus? Private industry frequently does multi-year deep research projects without the need for tenure systems.
fmajid 4y ago
And even tenured UT or A&M professors will seek to move out to tenured positions elsewhere because no one wants to go down with a sinking ship. This is a singularly bad idea as Texas had successfully transitioned from being a resource extraction economy to a technology and medical one.

themitigating 4y ago

This is the republicans punishing groups of people they don't like.

RhodesianHunter 4y ago
Specifically people who can say what they want because they have no fear of losing their jobs. Pretty rich coming from the party of "free speech".
- drstewart 4y ago
  >Specifically people who can say what they want because they have no fear of losing their jobs. Ah, like the Supreme Court. Good thing we don't see anyone suddenly wanting to do away with lifetime appointments there, otherwise there might be some hypocrisy floating around.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - RhodesianHunter 4y ago
    You're comparing the ability to speak truth to power to the powerful being able to do whatever they want. I'm not sure how you reached the conclusion these are the same.
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
Indeed, the state shouldn't be able to silence free-speech regardless of how one feels for the content [1, 2]. One should use reason and logic to counter arguments instead of force [3]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/desantis-florida-college-diversity-inclusion-ban-education-curriculum-political-agendas/672919/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/desantis-f... [2] https://time.com/6258304/florida-bill-ban-dei-crt-universities/ https://time.com/6258304/florida-bill-ban-dei-crt-universiti... [3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/florida-covid-data-scientist-raid-desantis-b1767723.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

satysin 4y ago

So the Texas Senate just passed a bill that makes it more likely that Texas faculty hires will be from a smaller and no doubt lower quality pool of candidates? Why take a job without the possibility of tenure vs anywhere else in the US that has the option available to you?

Fauntleroy 4y ago
[flagged]
mkl95 4y ago
If you don't plan on staying in academia forever, tenure vs no tenure shouldn't really matter.
- bsder 4y ago
  Tenure matters if you happen to be teaching American history and have a bunch of people who want you fired because you had the temerity to talk about slavery. Tenure matters if you happen to be teaching English literature and have a bunch of people who want you fired because you have the temerity to point out that Chaucer's characters have the symptoms of syphilis. Tenure matters if you happen to be teaching biology and have a bunch of people who want you fired because you had the temerity to teach about DNA and evolution. Shall I continue? Yes, there is enough oversupply of PhDs that Texas will still fill the roles. They'll just have to fill them over and over as people will leave the first chance they get.
  - drstewart 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - natpalmer1776 4y ago
    I'm tired of responding to folks caught up on the wrong shit, so here's what I should have said in the first place: In my personal experience I've seen or heard of more professors espousing their personal views as fact than most online and academic discourse would have otherwise led me to believe possible. I think removing tenure is a net loss for research because professors now have to worry about politically motivated reprisal for their research, whereas I believe it to be a net gain for student education since professors can then be held accountable for failing their basic responsibility of teaching factual information to the best of their knowledge based on the available research in their field of study.

aborsy 4y ago

Honestly, it may not be a bad thing. Tenure was meant to protect the academic freedom, and pursuit of the long-term scientific research. Today, most academics chase money, grants, trends, citations and status. It’s a job like any other, and doesn’t need protection, at cost to those outside the ivory tower (unless perhaps for a very small subset).

rhaway84773 4y ago
Even assuming you’re right, that’s only true until the next step the Texas legislature takes, because any benefit will be contrary to their goals, which is to hurt higher education.
ModernMech 4y ago
Doesn't matter really, what it does is make Texas public schools second rate. They will fail to attract top qualified candidates, and that's all there is to it. They are cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
tristor 4y ago
The change in academia is largely correlated with the fall-off of tenured positions in favor of adjunct faculty and the explosion of administration. I don't think it indicates that there is no need for tenure, but rather that tenure provided a bulwark against the very outcomes we now are seeing.
- all2 4y ago
  What if we started an institution that automated most of the admin, hired and based admissions on pure skill/ability/talent? It seems to me that something so simple couldn't possibly work...
  - majormajor 4y ago
    "hired and based admissions on pure skill/ability/talent?" Nobody agrees on what this looks like. So you're just asking for a big fight about that - exactly the kind that already happens for admissions.

dwighttk 4y ago

how many tenure track positions are hiring these days? I have the impression that they are pretty rare anyway.

ceejayoz 4y ago
Substantially more than "zero".
some-guy 4y ago
My wife just got one straight out of her PhD, but it's not super common unless you're 1) very cutthroat competitive and 2) willing to move far (in our case, 5 hours from the Bay Area).
rhaway84773 4y ago
It’s not just about tenure though. It’s the fact that the people who have the power to control everything about the public universities in Texas have shown that they will damage them, specifically by targeting faculty. Even if I’m a non-tenure track faculty member I would probably require a Texas university to offer a significant premium over a competing offer from a CA university, for example, before I decide to establish my career there.
ModernMech 4y ago
Our CS department has been hiring for TT roles continuously since at least when I joined in 2010.

orange_joe 4y ago

I’m skeptical that tenure is good for students, I knew so many teachers that just didn’t much care for their work and probably would have been fired if not for tenure. I understand the arguments in favor of tenure, particularly when it comes to recruitment, but given the bloated pipeline into academia, I’m not sure they hold.

tgv 4y ago
If you want to become a good researcher, go to university to learn from good researchers. If you want to become good in some other task, go to a school.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
y-curious 4y ago
Much like the lifetime appointment of Supreme Court judges, tenured professorship is a great idea that gets warped in practice.
- mgbmtl 4y ago
  Prof jobs might be researched-focused, teaching-focused, or a mix of both. Some universities really pushed research, in order to go for grants and donations. It also helps attract grad students. They usually make less enjoyable undergrad experiences. Then again, having profs that only teach, not research, can become very disconnected after a while. You may as well have a grad student repeat from the book. I know a few tenured profs (and my partner is one). I think most of awesome ones are those not pressured to run after grants constantly, and those that brag about them are red flags.
  - robwwilliams 4y ago
    Agree. One major difference is between: 1. Technical TRAINING to do job X (rote-style) 2. Conceptual LEARNING to think creatively about solving problems and asking and answering novel questions—big or small. Many of us on Hacker News understands the huge difference between this teo modes that has been so elegantly captured in Richard W Hammings “The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn”. If you want to be TRAINED then sure, go to an institution that does no research. If you want to LEARN then go to an institution that does some research, better yet, a great deal of research. I was an undegrad at UCSC in the 1970s—-no grades and great faculty who loved both teaching and research. I learned to learn and I still live to learn. Now I am expected to TRAIN first year med students human genetics that will allow them to pass their boards. The boards demand insufferably ancient genetics—a cut-off date of 2001 would be fine-wonderful. But there has been a bit of progress in genetics in the last two decades. I tried to teach them a hybrid of the “classics” but with 50% of time devoted to cutting-edge modern genetics. I hate TRAINING to the test. You can imagine my reviews as a professor. Who is at fault?

karaterobot 4y ago

> Public-college boards would be able to create “an alternate system of tiered employment status for faculty members” that’s not tenure, the legislation states. But that system would require faculty members to go through an annual performance evaluation. That sounds closer to how most jobs work. Honestly, I've never understood the purpose of tenure; it seems like an archaic tradition. If it's to give professors freedom to do research without fear of reprisal, it's not working, at least not optimally: there are plenty of ways to punish tenured researchers. The professors I know personally have no expectation of ever getting tenure. Imagine that: Ph.D. in your field, work 30 years, never even seriously entertain the possibility of getting the brass ring. Something's broken there. The best professor I had at university was in his sixties when I took his courses, and he never got tenure despite being really good at his job. The people who get tenure seem to be people who bring a lot of attention or a lot of money to the university. Both of those are only a professor's "job" if you look at universities as cynical money-making machines (a disenchantment I have slowly come around to). I guess what I'm saying is, I have no problems with Texas throwing a grenade into this situation. I am somewhat skeptical of the likelihood of them replacing it with a better system in practice, though. Still, some better solution must be found if we expect higher education to continue as an institution into the future. If this bill passes, I wish them good luck, and will be looking at this as an interesting experiment.

KerrAvon 4y ago
The problem is, as others have said, this severely degrades Texas's desirability as a career destination for academics as long as only Texas is doing this and other states are not. Put another way, these are the people Texas doesn't want in the state: - LGBT+ - women - academics Are they trying to have a student population composed of just cis crypto bros and assorted incels? Because this is how you get there.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  Given that universities already select which professors get tenure, how would removing tenure help or hurt any groups, relative to the present system?

SomaticPirate 4y ago

If there are trying to reduce entitlement spending, maybe they should start with their own state pension system. Maybe start with state representatives and move from a guarantee benefits system to a 401k or similar system where benefits aren’t guaranteed.

Willish42 4y ago

Getting stronger academics in Texas universities has been an uphill battle for quite awhile. I don't think this will make things any better, and I struggle to see any genuine argument for why this isn't the politically-motivated intent.

telotortium 4y ago

https://archive.ph/ECOij https://archive.ph/ECOij - the page wasn't loading for me for some reason.

tasty_freeze 4y ago

Some are arguing that the tenure system is broken. Maybe. If this change was done in good faith to make the system stronger, it is worth considering. But there is little evidence that that is what is going on. Conservatives have been beating the drum for decades that colleges brainwash their kids into being liberals, and so they want control to fire any academic that doesn't confirm to their views. edit: I'm speaking as a 19 year resident of Austin, Texas who has watched countless other power grabs, including Governor Perry installing biblical literalists to oversee Texas school books that deny evolution and rewriting history -- too much Jefferson and not a mention of Phyllis Schlafley (not joking). The same legislature has pushed a law requiring every K-12 schoolroom to display the Ten Commandments.

ShadowBanThis01 4y ago

I'd like to be open-minded and optimistic about this, but Texas is a noted enemy of education.

squokko 4y ago

Going to be tough for UT, which regularly hires people who are among the best in the world, and was essentially at the Berkeley/UCLA/UMich level of public university. They will still be able to hire, of course, but they won't be able to get Nobel Prize-level people without offering tenure.

csa 4y ago
> but they won't be able to get Nobel Prize-level people without offering tenure I’m fairly certain that most Nobel Prize-level people are not worried about tenure. They will be gainfully employed as long as they want to be. If they are looking for a delayed retirement, they can just move to a tenured spot when they reach a certain age.
- squokko 4y ago
  I'm talking about the people who seem like they could win a Nobel Prize someday when they're just finishing their PhD, not the people who already have one.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

CWuestefeld 4y ago

Clarifying a bad headline: it's not that tenure can't be offered (only) to new faculty. It's that henceforth nobody would be given tenure, even if they were already employees. Existing employees who are already tenured would be grandfathered. And obviously only for public institutions.

medler 4y ago
> It's that henceforth nobody would be given tenure, even if they were already employees. If I’m understanding you correctly, I think this is not true? “The legislation would apply only to faculty members hired by Texas colleges after January 1, 2024. Professors who have tenure, have applied for tenure, or are on the tenure track would not be affected.”
malshe 4y ago
That's my understanding too. I was surprised to see the headline because we have a couple of assistant profs in my department going up for tenure next year and I was told that if this law passes they won't be able to do that anymore. Edit: Looks like it applies only to new hires. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/20/texas-senate-tenure-universities/ https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/20/texas-senate-tenure-...

fzeroracer 4y ago

Texas has been rapid firing bills and actions that destroy local communities ability to self-govern as well as actions like these to try and spite what they view as the opposition. It's not going to end well for Texas (and is the reason why I left the state in the first place), but none of the ghouls in charge care because they'll be dead and / or get their payday before the problems come to roost. Much like Ken Paxton being a criminal that hasn't been put behind bars yet.

ajford 4y ago

So as a Texan I'm on the fence here. I wasn't directly involved (as a student and TA), but spent a fair while in academia, and was rather close personal friends with a number of adjunct professors, tenure-track profs, post-docs, and grad students. I was looking at staying in academics so I had many long discussions about the state of things (at least at the time, about a decade ago). There was a lot of concern in the field about how tenure was an incentive and a solid goal to strive for, but it left much for the administration to abuse. Between the politics and bureaucracy and constant jockeying for tenure track, it made it hard to focus on the students. Since you had to "play the game" or get cut or tossed out, that forced non-tenure profs to spend time outside of teaching. Then you had the shitty profs that just wanted that tenure protection so they could avoid teaching and just do their own personal research. And since it was so easy to cut adjuncts, they had little to no bargaining position and were often given shitty pay. So I'm all for ditching Tenure or otherwise reworking that pile of garbage. But on the other hand, I don't trust anything coming out of the TX lege right now. Especially if it's got Dan Patrick excited. They're trying their hardest to create an authoritarian theocracy using the same playbook as DeSantis, and this seems like another step in controlling education in Texas to paint the narrative they want.

runnerup 4y ago
I also feel like if achieving Tenure then allowed profs to stop "playing the game" and start "focusing on the students"...that getting rid of tenure means no one can ever stop "playing the game" and will never be able to "focus on the students". Personally I feel there are two different jobs in academia that need to be split up: Teaching students, and doing research. I feel that professors should be able to apple for jobs specifying a 60/40, 50/50, 75/25, 100/0, 0/100 split between those two roles. Don't make people research who just want to teach. And dont force students to suffer professors who don't want to teach them.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  These roles already exist. The standard one is 25/75 teaching research split. Then there are teaching faculty who do all teaching, and research faculty who do all research. I’m kind of 50/50 in my role.

xmddmx 4y ago

Tenure is to Academia as Venture Capital is to Entreprenureship. You give resources (money, which buys time, office space, equipment, support staff...) to a bunch of promising individuals, hoping that some of them will do amazing things, but knowing most of them will not.

currymj 4y ago

in the humanities there is a glut of excellent scholars who would be happy to have a non-tenured professorship which is nevertheless a real job with decent pay, benefits, and working conditions. in applied technical fields it will be really hard to hire people as tenure and academic freedom are the only reason people deal with the BS of academia over industry. so this will probably have the opposite effect of what the legislature wants, the pool of left-leaning humanities professors won’t change much, while STEM will be hugely weakened.

yawnxyz 4y ago

as far as I know, Australia doesn't have tenure either. But with the contract system they do have, it feels like a combination of "you'll be taken care of" and "...but you still have responsibilities". That said, it seems stressful for new professors though

ano-ther 4y ago

Scott Aaronson who has tenure in Texas describes the effect as this: > […] it would be the end of UT Austin and Texas A&M as leading research universities. More precisely, it would be the immediate end of our ability to recruit competitively, and the slightly slower end of our competitiveness period, as faculty with options moved elsewhere. This is so because of the economics of faculty hiring. Particularly in STEM fields like computer science, those who become professors typically forgo vastly higher salaries in industry, not to mention equity in startup companies and so on. https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7243 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7243

bjt 4y ago
While I think he's right, I wonder if that might still be a tradeoff worth making. Or at least, a sane person could argue that it is. Competition between universities for rankings skews a lot of what happens in higher ed. The state of Texas could rationally think "we want to spend our tax dollars subsidizing the education of Texans, but we're not super interested in spending those dollars to fund the academic rat race." The people who want to win that rat race will go somewhere else. UT will be greatly impacted but I don't think the overall scientific output of the USA will.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  I struggle to see how this benefits Texas, though. Education is an investment in the future; encouraging the best professors to go elsewhere is like saying you want the future to happen elsewhere. Maybe that's what Texas wants, but universities usually bring startups and high-tech jobs along with them. It kinda reminds me of how Texas wanted to get in on the blockchain hype, so they passed legislation making it extremely friendly to Bitcoin mining, which happens to be the most competitive, low-margin, environmentally damaging part of the crypto ecosystem. Meanwhile most of the high-margin profit centers (exchanges, DeFi protocols, new blockchain technologies) remained in the Bay Area. It's like Texas is awfully fond of setting up selection filters and then selects for the mediocre.
  - trilbyglens 4y ago

stainablesteel 4y ago

tenure was supposed to allow professors to be able to speak their mind without fear of being fired but apparently modern bureaucracy has evolved to get around this

every 4y ago

Hey, when you've got a political base to whip up and make crazy, consequences don't matter...

screye 4y ago

While the intentions of this change are admittedly malicious, I support the move away from the traditional concept of tenure. Tenure is about exploiting researchers through their 20s as PhDs/post-docs and 30s as assistant-professors, with tenure being a possibility at 40. In the best case scenario, these researchers hit 40, and enjoy what is really an early retirement. Reality is, many will find that nothing is good enough to get tenure at an R1 institute. With the industry moving as fast as it is, professors become obsolete rather quickly. Just look at the huge number of new professors in crypto and NLP, whose entire labs have become obsolete overnight. Honestly, the over-production of PhDs is a big problem today. Hopefully these changes will be the much-needed slap in the face needed for a whole generation of new PhDs to look elsewhere for employment. Tenure is a winner take all system, where the small number who succeed, do it at the expense of the far-too-late disillusionment of the majority. There are broadly 2 different types of academics. The economically productive ones and the money sinks. The money sink academics (Non-stem, non-business) are doomed to a life in academia, irrespective of tenure. They aren't employable in their profession elsewhere, effectively captives of the system. The economically productive ones will be given great 'deals' by the university anyway. These people are important, and universities will raise wages, give work-life balance deals, allow them to have their own practice and give them long contracts. Tenure is a flaky lever used liberally today, but forcing universities into offering more concrete deals is probably better for the employees overall. College basketball doesn't need to offer tenure to $$hire$$ the very best coaches . Tenure's main benefits were that professors were unfireable. In 2023, we see professors being practically bullied into submission by students. We see professors lose creative control over their departments with administrative takeover. Professors are slaves to their funding sources, in a manner that is no different than working in industry. The only appeal of tenure is thus idea of 'early academic retirement'. But that too is a lie, because the system will have squeezed every bit out of you. You might as well be a 65-yr-old in a 40 yr old's body by the time you get tenure. Tenure won't just go away. It will be replaced by more flexible deals. I for one, am looking forward to a change in academia, that adjusts to the death of honor based systems and the realities of a completely messed up supply-demand equation between universities and candidates.

Simulacra 4y ago

I think at SOME institutions this is needed. Professors who have stopped teaching and just waiting for retirement weigh down universities. Students learn from professors who have a vested interest in their learning. What incentivizes tenured profs?

Gabriel54 4y ago

As a TA at a certain public institution in Texas, the level of some students' incompetence by the time they reach their final year in undergraduate studies is shocking and saddening. And yet, almost no one fails, because there is pressure to pass everyone. One would literally have to do nothing in order to fail. Few professors have the time or energy to deal with these issues, so standards get lower and more students pass without knowing their subject. The only thing protecting professors from retaliation (not acquiescing to pressure from administrators / deans to pass students) is tenure. We can see clearly what will be the effect of this legislation.

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/ECOij https://archive.ph/ECOij

APhoenixRises 4y ago

This is a larger blow to smaller universities like UTSA and UTD that finally have budding research programs. I really wish the Texas government would stay out of people's lives. This is just another bill in the long line of bills this year intended to kill "wokeness". Our government doesn't give a single care about education. As long as they think they can get conforming, uninformed youth out of something, they'll do anything.

musicale 4y ago

This might possibly provide some benefits for adjunct faculty (at the expense of tenure lottery winners): Demolishing the tenure class system may reduce the social stigma of being an adjunct vs. tenured faculty member. A noted elsewhere, a mythical possibility of future tenure may become slightly less usable for luring faculty into accepting lower pay. And since everyone is now an adjunct, adjunct salaries (which are usually terrible) may have to rise overall. Although it will probably still be much lower than traditional faculty salaries, as UT may attract more adjunct applicants. Adjunct hiring might change from a per-term model (which is terrible) to a yearly model or even longer. The result could possibly (hopefully?) be higher social status, higher pay, and better job security - for the lucky few adjuncts who manage to get faculty jobs at UT.

pcvarmint 4y ago

https://archive.is/ECOij https://archive.is/ECOij