5 ms·

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 c

by 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.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    > It seems to me that something so simple couldn't possibly work... Well, what kind of knowledge do you have of university internals? Most people here on HN who want to get rid of university admin are on the outside looking in, and find it very hard to understand what all the admin do. In my experience, when I start to explain that a university is more like a town than a school, and "admin" are in fact the people who run the town and implement the services, it becomes very hard to identify where the cuts should be. The library? IT? Health center? police? The arts complex and associated services? The sports complex and associated services? The transportation system? And before you say these aren't the prerogative of a university, because a university is just a school, and it shouldn't offer these things, I have two responses. One, you're thinking of a "college". Two, if universities get rid of these services, often times the local town cannot replace them. So how are they to manage? So if you're having trouble understanding why a university can't simply cut or automate all the administrators, it could be because you don't have a clear understanding of their role and why they are crucial. Universities require bureaucracies and they don't scale linearly with the size of the student population.
    - kjksf 4y ago
      Here's the problem with your "admins are so absolutely necessary" argument. Per https://mndaily.com/193678/uncategorized/statistics-show-increase-admin-positions/ https://mndaily.com/193678/uncategorized/statistics-show-inc... between 1999 and 2010 admin jobs increased 75% across universities. Per https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-part-of-its-leadership-to-lead-yales-administration-increases-by-nearly-50-percent/ https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-... over the last 20 years, the number of managerial and professional staff that Yale employs has risen three times faster than the undergraduate student body. So were universities in 2000 providing unacceptable level of admin service or was the level of service just fine and they got bloated because they could, not because they needed to?
      - stametseater 4y ago
        Bureaucracies bloat because they gradually fill up with the sort of bureaucrats who seek foremost to expand their own dominion. From the individual perspective of such a bureaucrat, the more people they have working under them, the more important they are. From this individual selfish incentive, bureaucratic bloat becomes an emergent phenomenon. Or put another way: > Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people": > First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. > Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. > The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    > pure skill/ability/talent First, find a way to accurately, fairly, and unambiguously define and measure those qualities.
  - wyager 4y ago
    > hired and based admissions on pure skill/ability/talent This would be great, but I will present without comment the fact that lots of large universities are suddenly getting rid of standardized-test-based admissions, which is by far the best way that we know how to do ability-based admissions. You must understand the dynamics behind that decision to understand why it isn't currently legally/institutionally feasible to have merit-based admission.
    - all2 4y ago
      > You must understand the dynamics behind that decision to understand why it isn't currently legally/institutionally feasible to have merit-based admission. Is this for any institution of higher learning? Or just public institutions (ie, institutions that receive public/federal money)?
- ModernMech 4y ago
  The new trend now is not adjunct faculty, but well-paid lecturers with 5-year contracts instead of tenure.
- cal5k 4y ago
  Heavy government involvement in student loans created a perverse incentive to bloat costs (administration) and increase tuitions. Classic bureaucratization, really... when the buyer and the seller of something (e.g. a university degree) are disconnected by way of, say, a flood of cheap student loans, the incentive structure for the bureaucracy is to increase its own budget, staff, and therefore power. It's no wonder that administration has exploded along with tuitions. Lack of tenured positions really has very little to do with it.
  - zoolily 4y ago
    Heavy government involvement with public universities in the form of subsidies once made public education free in some states and low tuition everywhere. As government subsidies have decreased, tuition costs have risen to compensate. The state paid 75% of the costs to educate a student in the closest university to me in 2005, but paid less than 25% of those costs in 2020. Lower subsidies led to a reduction in tenured positions to reduce educational costs as well as to a rapid expansion of administrators whose job it is to obtain funds from donations, grants, and corporations. Unfunded government mandates like Title IX and so forth have also led to the expansion of the administration and increasing education costs.
- aborsy 4y ago
  In some sense, everyone is adjunct. People who work in industry have fixed-term renewable contracts. If job security is to be offered, extend it to other professions as well, as French do (with their CDI contracts). The main point is, professors don’t need life-time protection in many fields where research is increasingly focused on obtaining results in short term, and has become money driven. The gap between the type of research in academia and industry is not that much in many areas. Perhaps a 5-years contract model would work better: a performance review every 5 years. Professors get some job security if they want to pursue problems sometime ahead of the industry. The duration could depend on the field.
  - zoolily 4y ago
    Most industry positions are much better than adjunct positions. Adjunct faculty are temporary part-time workers who teach one or two classes per term. They are paid $1000-4000 per class without benefits, which is less than minimum wage when you count time to prepare for class, grade, and interact with students outside of class. A quarter of adjuncts depend on public assistance programs like food stamps to survive.
  - yodsanklai 4y ago
    > If job security is to be offered, extend it to other professions as well, as French do (with their CDI contracts). A French CDI contract doesn't mean job security. You can be fired for low performance, or for economical reasons. You'll get a few months salary in the process, a couple of months notice, but they'll fire you if they want too.
cal5k 4y ago
It also only applies to public universities - private institutions can still do whatever they want.
burkaman 4y ago
Are you suggesting that making the job less secure will make academics less interested in money, grands, trends, citations, and status? They'll be more content to just focus on the science and ignore money and fame, knowing that they can't get tenure and can be fired at any time?
majormajor 4y ago
What's somewhat interesting is that this is a move being made by people who simultaneously claim to want more freedom of expression in general. It's obvious to see how there could be non-Republican-friendly results of faculty being easier to fire for, say, a controversial twitter post. So what's the thinking here? Seems like it could be... * pure political theater, without really focusing on long-term affects * the result of deciding to not even fight a battle for control of administration for public universities in the state (except in that case... if you think the administrators won't share your views, making it easier for them to fire professors seems foolish) * similar to the above, but maybe a more outright battle on public education in general; possibly the first of many moves in the hope that right-wing private universities will emerge as replacements?)
- Centigonal 4y ago
  I think nearly everyone who says "I want more freedom of expression" leaves out the quiet part, which is "...for people who think like I do." There are many, many examples of supposed "free speech advocates" trying to silence dissenting voices or criticism. Under that assumption, it makes perfect sense that Texas conservatives, believing colleges are liberal bastions that spread ideas they disagree with, would see anything that reduces the power of college faculty as a win.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    I don't disagree, but it's still a bit puzzling beyond the just "political theater"/"retributional politics" approach: * if they don't control the administration of the schools, this only serves to make it harder to hire anybody and easier to fire those who the administration doesn't agree with. Presumably conservatives. That's a net loss. * if they do control the administration (or have a path to getting that control) then why not just hire people who think like they do and then enjoy the results of having those folks have tenure?
    - vkou 4y ago
      > * if they don't control the administration of the schools, They control the purse strings.
armchairhacker 4y ago
More generally we need better protections for faculty with controversial views who can still teach and research to not get “cancelled”; better labor protections and more jobs so that faculty can advocate for themselves and receive less work (vs. getting disciplined or fired) when they are too old to effectively teach and research; better grants and more jobs so that faculty have better pay; better grants and more jobs so that faculty can only research (these types of faculty suck at teaching), or only teach and not be considered “lesser”; etc. With all these tenure isn’t necessary. But this is Texas, with US labor protection and a culture which openly hates education and dissent, so in this specific case it’s definitively bad.
- endtime 4y ago
  > faculty can advocate for themselves and receive less work (vs. getting disciplined or fired) when they are too old to effectively teach and research Why is this desirable (to anyone other than elderly faculty)?
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    One of the promises for highly educated people (PhDs) who devote their most lucrative years to unprofitable research, is that they will able to do the job when they are very old. Otherwise, the retirement plan is insufficient. I can make several times what I do on the market, so if I'm going to be replaced as soon as it's convenient for the university, then we're going to have a very different relationship that's more about money.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  I definitely agree. The state __shouldn't__ under any circumstances have the power to police the content taught at universities. What sort of bastion of knowledge and free speech can universities be if they live in fear of getting angering a governor?
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  >”a culture which openly hates education and dissent, so in this specific case it’s definitively bad.” This is a completely untrue and biased stereotype. No one in Texas “openly hates education”. As for the dissent aspect, I don’t even know where to begin with that one.
nequo 4y ago
Eliminating tenure only increases the pressure to chase grants. Tenure is what affords academics the time to pursue research that pays off in 10 years instead of 2.
tejtm 4y ago
Tenure effectively migrated to administration which being even further from the students makes it less "school" more value extraction corporation.
ericmay 4y ago
On the other hand costs may rise because you may not be able to attract good professors if there isn't tenure to offset lower than industry wages. Or you may just get lots of turnover or low-quality professors.
VLM 4y ago
What is academic freedom in 2023?
curt15 4y ago
> Today, most academics chase money, grants, trends, citations and status. Grants, trends, citations, and status...but money really? I come from mathematics and the notion of getting rich in academia is laughable. Maybe that's why so many math and physics people go to finance.
Kevin_S 4y ago
But removing tenure will only increase the incentives of chasing those things. And I don't understand how others in this thread are saying academic freedom isn't necessary anymore/doesn't matter. The entire purpose of the republican party attacking tenure is so they can explicitly attack academic freedom.
uberman 4y ago
Are you aware that most non tenured positions require you to reapply every year for your job? Every 3 years if you are lucky. This in not a simple annual review like a normal job, this is you are fired at the end of your 1 year contract and now let's talk about the possibility of a new one year contract. This in my opinion is really what tenure is about, getting out of the yearly firing that adjuncts and lecturers face.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  Typical contracts are 3-5 years, which is more job security than you'll find at most any job, which are at-will in America (meaning you can be fired at any time for any reason). With the layoffs in the tech sector now in the 100's of thousands, it's nice to know I have a guaranteed position for the next 2 years.
  - uberman 4y ago
    Perhaps at your institution, but where I consult it is much harder to fire an "at will" administrator than it is to fire an adjunct. Even one who took a month of unannounced vacation out of the country then retroactively declared it as work from home when it turned out they had not even accrued the time they took. They were also only approved for one day a week work from home. My point being at least where I work it is next to impossible to fire a full time staffer who is not attached to soft money. An adjunct though is essentially disposable once a year. Part time professors, at the end of any semester.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      > Where I consult it is much harder to fire an "at will" administrator than it is to fire an adjunct. Of course, this makes perfect sense, due to the role adjuncts fill in the campus community. They are and always have been temporary labor that are used to fill small or short-term roles. For example, they may serve as a project manager on a capstone, a lecturer for a section, or a leader for a recitation. They are not full time faculty and are not expected to fill the role of a full time faculty member. At best they will work for maybe 14 weeks, maybe 6-8 hours a week for one course. Why shouldn't an adjunct be harder to fire than an administrator, who has a full-time, 40 hour per week, year-round role at the university? The problem you are alluding to is when a university builds a faculty out of adjuncts, which is just bad practice, and indicative of a bad university.
romwell 4y ago
>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. These two statements are written as if there's an implication; there isn't one. >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). Bold claim! Let's see if it's more than just, like, your opinion. (Again, it isn't).

by aborsy 4y ago

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.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  > It seems to me that something so simple couldn't possibly work... Well, what kind of knowledge do you have of university internals? Most people here on HN who want to get rid of university admin are on the outside looking in, and find it very hard to understand what all the admin do. In my experience, when I start to explain that a university is more like a town than a school, and "admin" are in fact the people who run the town and implement the services, it becomes very hard to identify where the cuts should be. The library? IT? Health center? police? The arts complex and associated services? The sports complex and associated services? The transportation system? And before you say these aren't the prerogative of a university, because a university is just a school, and it shouldn't offer these things, I have two responses. One, you're thinking of a "college". Two, if universities get rid of these services, often times the local town cannot replace them. So how are they to manage? So if you're having trouble understanding why a university can't simply cut or automate all the administrators, it could be because you don't have a clear understanding of their role and why they are crucial. Universities require bureaucracies and they don't scale linearly with the size of the student population.
  - kjksf 4y ago
    Here's the problem with your "admins are so absolutely necessary" argument. Per https://mndaily.com/193678/uncategorized/statistics-show-increase-admin-positions/ https://mndaily.com/193678/uncategorized/statistics-show-inc... between 1999 and 2010 admin jobs increased 75% across universities. Per https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-part-of-its-leadership-to-lead-yales-administration-increases-by-nearly-50-percent/ https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-... over the last 20 years, the number of managerial and professional staff that Yale employs has risen three times faster than the undergraduate student body. So were universities in 2000 providing unacceptable level of admin service or was the level of service just fine and they got bloated because they could, not because they needed to?
    - stametseater 4y ago
      Bureaucracies bloat because they gradually fill up with the sort of bureaucrats who seek foremost to expand their own dominion. From the individual perspective of such a bureaucrat, the more people they have working under them, the more important they are. From this individual selfish incentive, bureaucratic bloat becomes an emergent phenomenon. Or put another way: > Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people": > First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. > Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. > The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  > pure skill/ability/talent First, find a way to accurately, fairly, and unambiguously define and measure those qualities.
- wyager 4y ago
  > hired and based admissions on pure skill/ability/talent This would be great, but I will present without comment the fact that lots of large universities are suddenly getting rid of standardized-test-based admissions, which is by far the best way that we know how to do ability-based admissions. You must understand the dynamics behind that decision to understand why it isn't currently legally/institutionally feasible to have merit-based admission.
  - all2 4y ago
    > You must understand the dynamics behind that decision to understand why it isn't currently legally/institutionally feasible to have merit-based admission. Is this for any institution of higher learning? Or just public institutions (ie, institutions that receive public/federal money)?
ModernMech 4y ago
The new trend now is not adjunct faculty, but well-paid lecturers with 5-year contracts instead of tenure.
cal5k 4y ago
Heavy government involvement in student loans created a perverse incentive to bloat costs (administration) and increase tuitions. Classic bureaucratization, really... when the buyer and the seller of something (e.g. a university degree) are disconnected by way of, say, a flood of cheap student loans, the incentive structure for the bureaucracy is to increase its own budget, staff, and therefore power. It's no wonder that administration has exploded along with tuitions. Lack of tenured positions really has very little to do with it.
- zoolily 4y ago
  Heavy government involvement with public universities in the form of subsidies once made public education free in some states and low tuition everywhere. As government subsidies have decreased, tuition costs have risen to compensate. The state paid 75% of the costs to educate a student in the closest university to me in 2005, but paid less than 25% of those costs in 2020. Lower subsidies led to a reduction in tenured positions to reduce educational costs as well as to a rapid expansion of administrators whose job it is to obtain funds from donations, grants, and corporations. Unfunded government mandates like Title IX and so forth have also led to the expansion of the administration and increasing education costs.
aborsy 4y ago
In some sense, everyone is adjunct. People who work in industry have fixed-term renewable contracts. If job security is to be offered, extend it to other professions as well, as French do (with their CDI contracts). The main point is, professors don’t need life-time protection in many fields where research is increasingly focused on obtaining results in short term, and has become money driven. The gap between the type of research in academia and industry is not that much in many areas. Perhaps a 5-years contract model would work better: a performance review every 5 years. Professors get some job security if they want to pursue problems sometime ahead of the industry. The duration could depend on the field.
- zoolily 4y ago
  Most industry positions are much better than adjunct positions. Adjunct faculty are temporary part-time workers who teach one or two classes per term. They are paid $1000-4000 per class without benefits, which is less than minimum wage when you count time to prepare for class, grade, and interact with students outside of class. A quarter of adjuncts depend on public assistance programs like food stamps to survive.
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  > If job security is to be offered, extend it to other professions as well, as French do (with their CDI contracts). A French CDI contract doesn't mean job security. You can be fired for low performance, or for economical reasons. You'll get a few months salary in the process, a couple of months notice, but they'll fire you if they want too.

cal5k 4y ago

It also only applies to public universities - private institutions can still do whatever they want.

burkaman 4y ago

Are you suggesting that making the job less secure will make academics less interested in money, grands, trends, citations, and status? They'll be more content to just focus on the science and ignore money and fame, knowing that they can't get tenure and can be fired at any time?

majormajor 4y ago

What's somewhat interesting is that this is a move being made by people who simultaneously claim to want more freedom of expression in general. It's obvious to see how there could be non-Republican-friendly results of faculty being easier to fire for, say, a controversial twitter post. So what's the thinking here? Seems like it could be... * pure political theater, without really focusing on long-term affects * the result of deciding to not even fight a battle for control of administration for public universities in the state (except in that case... if you think the administrators won't share your views, making it easier for them to fire professors seems foolish) * similar to the above, but maybe a more outright battle on public education in general; possibly the first of many moves in the hope that right-wing private universities will emerge as replacements?)

Centigonal 4y ago
I think nearly everyone who says "I want more freedom of expression" leaves out the quiet part, which is "...for people who think like I do." There are many, many examples of supposed "free speech advocates" trying to silence dissenting voices or criticism. Under that assumption, it makes perfect sense that Texas conservatives, believing colleges are liberal bastions that spread ideas they disagree with, would see anything that reduces the power of college faculty as a win.
- majormajor 4y ago
  I don't disagree, but it's still a bit puzzling beyond the just "political theater"/"retributional politics" approach: * if they don't control the administration of the schools, this only serves to make it harder to hire anybody and easier to fire those who the administration doesn't agree with. Presumably conservatives. That's a net loss. * if they do control the administration (or have a path to getting that control) then why not just hire people who think like they do and then enjoy the results of having those folks have tenure?
  - vkou 4y ago
    > * if they don't control the administration of the schools, They control the purse strings.

armchairhacker 4y ago

More generally we need better protections for faculty with controversial views who can still teach and research to not get “cancelled”; better labor protections and more jobs so that faculty can advocate for themselves and receive less work (vs. getting disciplined or fired) when they are too old to effectively teach and research; better grants and more jobs so that faculty have better pay; better grants and more jobs so that faculty can only research (these types of faculty suck at teaching), or only teach and not be considered “lesser”; etc. With all these tenure isn’t necessary. But this is Texas, with US labor protection and a culture which openly hates education and dissent, so in this specific case it’s definitively bad.

endtime 4y ago
> faculty can advocate for themselves and receive less work (vs. getting disciplined or fired) when they are too old to effectively teach and research Why is this desirable (to anyone other than elderly faculty)?
- ModernMech 4y ago
  One of the promises for highly educated people (PhDs) who devote their most lucrative years to unprofitable research, is that they will able to do the job when they are very old. Otherwise, the retirement plan is insufficient. I can make several times what I do on the market, so if I'm going to be replaced as soon as it's convenient for the university, then we're going to have a very different relationship that's more about money.
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
I definitely agree. The state __shouldn't__ under any circumstances have the power to police the content taught at universities. What sort of bastion of knowledge and free speech can universities be if they live in fear of getting angering a governor?
BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
>”a culture which openly hates education and dissent, so in this specific case it’s definitively bad.” This is a completely untrue and biased stereotype. No one in Texas “openly hates education”. As for the dissent aspect, I don’t even know where to begin with that one.

nequo 4y ago

Eliminating tenure only increases the pressure to chase grants. Tenure is what affords academics the time to pursue research that pays off in 10 years instead of 2.

tejtm 4y ago

Tenure effectively migrated to administration which being even further from the students makes it less "school" more value extraction corporation.

ericmay 4y ago

On the other hand costs may rise because you may not be able to attract good professors if there isn't tenure to offset lower than industry wages. Or you may just get lots of turnover or low-quality professors.

VLM 4y ago

What is academic freedom in 2023?

curt15 4y ago

> Today, most academics chase money, grants, trends, citations and status. Grants, trends, citations, and status...but money really? I come from mathematics and the notion of getting rich in academia is laughable. Maybe that's why so many math and physics people go to finance.

Kevin_S 4y ago

But removing tenure will only increase the incentives of chasing those things. And I don't understand how others in this thread are saying academic freedom isn't necessary anymore/doesn't matter. The entire purpose of the republican party attacking tenure is so they can explicitly attack academic freedom.

uberman 4y ago

Are you aware that most non tenured positions require you to reapply every year for your job? Every 3 years if you are lucky. This in not a simple annual review like a normal job, this is you are fired at the end of your 1 year contract and now let's talk about the possibility of a new one year contract. This in my opinion is really what tenure is about, getting out of the yearly firing that adjuncts and lecturers face.

ModernMech 4y ago
Typical contracts are 3-5 years, which is more job security than you'll find at most any job, which are at-will in America (meaning you can be fired at any time for any reason). With the layoffs in the tech sector now in the 100's of thousands, it's nice to know I have a guaranteed position for the next 2 years.
- uberman 4y ago
  Perhaps at your institution, but where I consult it is much harder to fire an "at will" administrator than it is to fire an adjunct. Even one who took a month of unannounced vacation out of the country then retroactively declared it as work from home when it turned out they had not even accrued the time they took. They were also only approved for one day a week work from home. My point being at least where I work it is next to impossible to fire a full time staffer who is not attached to soft money. An adjunct though is essentially disposable once a year. Part time professors, at the end of any semester.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    > Where I consult it is much harder to fire an "at will" administrator than it is to fire an adjunct. Of course, this makes perfect sense, due to the role adjuncts fill in the campus community. They are and always have been temporary labor that are used to fill small or short-term roles. For example, they may serve as a project manager on a capstone, a lecturer for a section, or a leader for a recitation. They are not full time faculty and are not expected to fill the role of a full time faculty member. At best they will work for maybe 14 weeks, maybe 6-8 hours a week for one course. Why shouldn't an adjunct be harder to fire than an administrator, who has a full-time, 40 hour per week, year-round role at the university? The problem you are alluding to is when a university builds a faculty out of adjuncts, which is just bad practice, and indicative of a bad university.

romwell 4y ago

>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. These two statements are written as if there's an implication; there isn't one. >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). Bold claim! Let's see if it's more than just, like, your opinion. (Again, it isn't).