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 friend

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.