Wednesday, 22 February 2006

Beyond tenure?

The Dean Dad has stirred up some controversy at InsideHigherEd with an op-ed supporting getting rid of tenure.

I’m not entirely sold, but I do think that the institution of tenure (coupled with the norm of rarely firing professors before tenure review) does seem to encourage highly risk-adverse behavior by employers. It probably also depresses salaries substantially. On the other hand, there are serious academic freedom arguments—at least for people who have gotten tenure—that support the institution, so I am somewhat torn.

# By Chris Lawrence @ 11:06 pm CST [Permalink] « (0)
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2 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.
[Permalink] 1. vegreville wrote @ Sat, 25 Feb 2006, 10:18 pm CST:

Someplaces do fire pre-tenure. And not rarely, either.

There are some levers after tenure to discipline people, but they are weak. There are up or out reviews in other job such as law firms or accounting firms, I. And once you are partner, you are almost tenured-I do wonder about how different they are than the academic market. I just don’t know the facts.

 
[Permalink] 2. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Sat, 25 Feb 2006, 10:45 pm CST:

Someplaces do fire pre-tenure. And not rarely, either.

True, although firing at a mid-term (third-year or fourth-year) review is much more common than a serious annual review.

 
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Signifying Nothing formerly featured the stylings of Brock Sides, a left-leaning philosopher turned network administrator currently residing in Memphis, Tennessee who now blogs at Battlepanda, and Robert Prather, a libertarian-leaning conservative economist and occasional contributor at OTB.

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