A Solution for the Tenure Problem

[DigDeep(inactive)]

Interesting article in the Times.

"What if innstead of abolishing tenure, we restructured it? The heart of the problem is that we’ve combined two separate skill sets into a single job...If we created three kinds of tenure rather than one, we might see net gains in both research and teaching."

 

1. A research-only tenure track would be for professors who have the passion and talent for discovering knowledge, but lack the motivation or ability to teach well. This would allow them to do more groundbreaking studies and produce more patents, while sparing students the sorrow of shoddy courses.

 

2. A teaching-only tenure track would be for professors who excel in communicating knowledge. Granting tenure on the basis of exemplary teaching would be a radical step for research universities but it might improve student learning. 

 

3. The third tenure track would be for research and teaching. Professors who succeed in both could maintain this dual role, whereas those who struggle in research could eventually shift to the teaching track, and vice versa.

 

 

 

 

Although I think it's an interesting idea, I think problems would arise. Do you pay profs more for research or teaching or both? Clearly, research and teaching would take more work ours, but do you pay them more for it? I suppose it could work if they were paid equally, and the only way to take on grad students was if you were research only; although other faculty could serve on committees......thoughts? Would this work?

 

Article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/opinion/a-solution-for-bad-teaching.html?hpw&rref=opinion&_r=1

Edited March 20, 2014 by DigDeep

[spunky]

uhm... i'm not quite sure any university would be willing to jump into this bandwagon. i'm trying to find the exact statistic, but isn't it true that most colleges (at least in the U.S.) now employ adjunct professors for teaching-only duties? thinking pragmatically, as the head of a university i'd say you'd probably give tenure to talented, research-only professors (because they are the ones capable of bringing in more grants and prestige to the university) and leave the teaching to adjuncts, TAs and whatnot. 

[pears]

On a very superficial level, having only looked into his bio & scanned the article: all this is very easy to for a very young & charismatic professor who appears to be tenured himself. I'll revisit this thread when I've given it a thorough read & more thought!

 

But, in general, this reminds me of a trend that I have a particular distaste for in anthropology: as far as I can tell, everyone — especially seasoned researchers — loves to run their jaw about how we need to stop writing & speaking in "Academese," make our work relevant to & digestible for the public, stay deeply involved with & committed to the places & people we study, & so on... yet, so far, it's mostly been a case of "do as I say, not as I do," & in turn, that perpetuates our ridiculous system of expectations for anthropologists. I mean, really, you expect me to listen to your complaints about the "opaqueness" of anthropology when you used "somniforous" more than once in your article? Yeah, no. Go away. :|

 

Anyway, to bring that full circle, there seems to be a good deal of "do as I say"-type academia related pieces floating around; lots of hypocrisy on the part of people whose careers are very secure, but that's not to say they haven't truly earned the ability to say these sorts of things. I just wish there were more progressive academic leadership by action.

[rising_star]

There actually is a movement toward teaching-only positions in several systems. SUNY and the University System of Georgia come to mind. While they don't use the term "professor", they do have permanent, full-time lecturer positions, with the possibility of promotion to Senior Lecturer. They have a higher teaching load than traditional TT positions, with much more emphasis on teaching, evaluations, and excelling at teaching. I see nothing wrong with these positions in general because they are FT, come with benefits, and offer the possibility of promotion. The devil, of course, is in the details. From what I know of the plans at one SUNY campus, the offer was 5/5 with the requirement of service and advising and for not much more pay than adjuncts currently make by teaching that many courses. That is a shoddy deal, to say the least. A friend on this SUNY campus told me that all of his department's current adjuncts declined to apply for these lecturer positions because they knew it would be more work for the same amount (or less potentially) of money.

[Guest Gnome Chomsky]

uhm... i'm not quite sure any university would be willing to jump into this bandwagon. i'm trying to find the exact statistic, but isn't it true that most colleges (at least in the U.S.) now employ adjunct professors for teaching-only duties? thinking pragmatically, as the head of a university i'd say you'd probably give tenure to talented, research-only professors (because they are the ones capable of bringing in more grants and prestige to the university) and leave the teaching to adjuncts, TAs and whatnot. 

I agree with this pretty much word for word. Sure, the proposed idea sounds nice, but it isn't very realistic. Researchers are rock stars at the big name universities. I do linguistics. Noam Chomsky (not me... I'm Gnome Chomsky... no relation... pure coincidence) is probably the biggest living rock star in the world for linguists. He's the Mick Jagger of academia (if you're into that type of thing). A lot of people apply to MIT just for him. But do you really think they apply so they can take one of his classes or so they could work alongside him in the lab? 

 

Don't get me wrong. I think a good teacher goes a long way. But I think the universities view teachers as a dime a dozen. All they're doing is reading from a pre-assigned textbook and adding some charisma so the students don't fall asleep. The researchers, on the other hand, are thinking outside the box and changing the world with their brilliance. I'm being hyperbolic, but my point stands. The university just doesn't value them equally. And if there were pure tenured researchers and pure tenured teachers, the researchers would be mighty upset if the teachers got the same pay and benefits. 

Edited March 23, 2014 by Gnome Chomsky

[DigDeep(inactive)]

I agree with this pretty much word for word. Sure, the proposed idea sounds nice, but it isn't very realistic. Researchers are rock stars at the big name universities. I do linguistics. Noam Chomsky (not me... I'm Gnome Chomsky... no relation... pure coincidence) is probably the biggest living rock star in the world for linguists. He's the Mick Jagger of academia (if you're into that type of thing). A lot of people apply to MIT just for him. But do you really think they apply so they can take one of his classes or so they could work alongside him in the lab? 

 

Don't get me wrong. I think a good teacher goes a long way. But I think the universities view teachers as a dime a dozen. All they're doing is reading from a pre-assigned textbook and adding some charisma so the students don't fall asleep. The researchers, on the other hand, are thinking outside the box and changing the world with their brilliance. I'm being hyperbolic, but my point stands. The university just doesn't value them equally. And if there were pure tenured researchers and pure tenured teachers, the researchers would be mighty upset if the teachers got the same pay and benefits. 

 

Agreed. 

[TakeruK]

I also agree that this idea is not really realistic. I don't even see the purpose of a tenure-tracked teaching position and I really think teaching is an important part of being a grad student and/or professor! 

 

To me, tenure is granted so that you can have job security despite fluctuations in your research output or the controversial nature of your research. The idea of tenure is to protect researchers from negative effects due to people not agreeing or liking their outcome. It's to protect the integrity of their work. If a prof is dependent on grants from source X and they do research and find out something bad about X, tenure protects them when they publish this knowledge so that X cannot directly influence their job status. In addition, tenure is being vetted as someone who is able to produce useful results for the field, so that even if a tenured prof gets "writer's block" or does not produce anything for e.g. 5 years in a row, they don't have to worry about losing their job. Instead, they can keep on working until they reach that next important result. It prevents people feeling pressure to make up fake results because they are afraid of losing their job.

 

Of course, this view of tenure is also idealistic. But to me, tenure is all about protecting research / scientific inquiry / scholarly work. I don't think a "teaching tenure track" makes sense. Most educators do not have permanent job security like tenure provides. However, this doesn't mean they are completely unprotected. Instead, I think teaching staff at universities should be hired in permanent positions instead of yearly contracts, and be protected like any other permanent employee at any other job. At least in Canada, everyone in the teaching profession is unionized and so there are a lot of protections so that schools can't just fire people without a just cause. Layoffs should happen in reverse order of seniority and so on, so that a prof that has been teaching for 20 years doesn't suddenly have to find something else to do if the budget is cut one year. 

[rising_star]

TakeruK, I think your last paragraph does a nice job of explaining why a tenure-track is needed for teaching-only positions. Treating them the same as permanent staff doesn't make sense because they are unlikely to have the same 12-month demands to be in the office as permanent staff. Tenure already exists in many public school systems, in part thanks to unions. But it does not exist in those same places when you teach at the collegiate level, which makes no sense.

 

If I read you correctly, your objection is that people who teach don't need tenure in the same way because they aren't doing anything controversial, can't have writer's block for a few years, etc. The writer's block equivalent is probably trying new techniques/approaches and getting lower teaching evaluation scores. But, I think that's field-specific. There are lots of opportunities for people to mire themselves in controversy while teaching in the humanities and social sciences. For example, the recent effort by some SC lawmakers to withdraw some university funding because instructors are using "gay material" could lead to repercussions directly on those faculty, especially if they are adjuncts. The freedom of tenure for teaching would give instructors the chance to try new things, teach subjects that make students uncomfortable, and give grades lower than a B without fear that these things will get them fired due to poor reviews from students.

[Guest Gnome Chomsky]

 

The writer's block equivalent is probably trying new techniques/approaches and getting lower teaching evaluation scores. 

I find that kind of hard to picture. For one, I think the board knows the story behind teaching evaluations. Most bad evals probably have to do with receiving a poor grade. The poorer the teacher (according to evals), the harder the grader. But that's another topic in an of itself. 

 

I just don't see a teacher making such a drastic, controversial change to their teaching approach. Also, these "controversial" researchers probably made some amazing discoveries early in their career, and that's why the university doesn't want to lose them. 

 

I just can't see something even closely related with regard to teaching. The only professor I know who's changed his teaching style drastically did it because of poor evals. And he already had tenure for his research. He was reaching retirement and was known for being such a tough grader, and the board insisted he lighten up a little. He didn't really like that idea, so he sort of gave up and just started teaching like a zombie. He told me all this. We're drinking buddies. 

 

Anyway, I just can't see something like that. I think TakerUK makes a good point about controversy and writer's block. I can't really think of teaching equivalent to writer's block. 

[rising_star]

Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist!

 

Also, while many know about the correlations with bad teaching evals, that does not stop universities and colleges using them when they consider whether to rehire someone. I have colleagues (junior assistant professors) who have been told to do whatever they need to raise their teaching evals so that it isn't a problem when they go up for tenure. This in spite of everything we know about teaching evals that you indicate, Gnome. Now imagine someone in a teaching only position. Let's say that you want to include critical discussions of a sensitive topic, like abortion in your course on social policy or gender studies. Should you be able to? Probably. Will it upset some students? Yes. Will they take it out on you in your teaching evals? Probably. If those evals are the sole basis for determining whether or not you are rehired (and, let's be honest, this happens frequently), this means that you have to change your teaching to accommodate what students want (or in this case, what they don't want to hear about).

 

I'm confused about your point about teaching approaches. People change their approaches all the time. I doubt professors were using PowerPoint or other presentation tools 15-20 years ago, but they are standard today. I have had students look askance and confused when I don't have a PPT presentation open at the start of class. The new "tools" I'm being asked to use (primarily technological/digital) require me to rethink how I've taught things in the past and change them around to make them more interactive/multimedia-friendly. Does this always work the first time? Hell no. If it did, I would be a teaching genius and educational consultant at the upper echelons. People have whole PhDs in this field so it shouldn't at all be surprising that not everything one does in the classroom works, and certainly not the first (or second or third) time. But, hey, if you've never seen these kinds of things, you've had some really awesome professors and you should be grateful for that. Just remember that there are lots of other situations out there in America's 2000+ colleges and universities.

[TakeruK]

TakeruK, I think your last paragraph does a nice job of explaining why a tenure-track is needed for teaching-only positions. Treating them the same as permanent staff doesn't make sense because they are unlikely to have the same 12-month demands to be in the office as permanent staff. Tenure already exists in many public school systems, in part thanks to unions. But it does not exist in those same places when you teach at the collegiate level, which makes no sense.

 

If I read you correctly, your objection is that people who teach don't need tenure in the same way because they aren't doing anything controversial, can't have writer's block for a few years, etc. The writer's block equivalent is probably trying new techniques/approaches and getting lower teaching evaluation scores. But, I think that's field-specific. There are lots of opportunities for people to mire themselves in controversy while teaching in the humanities and social sciences. For example, the recent effort by some SC lawmakers to withdraw some university funding because instructors are using "gay material" could lead to repercussions directly on those faculty, especially if they are adjuncts. The freedom of tenure for teaching would give instructors the chance to try new things, teach subjects that make students uncomfortable, and give grades lower than a B without fear that these things will get them fired due to poor reviews from students.

 

Hmm, I think one issue here is my lack of understanding of how jobs actually work in the US and/or what I think tenure actually means. I agree with you on all your points in the second paragraph, and from my knowledge of how things work with unions in Canada (for professors as well as public school teachers), everything you describe is job protected in virtually every collective bargaining agreement. So, I may be wrong here, but I figured that tenure means you have a permanent permanent job--that is, the only way for you to lose your job is if the department shuts down. However, job protections that most collective bargaining agreements effectively gives "tenure" to all teachers. But jobs can still be lost if there is a huge budget cut and they have to let the most junior 25% of their faculty go (usually many of the senior people will choose early retirement so that the younger ones don't lose their jobs). 

 

Caveats to the above:

1. This only applies to permanent teaching positions, not contracted adjuncts/sessional lecturers (I think it is bad practice for Universities to continually hire contracted teachers instead of an actual permanent position when a permanent one is actually needed. But some unions have regulations to prevent this from happening--whether they are effective, I don't know.)

2. I am speaking from my experience in Canada, which is obviously different from the US. But I don't know how different. I might also be wrong about how Canada works, but from everything I know, employers can't really just fire their unionized teachers because they got bad reviews. The employer would have to prove beyond doubt that the teacher is not actually performing their job duties and/or not actually qualified for the job in order to fire them. Bad reviews from students, even multiple terms in a row, does not get a teacher fired. It might get the employer to look into the potential teaching problem and utilize their own internal review process to evaluate a teacher's performance though.

 

So, this is why, from this worldview, tenure doesn't make sense for a teaching-only position. However, perhaps my worldview is not an accurate reflection of reality (or at least not in the United States). If a permanent teaching position (i.e. not based on renewal of contracts) does not carry the protections that you wrote in your quoted post, then yeah, I definitely agree such protections are necessary for a teaching position! An effective instructor needs to have the freedom to experiment in their classes and try new things and not be shackled to their student evaluations!

 

I didn't know US public schools have tenure. I guess Canadian public schools unions basically afford their teachers the same things as tenure, just without the name. Actually now that I consider this again, I am no longer sure what tenure actually means anymore. At this point, I can only think that a tenured position can basically appear to be completely crappy at their job (when measured by some metric) and not run the risk of losing it. So, this is why I thought a researcher needs tenure--there is no good metric to measure research productivity. That is, tenure is necessary only in work roles where common ways of measuring output (e.g. # of papers) might not be an accurate representation of the person's actual value.

 

For teaching roles, even if a professor is trying new techniques and gets bad reviews or doesn't teach a class as well, it's hard to imagine a case where an instructor can completely fail at teaching (i.e. majority of the students failed to learn the material). But perhaps I am not thinking hard enough, please let me know what I could be missing!