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February 05, 2010 8:53 AM
How to Grant Tenure
Gordon Gee, America’s “best” (and most bountifully compensated) college president, wants to change tenure. Gee, the president of Ohio State, recently spoke with the Associated Press:
Ohio State University President Gordon Gee says the traditional formula that rewards publishing in scholarly journals over excellence in teaching and other contributions is outdated and too often favors the quantity of a professor’s output over quality.
“Someone should gain recognition at the university for writing the great American novel or for discovering the cure for cancer,” he told The Associated Press. “In a very complex world, you can no longer expect everyone to be great at everything.”
It’s unclear how, exactly, Gee would prefer to determine excellence in teaching or award tenure. Tenure, which makes a faculty appointment virtually permanent, is typically granted by a university in a way that emphasizes scholarship and research (or, logistically, publication).
Gee, who has also served as the president of Brown University and the chancellor of Vanderbilt University, began his career as an associate professor at Brigham Young University Law School.
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PQuincy on February 05, 2010 7:41 PM:
Those who criticize academic tenure like to portray it as resting exclusively on a review of publications in the candidate's field. Anyone who has worked at an actual research university knows that publications are essential for tenure, but (with certain exceptions) only if the candidate's teaching and service are also good. Every case represents a judgment, and different departments, colleges and universities do it differently, but few ignore teaching.
Can an Assyriologist at Chicago or a junior faculty member who has already pulled in millions in NIH grants get tenure, even though their teaching is weak or non-existent? Sure! But in general, aside from areas that are truly esoteric and demanding (how many languages can YOU read in cuneiform?) or that depend on grant largesse, most tenure cases take teaching into account. No department wants to be saddled with someone whose classes are empty, since that requires all the rest of the department to teach more students, after all.
Another element that is often overlooked: tenure is a way of keeping faculty salaries down. After all, that tenured professor at the University of Ohio earning $126,000 a year may be comfortable, but it's hardly Wall Street wages. Moreover, how many professions require six to eight years of post-baccalaureate training (all of it in a competitive funding environment), followed by a highly competitive job search process (typically 50-300 applicants for each job), followed by a seven-year probationary period after which there is a real chance the person will not have a job. Universities do deny tenure, after all...and the outcome is not that the person remains an assistant professor, but that they're unemployed.
Without something like tenure, how many people with the qualities needed for doing top-quality research -- qualities which might well bring in a much richer salary in other lines of business -- would go through this process?
If you doubt this, look into the salary levels of PhD level research scientists at corporations: they tend to be substantially higher than academic salaries.