On #tenure…from the archives, 2010

Serendipity rules! I'd been looking for this back post from the archives, as much for the carrot image as the content and blogger David F Ruccio's comments on an NY Times Debate about tenure (link below). Today, when I was no longer looking for the post, it popped up among the " You might also like" selections at the end of a post. 

Then I noticed that I hadn't carried Ruccio (also blogging at Real World Economics Review) over to the new blogroll, rebuilt after the contents unraveled during migration to this domain. It's there now.  

The About page describes occasional link & commentary (on economics, culture and society) as consisting of  "occasional links and bits of commentary—some humorous, others more serious, often a combination." Let me add that it is fabulously illustrated with charts, graphs (hey, he is an economist), cartoons, public art, lithographs. prints and paintings. Now follows the post as it appeared July 20, 2010:

Contingent faculty, tenure and academic freedom

Don & Suzanne at signing of
landmark CO legislation

…by Don Eron, originally posted to COCAL's contingent faculty email list, popularly known as adj-l, and republished here with Don's permission. His elegant and thoughtful examination of tenure and contingency in current higher education was part of a larger discussion on the COCAL listserv email that included Jack Longmate and Seth Kahn, among others. To access the complete thread, titled, "Contingent faculty, undocumented workers (and tenure)," subscribe online or by sending adj-l@adj-l.org a blank email with "Subscribe" in the subject line.

Dear Colleagues,

Jack [Longmate] suggests that offering tenure as a remedy to the problems that stem from contingency--in other words, to the problems that occur when faculty do not have tenure--is a "hard sell." As somebody who has long advocated that all faculty, at every rank and job description, should be granted tenure after the successful completion of a probationary period, I can agree with Jack that selling tenure as a solution is a "hard sell," not only to tenured faculty but perhaps to Jack and others on this list, although it shouldn't be so.

Sue Doe's Testimony on Adjunct issues at Colorado General Assembly

This is about the proposed Fischer Legislation, in Colorado, which would in Dr. Doe's words, result in real benefits for adcons, in time, as institutions do the right thing, "take the plunge, make a five-year commitment, and reap the benefits of a more secure teaching faculty."

Wonderful testimony about our issues. Congratulations, Sue. Let's get some comments up.

And have a look at this bill. http://www.statebillinfo.com/bills/bills/12/1144_01.pdf

Let's be into everything. Now is our time. Again, thank you, Sue.


UPDATE: Sue Doe writes with the following: "I have to correct the record a bit in terms of the House Bill. I didn't testify the way that Don Eron and Suzanne Hudson (CU-Boulder) and Ray Hogler (CSU) did, which was in the actual Colorado House chambers. I was insufficiently courageous for that. I just sent in my written testimony!  Ray Hogler, Don Eron, Suzanne Hudson and Representative Fischer are the people who showed the real guts. You may have met Ray at the Summit and you may know Don and Suzanne from their work with AAUP on the notion of teaching tenure."


Thanks for that, Sue—but we're still marking yours as more than sufficient, and we're glad to have everyone else here to be congratulated as well, on their courage, commitment and vision. 

English Department of the Future

The time: some decades hence.
The place: The University of South Jetsonville, a large state university.
The Grand Administrator is speaking to one of his minions about what used to be called the English Department. Although there are four faculty members who still comprise the "English Department," most of the department, and its chair, have been "restructured" and have disappeared in the name of increasing efficiency. Curiously enough, the number of administrators has only increased. We enter in the midst of the conversation.
The Grand Administrator: "What can you tell me about how we're achieving excellence in the English Department?"
Minion: "Well, our single section of English 101 is a success. The accrediting agency is happy that we have moved to weekly Scantron grammar quizzes instead of actual writing, since it's impossible to be accredited without measurable outcomes. There's nothing more measurable than a quiz."

It gets 'better' ~ read the rest at notofgeneralinterest.blogspot.com

From April 2008, so either prescient or just another case of the le plus ça change le plus c'est la même chose. That or, quoting Gen DeGaulle, ça c'est le chit en lit. Inspired by discussion of tenureless university, closer now than it was then. The scenario is equally reminiscent of a certain rural NM branch campus, cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, circa 2003.... and no doubt innumerable others of its ilk

Posted via email from Academentia

Multiple Ways to Salvation: Tenure and Teaching-Intensive Appointments

.... an article reposted verbatim from the AAUP Newsletter but with selected passages highlighted for emphasis. Comments invited, may be posted anonymously or under pseudonym. Trolls must stay under the bridge and will not be fed. 

Personally, I can't help being curious about the identity and specific affiliations of these unnamed administrators supporting tenure. What is the distribution of opinion across kinds of higher ed institutions as well as public/ private and non-profit / for-profit divides? Will all adjuncts get some kind of tenure? Will only the tenured teach? If not across the board, then where? What will happen to the rest? If institutions are unwilling to come on board, what means are available to "persuade" them to reconsider?  

How do you think think AAUP's take on tenure conundrum compare's to our own Program for Change? Is there a middle way? Ways? And then there is implementation. So far, no group advocating this level of change (whether similar or antithetical) has the authority to "make it so."

But most important ~ we now have a discussion. Let's keep it going and as open as possible. May the disgruntled speak out instead of whispering behind the scenes. If everyone, in the name of delicacy or whatever, waits for each stake holding group to reach a consensus, I may already have expired from age related infirmities and impatience.... and probably won't be the only one. 

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 The AAUP's latest report discusses a growing consensus: Institutions that employ teaching-intensive faculty should hire them and evaluate their teaching through the rigorous system of peer review known as the tenure system. As E. Gordon Gee, the United States's highest-paid university president puts it, campus employers must preserve "multiple ways to salvation" inside the tenure system—even at research-intensive institutions.


As the report notes, tenure was designed as a "big tent" to unite faculty of diverse interests and workplace priorities. It was not designed as a merit badge for research-intensive faculty or as a fence to exclude those with teaching-intensive commitments.
 
Before 1970, as today, most full-time faculty appointments were teaching-intensive. Nearly all full-time teaching-intensive positions were on the tenure track. Most faculty who spent most of their time teaching were also campus and professional citizens—with clear roles in shared governance and access to support for research or professional activity.


Today, campus employers have shunted the majority of teaching-intensive positions outside of the tenure system. This has in most cases meant a dramatic shift from "teaching-intensive" appointments to "teaching-only" appointments, featuring a faculty with attenuated relationships to campus and disciplinary peers.


This seismic shift from "teaching-intensive" faculty within the big tent of tenure to "teaching-only" faculty outside of it has a direct impact on student retention and achievement, as a growing body of evidence clearly demonstrates.


The central question we have to face in connection with this historic change is clear: Should more classroom teaching be done by faculty supported by the rigorous peer scrutiny of the tenure system? Most of the evidence says yes, and a host of diverse voices agree. This view brings together students, faculty, and legislators; the AAUP; and even many administrators.


In opposition to this trend, campuses across the country have taken bold steps to stabilize the crumbling faculty infrastructure. Concerned legislators and some academic administrators have joined faculty associations in calling for dramatic reductions in the reliance on contingent appointments, commonly urging a maximum of 25 percent. 


Read the report, Tenure and Teaching-Intensive Appointments, which was approved by the Committee on Contingency and the Profession. Or visit the AAUP Web site to learn more about our work on contingent faculty appointments.


Report prepared by Mayra Besosa (Spanish), California State University, San Marcos, co-chair, and Marc Bousquet (English), Santa Clara University, co-chair AAUP Committee on Contingency and the Profession

The AAUP Online is an electronic newsletter of the American Association of University Professors.  Learn more about the AAUP. Visit us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

Ominvore visits the academic workplace

A collection of annotated (best kind) links to book reviews, essays, online articles, blog posts... all in one place for your reading convenience.

From Workplace, a review of The University Against Itself: The NYU Strike and the Future of the Academic Workplace by Monika Krause, Mary Nolan, Michael Palm, and Andrew Ross. Clive Bloom sheds few tears for Middlesex's strangely underpopulated philosophy department — or any other corners of an academy short on recruits and long overdue for the axe. Breaking out of the academy may seem daunting, but scholars' skills transfer to many other jobs. Teachers without technology strike back: Many professors don't find that the latest technology helps their students learn. In the conversation about ebooks and academe, the distance from cup to lip is great and involves many challenges. Geoffrey Nunberg on why Google's Book Search is a disaster for scholars. Open peer review in humanities journals: Is an experiment by Shakespeare Quarterly the shape of things to come? The Internet is calling into question one of academia’s sacred rites — the peer-reviewed journal article (and more). If it doesn’t exist on the internet, it doesn’t exist; as time has gone on, it’s proved to be a truism, perhaps the paradigmatic truism of our times. Finishing School: Christopher Beam on the case for getting rid of tenure. Never mix, never worry: Here is a brief (and incomplete) history of the academic couple. Hot at their own risk: Professors seen as very good-looking can be cast by colleagues and their students as lightweights, known less for their productivity than for their pulchritude.

The academic workplace, reposted from the Bookforum's aptly named blog, Omnivore

COCAL & Program

So far e-published COCAL updates include a brief report (in French) from a French Canadian news outlet and Jennifer Epstein's IHE article, "Visions of Adjunct Tenure," which has already garnered a number of comments with no doubt more comments, blog posts and articles to come.

Puma Freytag, Marie Blais, Mary Ellen Goddwin, Maria Treresa Lechuga. 

© Agence QMI

Jack Longmate reports on the our Program for Change session... 

The Saturday NFM session at COCAL IX went well and was well attended -- estimating around 30 people, a significant number considering that the was competing with 5 other concurrent workshop sessions. Peter Brown and Ross Borden were in the audience, with Peter taking pictures at a few points. NFM advisory board members present included Joe Berry and Rich Moser. Others attending included David Rives, president of AFT Oregon; Mary Ellen Goodwin, one of the leading COCAL organizers over the last decade; Jonathan Karpf; Holly Clarke and Shirley Rausher from the CUNY system (who volunteered input and comments); Don Eron from Colorado; Betsy Smith of Cape Cod CC; and others. 

Input on the Program for Change was positive and in one case, inspired the sale of 5 NFM bumper stickers. Frank Cosco's presentation was especially clear, as were his responses to points brought up during the discussion. Ross made an especially eloquent statement of support. 

The UI session went well also.  Helena Wortham asked if my slides could be posted somewhere, and Joe Berry suggested on the NFM website.

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Related Links (chosen by humans, no bots involved)

• CHE previews COCAL, spills Program4Change beans but misses the boat
• COCAL "programme"
• Our own pre-COCAL piece briefly introducing Program for Change but without giving the farm away or encroaching on Frank's and Jack's limelight in any way. 
• About Program for Change ~ Letter to NFM Members
• The thing itself ~ Program for Change
• Aforementioned IHE piece, Visions of Adjunct Tenure
• U Colorado Boulder Faculty Assembly approves Instructor Tenure
• Dean Dad puts in his entirely predictable 2¢, A Response to the New Faculty Majority 
• Blogger Missoula Redhead responds at Pop Culture Academic (a find for the adjunct blog list: to be added toot sweet)

Liquidating tenure

Those with it want to keep it. Those without it, want it or at least something resembling security (a tricky concept and contested in these times) and pay equity. Consensus, of the workable kind, in the academy, among professional and labor groups, is in short supply, with stance running to the tier-centric. Everyone has a plan just not the same one.

Love, crave it or resent it, for those in the academy, tenure is an intrinsic part of the culture. From the outside, whether viewed nostalgically as quaint (like high button shoes) or regarded as anathema to American values and Western world civilization as some think they know it, tenure seems more anachronism than necessity.

"Liquidating Tenure" (occasional links & commentary), an academic blog newly added to my "adjunct blog" list, comments on tenure positions from the recently published NYT-staged debate. Isn't the picture illustrating Bruccio's post, both real and totally irresistible?

Confessions redux

From the June Higher Ed Insider Update "In Case You Missed It" column: 

"And our most commented article? An essay by Peter D.G. Brown, Distinguished Service Professor of German at the State University of New York at New Paltz and founding member of the board of directors of New Faculty Majority: The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity on why he's an advocate for adjuncts despite being tenured."

Examining "Reassigned Time: Tenure and the Adjunctification of Higher Ed"

Taking a turn around the blogosphere ~ revisiting that ole tenure thang, which must, I suppose, start with revisiting the much reviewed, forwarded, blogged and tweeted AAUP Report on Tenure Conversion. Skipping over those, although a link list would be informative (what is this academic compulsion to bibliographicate?), this is the one I stumbled over today via Gabriell Montell's post,"Saying No to a World Without Tenure," in the Chronicle's On Hiring blog.... following a trail that starting out from a humble Google alert set for "new faculty majority."

In Reassigned Time: Tenure and the Adjunctification of Higher Ed at Reassigned Time, Dr Crazy (blog handle not diagnosis) opens by stating that she hadn't been going to enter the Berubé vs Dean Dad (@ IHE) fray but needed to get it out of her system: