What Higher Ed needs is solidarity, not more tenure

[mahagonny]

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/tenure-is-not-worth-fighting-for

[polly_mer]

No, what US higher ed needs is a more widely shared, realistic picture of what students want and for what taxpayers will pay.

Focusing on the adjunct oversupply is dated; the time to sort out that particular problem was twenty years ago.

Arguing now about a tiny part of academia that is less relevant all the time is wasted energy all around when most of the people involved won't have faculty jobs at all in the next three years as institutions take a hard look at various factors as the dwindling student population vote with their feet.

[apl68]

Based on what I've seen on The Fora, solidarity will remain elusive.

[marshwiggle]

Based on what I've seen on The Fora, solidarity will remain elusive.

Of course it will, largely because the people most adamant about "saving" higher education are the least willing to honestly discuss the demographic realities of a declining student age population, which has nothing to do with government funding, online education, bad aministration, etc.  It is real, unavoidable, and will have a profound effect regardless of what is done about all of those other things. However, what is done about those other things will be ineffective or even counter-productive if that reality is ignored or downplayed.

[polly_mer]

Based on what I've seen on The Fora, solidarity will remain elusive.

Of course it will, largely because the people most adamant about "saving" higher education are the least willing to honestly discuss the demographic realities of a declining student age population, which has nothing to do with government funding, online education, bad aministration, etc.  It is real, unavoidable, and will have a profound effect regardless of what is done about all of those other things. However, what is done about those other things will be ineffective or even counter-productive if that reality is ignored or downplayed.

The people most adamant about saving higher ed are generally the ones whose jobs are most at-risk because of factors outside their control including the fact that the rest of us don't see a need for nearly that many faculty members teaching those particular topics at "every" school.

The conversations regarding program cuts are fascinating to watch as people insist that 5-15 graduates in those programs every year justify a department with full offerings when the entire student population at that institution is tens of thousands.  The students have already voted with their feet about given degree programs, even if the overall endeavor is very valuable and should be offered multiple places in the US.

That means fewer faculty jobs, although a probably better overall experience for students in certain majors by being grouped together in a handful of institutions instead of spread out with only a couple faculty members with whom to interact regularly.

[Hegemony]

Our university judges program worth by Polly's metric, which is number of majors. I'm in a program with a small number of majors — around 15 per year. I mean 15 total, graduating 3-4 per year. So by that metric, we're completely marginal. However, we run a large number of courses per year that enroll great numbers — up to 150 students per course. It's hard to say what the total demand is, because as large as we make the courses, they always fill and have a wait list. In some cases, the students say that our subject is the one that really interests them, but their parents insist they major in Business or Product Management or the like. I hope they take our lens of looking at the world into those professions too, as well as into their non-work lives. In other cases, they don't hanker to major in our subject, but they find it interesting and appealing, and it enriches their understanding of the world and their place in it. After all, that's what General Education requirements are for — to give students a rounded view of the world. So I would argue that we deserve a place at the table, even though we have so few actual majors. I would argue that we're serving the students just as valuably as any other course they take, and that a lack of majors doesn't mean a lack of worthiness or interest.

Of course, I also champion the departments that have a small number of majors and that do not offer the big crowd-pleasing courses, like Latin. Sure, Gen Ed students like the Mythology courses. But I would argue that a Latin major should exist even if there were no Mythology courses. That's why I'm a pointy-headed intellectual.

[spork]

It sounds as if you are drawing from a different pool of students and have a different caliber of faculty than at the place where I work.

[marshwiggle]

Our university judges program worth by Polly's metric, which is number of majors. I'm in a program with a small number of majors — around 15 per year. I mean 15 total, graduating 3-4 per year. So by that metric, we're completely marginal. However, we run a large number of courses per year that enroll great numbers — up to 150 students per course.

The only real number that matters is the ratio of bums-in-seats to faculty; whether they're majors or not isn't so important as long as each faculty member is teaching the required number of students. The dinosaur who only teaches small senior and grad courses because students hate him is the one the institution can't afford.

(And if a whole department is teaching less then the required number in total, then there's reason to consider shutting it down. Unless they can shift budget to other areas teaching more than the required number, so it's self-correcting.)

[Hegemony]

You would think the ratio of bums-in-seats to faculty would matter, but not at my place. The metrics are clear: number of majors stands in for worthiness.

[mahagonny]

No, what US higher ed needs is a more widely shared, realistic picture of what students want and for what taxpayers will pay.

Taxpayers as a group could in theory control the amount of aid going to fund higher education. but if you actually want to attend college, you pay what they charge in fees, tuition etc. And it costs what it does partly because of groups within it who have power. The tenured bloc is one.
If post COVID-19 the discussion should come around to 'tenure for the good of all is somebody's wish, not the way things have been,' things could change. Well, probably not, but at least the way they're talked about might change.

Based on what I've seen on The Fora, solidarity will remain elusive.

The reason there's been so little solidarity is the tenure track doesn't believe the adjunct group can do anything more for them than they're getting now. To wit, somebody asked 'could there be more alliance between part timers and TT, and the response was 'please go away.''
http://thefora.org/index.php?topic=549.msg10306#msg10306

Or as the article says (and...for those in the cheap seats who can't get past the pay wall):

'[Maria] Maisto, who is on the advisory board of Tenure for the Common Good, said that when she started her activism, she accepted that most tenured faculty members would be indifferent at best and hostile at worst to her cause. She'd hear from tenured professors who believed in the cause and thus felt like loners in their departments or on their campuses. Empathy wasn't the norm.

How much tenured professors have cared, historically, about their contingent colleagues, is difficult to measure. Everyone knows the caricature: the older, typically white, typically male full professor whose non-tenure-track colleagues escape his vision, who still believes merit rises to the top and those who fail to land tenure-track jobs lack work ethic, intelligence, or both.

"In general, we've seen the adjuncts as nobody," said Aaron Barlow, an English professor at CUNY's New York City College of Technology who is on Tenure for the Common Good's executive council. "And that needs to change."'

[Wahoo Redux]

Based on what I've seen on The Fora, solidarity will remain elusive.

Well, we have radically different ideas sometimes.

Some of us tread the same waters obsessively that academia must fail for the common good; other posters are obsessed with the injustice of adjunctafication; some refuse to engage in either of these themes; most simply seem to have accepted the doom and gloom bearing down upon us and accept dissolution with a shrug, even when there is occasional good news; and a few of us think we might be able to do something about these things given room enough and time.

We also disagree about the purpose of education.

All this speaks to an industry in crisis and all the crabs in the barrel turning on each other.

[mahagonny]

All this speaks to an industry in crisis and all the crabs in the barrel turning on each other.

'Crab in a barrel?' All right now...who said adjuncts never get promotions!