South Carolina abolishing tenure

[Caracal]

Going forward, anyway. Here's HB 4522, the Cancelling Professor Tenure Act.

Hard to know how serious this is. It's just a proposed bill at the moment.

[dismalist]

Research is a different matter, though tenure is not so desirable there. I'm thinking only of undergraduate education.

Well, at the University of California system, we have tenure, but it is paired with a system of post-tenure review that is tied to a robust system of merit increases. In particular, it has over $100K in salary increases from the lowest tenured step to the top of the salary scale, which is a pretty decent incentive for even tenured faculty to stay productive. Tenure is not sinecure, even if it is portrayed as such by some segments.

That sounds alright for incentives, but is completely independent of tenure.

Well, it's a two step process, the possibility of tenure allows academia to compete for talent that it would otherwise lose to industry, and the presence of a robust system of merit increases incentivizes tenured faculty to remain productive. Let's turn this question around, why would a self-respecting economist stay in academia when they could be paid substantially more in the private sector?

Because people differ in their desires.

Tenure or lack thereof is not worrisome, for other aspects of the employment contract will adjust to the point where the hirers are happy with the quantity hired and vice versa. Money, office space, free time, teaching load, freedom to mouth off, whatever. 

Different mix of people, maybe, or maybe not. No worries!

[Kate]

Those who are competitive in the current job market will move. Yes, they can be replaced by others....who are not competitive enough in the current job market. On the other hand, some non publushing faculty could be terminated.

So the overall level will be more uniform but of much lower quality.

[dismalist]

Those who are competitive in the current job market will move. Yes, they can be replaced by others....who are not competitive enough in the current job market. On the other hand, some non publushing faculty could be terminated.

So the overall level will be more uniform but of much lower quality.

Hi Kate!

Good enough, for undergraduate education. :-)

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

I see possible outcomes that people criticizing the bill would consider a win in other circumstances (and people supporting the bill may actually dislike):
- the 2-course requirement may reduce number of courses taught by the adjuncts by forcing to spread the load more evenly. Workforce consisting mostly of people on 5-year contract may actually reduce the current level of stratification. Though, it looks like the 2-course requirement can be easily bypassed,for example, by separating high-achievers into separate departments only offering graduate degrees (to fit an exemption in the bill).
- 5-year time limit for the faculty contracts may actually make many PhD programs unfeasible. This may force a much needed self-examination in the programs with average time to graduation in high single digits. Furthermore, downgrade of graduate programs to masters-only should reduce the glut on the PhD labour market.

"Part of that force that always wills the evil and always produces the good"
- Mephisto's self-description from Faust

[Parasaurolophus]

Isn't the two courses a semester just a minimum? As in, anyone teaching less than that must now teach that many?

[dismalist]

Isn't the two courses a semester just a minimum? As in, anyone teaching less than that must now teach that many?

I certainly hope so! :-)

C'mon -- 4/4/1 was the norm 70 years ago. Science didn't stop, it advanced.

Undergraduate teaching emerged as a way to finance research. The rich kids paid and the profs thought [and published to prove that they had thought].

This time is different! Undergraduate teaching is something for its own sake, with an experience for the rich, no less. A signal for the rest. Let the undergraduates eat cake.

It's one hell of a lot cheaper not needing real researchers, but just a bunch of, well, instructors.

[Tee_Bee]

Going forward, anyway. Here's HB 4522, the Cancelling Professor Tenure Act.

Hard to know how serious this is. It's just a proposed bill at the moment.

This. Your friendly neighborhood political scientist here to remind y'all that bills are often introduced for reasons other than actually making law, such as showing the home folks that you're doing something about those crayzee college professors. Some years ago there was a bill introduced in the Other Carolina that would have put all state schools on something like a 5-5 load. Various industries in the state helped educate the legislature about how that would kill the state's efforts to lure more industry to the state. The bill quietly died. It's good to be vigilant but I wouldn't panic yet.

[dismalist]

Going forward, anyway. Here's HB 4522, the Cancelling Professor Tenure Act.

Hard to know how serious this is. It's just a proposed bill at the moment.

This. Your friendly neighborhood political scientist here to remind y'all that bills are often introduced for reasons other than actually making law, such as showing the home folks that you're doing something about those crayzee college professors. Some years ago there was a bill introduced in the Other Carolina that would have put all state schools on something like a 5-5 load. Various industries in the state helped educate the legislature about how that would kill the state's efforts to lure more industry to the state. The bill quietly died. It's good to be vigilant but I wouldn't panic yet.

What a pity.

[mleok]

Going forward, anyway. Here's HB 4522, the Cancelling Professor Tenure Act.

Hard to know how serious this is. It's just a proposed bill at the moment.

This. Your friendly neighborhood political scientist here to remind y'all that bills are often introduced for reasons other than actually making law, such as showing the home folks that you're doing something about those crayzee college professors. Some years ago there was a bill introduced in the Other Carolina that would have put all state schools on something like a 5-5 load. Various industries in the state helped educate the legislature about how that would kill the state's efforts to lure more industry to the state. The bill quietly died. It's good to be vigilant but I wouldn't panic yet.

What a pity.

What's your teaching load?

[Caracal]

Going forward, anyway. Here's HB 4522, the Cancelling Professor Tenure Act.

Hard to know how serious this is. It's just a proposed bill at the moment.

This. Your friendly neighborhood political scientist here to remind y'all that bills are often introduced for reasons other than actually making law, such as showing the home folks that you're doing something about those crayzee college professors. Some years ago there was a bill introduced in the Other Carolina that would have put all state schools on something like a 5-5 load. Various industries in the state helped educate the legislature about how that would kill the state's efforts to lure more industry to the state. The bill quietly died. It's good to be vigilant but I wouldn't panic yet.

What a pity.

What's your teaching load?

I teach a 4/4 with no other responsibilities. It's no longer right at the limit in terms of class prep, but it used to be when I didn't have so much stuff in the can. The grading also isn't at the limit, but that's mostly just because I've accepted that if I get students stuff back before the next exam that will have to be good enough. My attention probably is at the limit. I think if I tried to teach another class, I just couldn't manage to keep all the balls up in the air.

I definitely couldn't teach 5 classes and take on advising responsibilities, committee work, deal with searches, student events and all the rest.

[marshwiggle]

Those who are competitive in the current job market will move. Yes, they can be replaced by others....who are not competitive enough in the current job market. On the other hand, some non publushing faculty could be terminated.

So the overall level will be more uniform but of much lower quality.

What seems likely to me is something like this:

In professional/STEM fields where there are good jobs outside academia:

• The "research rock stars" who need big labs and lots of infrastructure won't be interested in 5 year contracts, since setting up their research programs requires a long time frame to be worth it.(And teaching annoys them; they only do it as much as they have to.)
• The "research professional musicians" (to belabour the analogy) who do decent research which doesn't require so much infrastructure and who actually like teaching, and are interested in making/keeping  their programs viable, will probably consider a 5 year contract.
  

These decent "professional musicians" will be perfectly fine for most institutions and will produce solid graduates.


In fields where there are not a lot of good prospects outside of academia, there will be two groups who will absolutely stay.

• The hand-wringers who say "Basketweaving is important. We have to have basketweaving. Any university must have basketweaving." but who don't really have any serious commitment to figuring out how to modernize and/or increase their enrollment to keep their program sustainable. Since they don't want to change the status quo, they'll hang on as long as possible.
• The people who are adjuncts now who stay at a place even when they have to start the term without a contract. (Those have come up on here.) For them a 5 year contract would be like winning the lottery.

[mahagonny]

In an ironic but unsurprising twist, tenure track professors are now being required to pledge allegiance to 'diversity, equity and inclusion.' The very same structure, tenure, that was designed to protect and encourage free intellectual inquiry and dissemination of new knowledge, now officially, overtly, enforces conformity. You want the salary and the career? Join the religion and start confessing your whiteness. Not your cup up tea? Fine, step out of the line then. There are others waiting.
Well, as someone said, there will always be a California.
Tyranny is here.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2018/10/18/i_pledge_allegiance_to_diversity_and_to_the_tenure_for_which_it_stands.html

ETA: Actually, in theory, you should be able to answer this question your own way, from the heart. Justice is in the eye of the beholder:

No one knows how many schools require such diversity statements, but the practice appears to be in vogue. Vassar College, for example, requires tenure-track job candidates to write about their contributions to social justice.

So for example if this is your idea of social justice you should be able to answer
"I made a donation to Bob Woodson's foundation "'1776 Unites'" whose mission statement says

"In the rush to redefine the place of black Americans in contemporary society, many radical activists and academics have mounted a campaign to destroy traditional American history and replace it with a politicized version that few would recognize. According to the new radical orthodoxy, the United States was founded as a racist nation—and everything that has happened throughout our history must be viewed through the lens of the systemic oppression of black people.

Rejecting this false narrative, a collection of the most prominent and respected black scholars and thinkers has come together to correct the record and tell the true story of black Americans in all its complexity, diversity of experience, and poignancy."

See how far you'd get with that at Vassar College.

[Caracal]

In fields where there are not a lot of good prospects outside of academia, there will be two groups who will absolutely stay.

• The hand-wringers who say "Basketweaving is important. We have to have basketweaving. Any university must have basketweaving." but who don't really have any serious commitment to figuring out how to modernize and/or increase their enrollment to keep their program sustainable. Since they don't want to change the status quo, they'll hang on as long as possible.
• The people who are adjuncts now who stay at a place even when they have to start the term without a contract. (Those have come up on here.) For them a 5 year contract would be like winning the lottery.

If this proposed bill was actually passed, tenure would still apply to people hired before.

I don't think you have a good sense of what job markets look like in different disciplines. It can be easy to think that when only fifty percent of phd recipients get tenure track jobs, that must mean the job market is terrible for everyone. That isn't actually true though. People who build strong resumes after getting a job, usually have options. Would people in the humanities coming out of grad school still take jobs at South Carolina state schools? Yeah, of course. For the flagship schools, many people might take a position with a 2/2 and no possibility of tenure over a 4/4 somewhere else. Then those people start doing two things. Try to produce work and apply elsewhere. The good people will get other jobs and take them. You'll lose people hired with tenure too, because who wants to be in an unstable department with constant searches.

[clean]

I think that people on this thread have actually thought this through.  There is "What they SAY to do" and "HOW we do it"

How many people are actually teaching below the minimum in the bill? 
For those that ARE, then we can 'manage that' by breaking the current 1 class a semester into 2 sections (at the same time, of course).

IF you teach one class a year, then you may have to add an independent study, or some notional administrative function so that you are not 100% faculty, or just reduce or redefine the cost of buying out a class teaching assignment .

as was pointed out above, there are political points to be made by creating the bill. Passing the bill is another matter.  Also, it grandfathers in those that are already tenured, so tenure will 'die out' only once the last one dies/retires.  As for the 'no tenure' for future hires, prospective faculty will have to weigh the 'total package' of what SC offers. 

I worked in SC for the first 5 years of my career.  It bothered my coworkers no end that I rented rather than owned. Some argued that I was signalling that I was not committed to being there by not sinking roots.  I replied a.  You have not Committed to keeping me as I have not been tenured, and b.  Rents are SO cheap that it would cost a LOT more to own than to rent!  (The argument was that I was missing the mortgage deduction and that was costing me money, but when I would on occasion have to explain that Paying the Bank 10K to save 2K on my taxes (as opposed to SAVING the 10K in interest but Paying an extra 2K in taxes) leaves more in MY pocket! 


I predict:
It wont pass
and if it does, It wont matter!