1) Quick thread about tenure (I'm up for tenure right now). I value the prospect of tenure. Highly. I don't think people like Dean White at UC Boulder understand that if you take that away then people like me work elsewhere, including in another industry altogether. ...
https://twitter.com/cnewf/status/1335003099338076162
2) I quit a consulting job to get a PhD in English. In 2008. I wasn't naive abt what it meant for my financial & employment prospects to make that decision. If you're thinking, whoa, that was stupid, I don't agree, but that should tell you how much I value the prospect of tenure.
3) I wouldn't have quit my job to do a PhD if there were no prospect of tenure. Notwithstanding the impression you have by now from this thread of my appetite for risk, I'm an extremely risk averse person. The best I can explain this is with a poker analogy (sorry). ...
4) (I also used to play poker). See the concept of pot odds in a poker hand. In effect, tenure sweetens the pot, or ups the ratio of the value of pursuing an academic career to the risk entailed in pursuing it. ...
5) Lots of us would pursue other, more lucrative things than academia. If you've spent most of your 20s (in my case, YMMV) getting a PhD and making a poverty wage, there has to be an incentive, and that incentive has to be more than 'love of [research, teaching, etc.].' ...
6) By this point I know you're thinking 'yeah, but who cares, someone else will just step in if you step out, plenty waiting in the wings, etc.' But if we're being honest, all that extraordinarily talented 'surplus labor' only exists now because of the prospect of tenure. ...
7) I.e. if you take away tenure, i.e. you take away an essential form of compensation given the opportunity cost of doing a PhD and a late financial start in life, you're going to lose that 'surplus' you have now. Dean White doesn't see that; he's not looking that far ahead. ...
8) Given that, the next question for the Dean Whites of the world is: What happens to their business model if you take away well trained and well supported teachers and researchers (because you've taken away the incentives to land that kind of employee)?
9) That is, if you turn higher education into a rote credentialing service (in practice and by advertisement), will the economic signal be the same for graduates? Will a a campus and infrastructure be justified? Will there be as many deans? Will they be compensated as now?
10) Are you going to beat YouTube at its own game? Are you going to beat the ed tech industry at its own game? Because I promise all the Dean Whites that those industries don't need you standing up a shop with a fake university sign and an expensive middle management. ...
11) In other words, colleges and universities compete and offer value because for all the cynicism about them they're actually not just credential farms. They're centers of teaching and learning. Of knowledge production and preservation. That's the 'value added.' ...
12) Which is to say not only do you lose me if you lose tenure (what do you care, right?). You dig your own grave, as it were. You usher in your own obsolescence. Details here /end : chronicle.com/article/the-un…
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