The case for tenure is a little bit stronger than you make it out to be.
1. It's true that no other industry uses something like tenure to incentivize over-the-hill employees from blocking the careers of up-and-comers. But tenure defenders argue that that in other industries, there exists managers whose jobs are not threatened by the up-a…
The case for tenure is a little bit stronger than you make it out to be.
1. It's true that no other industry uses something like tenure to incentivize over-the-hill employees from blocking the careers of up-and-comers. But tenure defenders argue that that in other industries, there exists managers whose jobs are not threatened by the up-and-comers and who are able to evaluate the quality of the new hires' work. And the claim is that this is different in academia -- the only people capable of evaluating the work are those whose jobs are in jeopardy.
2. Another argument for tenure starts with the observation that almost all of the valuable research is done early in researchers' career. Therefore it is much more important to incentivize hard work early on than it is to get any effort at all out of workers later in their career. Tenure accomplishes this -- a big prize that can only be won through lots of hard work early on. This applies more to Top 20 institutions than to middling ones where the required research for tenure isn't that impressive.
I'm not sure if I believe either of these, but Bryan should be attacking the strongest version of the arguments for tenure.
Isn't part of the reason great work isn't done later in one's career because they are no longer incentivized to (they have tenure)? That said, I don't totally buy it that the possibility of tenure incentivizes valuable research. More likely it incentivizes various bad practices to achieve the publications needed for tenure, which is orthogonal to good research.
The case for tenure is a little bit stronger than you make it out to be.
1. It's true that no other industry uses something like tenure to incentivize over-the-hill employees from blocking the careers of up-and-comers. But tenure defenders argue that that in other industries, there exists managers whose jobs are not threatened by the up-and-comers and who are able to evaluate the quality of the new hires' work. And the claim is that this is different in academia -- the only people capable of evaluating the work are those whose jobs are in jeopardy.
2. Another argument for tenure starts with the observation that almost all of the valuable research is done early in researchers' career. Therefore it is much more important to incentivize hard work early on than it is to get any effort at all out of workers later in their career. Tenure accomplishes this -- a big prize that can only be won through lots of hard work early on. This applies more to Top 20 institutions than to middling ones where the required research for tenure isn't that impressive.
I'm not sure if I believe either of these, but Bryan should be attacking the strongest version of the arguments for tenure.
Mayeb most good work is done before tenure because after it you dont have to do any work.
Every other job requires good work on day 1 AND 5000. Why is teaching any different?
Isn't part of the reason great work isn't done later in one's career because they are no longer incentivized to (they have tenure)? That said, I don't totally buy it that the possibility of tenure incentivizes valuable research. More likely it incentivizes various bad practices to achieve the publications needed for tenure, which is orthogonal to good research.