You describe the tenure process and work schedule for a professor at a top 100 research school, which is probably all you are familiar with and which obviously clouds your perceptions of "normal." In reality, there are something like 3000 colleges and universities and most professors' normal teaching load is 4x4 if not more. There are no…
You describe the tenure process and work schedule for a professor at a top 100 research school, which is probably all you are familiar with and which obviously clouds your perceptions of "normal." In reality, there are something like 3000 colleges and universities and most professors' normal teaching load is 4x4 if not more. There are no TAs and classes can be anywhere from 20 to 100 students, which means one person has to handle a lot of grading. The notion that you only have to prep once and then recycle it forever might be true for tenured professors at R1 schools who give the same lecture you can find on YouTube, but again, in the real world of higher ed where 99% of faculty work, we are expected to actually teach students through varied pedagogies, including simulations, projects, and numerous other approaches that take a lot of time. Our service expectations are much greater too. Does all of this justify tenure? As a politics professor at a regional public university who is actually teaching hundreds of students each semester, I sure as hell want the protection of tenure in case some woke administrator or overly sensitive sophomore gets offended by something I say. This is why we have tenure, not to protect R1 faculty from their next big Peer Reviewed Article that 30 people will read and one will cite.
You want protection? Me too. In my job. But I dont have it, and no one else does.
What make your job so special, your 'work' so special, that it needs protection against sensitive sophomores, and more than I need protection against some sensative client or collegae. It aint special what you do.
A world in which fewer people are fired arbitrarily is in fact a better world in my view. And professor is a job based on speech in a way that an office worker who suddenly stood up and made a harangue on his various opinions would not be. But as the article occasionally mentions, it is all moot anyway since tenure is dying.
Interesting take. But it wasn't always this way with faculty being afraid of offending students. It may be that tenure now serves this purpose but it hasn't always been so.
You describe the tenure process and work schedule for a professor at a top 100 research school, which is probably all you are familiar with and which obviously clouds your perceptions of "normal." In reality, there are something like 3000 colleges and universities and most professors' normal teaching load is 4x4 if not more. There are no TAs and classes can be anywhere from 20 to 100 students, which means one person has to handle a lot of grading. The notion that you only have to prep once and then recycle it forever might be true for tenured professors at R1 schools who give the same lecture you can find on YouTube, but again, in the real world of higher ed where 99% of faculty work, we are expected to actually teach students through varied pedagogies, including simulations, projects, and numerous other approaches that take a lot of time. Our service expectations are much greater too. Does all of this justify tenure? As a politics professor at a regional public university who is actually teaching hundreds of students each semester, I sure as hell want the protection of tenure in case some woke administrator or overly sensitive sophomore gets offended by something I say. This is why we have tenure, not to protect R1 faculty from their next big Peer Reviewed Article that 30 people will read and one will cite.
You want protection? Me too. In my job. But I dont have it, and no one else does.
What make your job so special, your 'work' so special, that it needs protection against sensitive sophomores, and more than I need protection against some sensative client or collegae. It aint special what you do.
A world in which fewer people are fired arbitrarily is in fact a better world in my view. And professor is a job based on speech in a way that an office worker who suddenly stood up and made a harangue on his various opinions would not be. But as the article occasionally mentions, it is all moot anyway since tenure is dying.
Interesting take. But it wasn't always this way with faculty being afraid of offending students. It may be that tenure now serves this purpose but it hasn't always been so.