To Keep or Not to Keep Tenured Professorships :

That is the Question

 

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Rather, that was the question in 2012, when I wrote the following blurb for a website I had at the time. Today, we know the answer. I’ll tell you following the blurb.

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The debate is on, and the issue is sharply divided. Those in favor of tenured professorships say it is the only way to ensure quality of education; after all, one must be one sharp cookie if he or she is to earn tenure. Those against say it might serve the professors, but it wreaks havoc on their students. Needless to say, the truth lies somewhere in between.

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Still, it true that students suffer. The professors become caught up in the publish-or-perish rat race; after all, research is paying 90 percent of their salaries. There's too little time for students when teaching is paying only 10 percent.

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I've long opposed tenured professorships and wrote about it in my historical novel, Tales Along the Way Home.(1) The answer, in my opinion, lies in the Oxbridge System; that is, having researchers who research and tutors who teach and ne'er the twain shall meet. The system has been working in Oxford and Cambridge, England, for centuries!

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Read The Wall Street Journal article from 2012.(2) Yes, it’s still up, if you have a subscription.

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UPDATE (2025): Yes, tenured professorships are dying out, at least as far as teaching goes. Instead, graduate students and instructors (adjunct / part-time) instructors are doing the teaching, while fewer professors are researching and publishing.

 

Is the system working? It depends on who you ask. You see, the instructors are paid so little ($1,500 per 3-hour course). Can you afford to live on $1,500 for the duration of a semester? Can you afford to live on $3,000 for the duration of a semester? Let’s see . . . a semester runs between 15 and 17 weeks. That works out to between $88.24 and $200.00 per week, using the following computations:

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$1,500 / 15 weeks = $100.00 per week         $1,500 / 17 weeks = $88.24 per week

$3,000 / 15 weeks = $200.00 per week         $3,000 / 17 weeks = $176.47 per week

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All I can say is this: Now, we know who has been sleeping in the tents that the government is so busy scooping up and dumping into garbage trucks. I hope those instructors own bicycles, because they surely can’t afford to buy, insure, and fuel a car on so little money.

 

To be fair, the system of having separate teachers and researchers is working. The schools just need to work out the kinks in their payroll practices or else they will find themselves with all researchers and no teachers – if they can find anyone qualified to either teach or do research.

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(1) Tolles, Virginia, Tales Along the Way Home, 2006. (Available to read on Amazon Kindle; printed book no longer available)

(2) Should Tenure for College Professors Be Abolished? The Wall Street Journal. June 24, 2012.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303610504577418293114042070.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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