What Your College President Didn't Tell You. There are many things university presidents would like to say but dare not. By By JOHN M. McCARDELL Jr.. [The New York Times > Opinion]
Wrong about tenure two times.
First, the answer to
Why not a system of contracts of varying length, including lifetime for the most valuable colleagues, that acknowledges the realities of academic life in the 21st century?
is: Because then you'd have to pay the professoriate more. The economics are clear, that loads of talented people are prepared to work for lower wages in exchange for job security. (We've seen this in trade labor neogitations over the last fifteen years or so, as well.)
Second, consider this reasoning:
Moreover, when most tenure documents were originally adopted, faculty members had little protection. Today, almost every negative tenure decision is appealed. Appeals not upheld internally are taken to court. Few if any of these appeals have as their basis a denial of academic freedom.
Now, that might readily be because the system of tenure, under attack though it may be, has worked very effectively to build institutions that support academic freedom. Of course, it isn't as though there are no attackes on academic freedom, as the AAUP censure list testifies.
But whichever way that evidence cuts, the reasoning here is inadequate to support the claim that the tenure system doesn't protect academic freedom. It's like arguing that, because few bank robbers are charged with taking the goodies in the vault (they pass stick up notes to tellers), we ought to give up using bank vaults and guarding them. Vaults are safer exactly because they are vaults and so guarded, leaving would be robbers to try to attack less well secured aspects of the banking system.
Going on, it's right that most classes at a school are not at the student:teacher ratio that characterizes the institution as a whole. But that's going to be true of average class size, too, which McCardell chooses to tout as superior.
It's worth noting that at my university, in point of fact, very many classes are at the average class size, because there just isn't that much variance in class size (from lows of one student to highs in most departments somewhere in the twenties).
He's right about the drinking age.
6:50:07 AM 
|
