Tenure should be abolished because tenure is slavery.
Tenure is one of our current day forms of slavery. Response post to: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/communicating-realities-higher-ed-2022?fbclid=IwAR3B_Sp0QFDigHRGAfPDG852F3DGX5uMWwgae6FIg3iS-0Z5dYo44KsVNu4
It's is not direct slave-is-slave, master-is-master slavery. It is, as is some forms of education now, disaggregated. The parts of slavery now are possessed or embodied within different entities, but it is still slavery if one defines slavery as a lack of freedom combined with a lifetime of benefit.
Here me out.
1. Students pay the price--their tuition literally becomes the forever paycheck that will output last in this process. As long as students keep joining the institution--and really, ask any university how important "Enrollment" is to them-- the input into the system keeps happening. This is the input of "lifeblood" for lack of a better analogy. Without students, a university dies. In this model, the debt that students carry becomes the disaggregated "lack" or deficit.
2. Faculty pay the entry price to attain the status of "tenure". (Note: I can point out that paying this price is one-time technically.) They will go through the YEARS of hoops it takes to get this status. Now, I will not pretend to know what this is. I've simply turned my head and hands away from this entirely. I worked at institutions that did not offer it OR I did not work in roles that had tenure in the career path. (Sabbatical is a completely different idea, BTW.) But I've heard the horrors stories. I can't even LINK to one article because a Google search of just "Chronicle of Higher Education gave up pursuing tenure" pulls up 8 articles in just the past 5 years and that's just the surface!
But I know we're talking years of:
- Attending faculty meetings but being on time AND contributing more than one's fair share
- Publishing and its attendant research
- Excellent teaching record
- Carrying the load of freshman courses that would make one cry daily
- Simultaneously carry strong academic conversations while respecting other tenured profs
- Attend non-academic events for the university to look like you have 'team spirit' (READ: Football)
- Don't forget to buy a house in the university neighborhood.
Side point: I won't get deep into the scandalous price that adjuncts are paid for what is known as often EQUIVALENT or HARDER work with many less benefits and pay. It's very true that adjuncts could be paid a fraction (the article says 1/4) of what a full time faculty member is paid for the same work. THE SAME. How is that EVEN legal?
3. Then there is the "forever" part. The faculty member, once they get tenure, supposedly has a 'forever paycheck' and now a benefit of this lauded extra thing called "Academic Freedom" (which...actually....checking the paperwork was a right awarded to all faculty (including adjuncts) from the date of hire...but no one noticed that) but still... FREEDOM.
And yet, that forever is only contingent on the university being open. Which brings us back to #1. Students. A university is only open if it has students.
Post-pandemic. Students are realizing they have a much broader choice. I hope they embrace that and walk with their dollars. Universities will shut down, profs will lose tenure, and hopefully that concept will pass from memory. Bye bye slavery.