Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: "Arthur E. Sowers"
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 22:45:11 -0500
On Wed, 22 Jan 1997, Michael Dworetsky wrote:
> In article <32E53D4D.5337@ultranet.com> chucksz@scientist.com writes:
> >Lawrence R. Mead wrote:
> >>
> >> Dettol (mikeh@gold.chem.hawaii.edu) wrote:
> >[snip]
>
> In following this mainly American thread, I see that no one has hit upon
> the uniquely British solution incorporated in the 1988 Education Act by
> the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher.
>
> Tenure for all new employment contracts was abolished so that academics
> could be dismissed for 'good cause' (I won't go into details, but imagine
> the lengthy and difficult process of setting up tribunals, appeals,
> etc--there have been very few dismissals for this reason) or for reasons
> of 'financial redundancy', e.g., if one's university was no longer going
> to have a department or group teaching and researching one's subject. The
> latter provision has been the subject of some abuse by administrations,
> according to the university staff unions.
>
> The Education Act specifically has protections of free speech written
> into it to counter the claim that tenure is required in order to protect
> freedom to advocate unpopular or unusual ideas. I'm not sure how well
> this works in practice.
>
> What is bizarre, of course, is that being promoted in effect changes
> one's contract, so that ***those who earn promotion*** (mainly through
> research excellence, though teaching also counts) lose tenure, but those
> who are unpromotable (or, at least, unpromoted--even if deserving) retain
> tenure if their contract was dated before 1988.
>
> I understand that in the USA one receives tenure upon promotion.
Not necessarily. Many schools, particularly medical and health science
centers, have been or are planning to separate promotion from tenure
consideration. Many schools (particularly the ones in the limelight) have
also separated the "appointment" from the salary. They have also linked
the salary in many cases to grants, and de-linked the salary either mostly
or completely from institutional resources. This means that if you lose
your grant, you lose your job. I know of many examples where tenure means
that if you lose your grant, then your paycheck goes immediately down to
50% of full salary for one year. After that one year, if you don't get
your grant support back, then your salary goes to zero. Sure, the
appointment is tenured. You have, maybe, an office. But your lab gets
taken away. This is not that common, but on the other hand, I've heard of
it from a good number of people I know.
Art Sowers
-------------------------------------------------------
Written in the public interest, the essays on
"Contemporary Problems in Science Jobs" are located at:
http://www.access.digex.net/~arthures/homepage.htm
Snail mail adr to me: P.O.Box 489, Georgetown, DE 19947
-------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: "Arthur E. Sowers"
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 23:02:51 -0500
On Tue, 21 Jan 1997, Marc Andelman wrote:
> Hi Mike. I whole heartledly agree. I would go one better, however, and
> modestly propose that we abolish academia. Sort of put it out of
> it's own misery. In fact, it could abolish itself once the information
> age helps expose such atavistic anachronisms of inefficency .
> ( I am not Pat Buchanan, Spiro Agnew's speach writer). The universities are
> like an old line industry that has sunk it's capital into innefficient plant and
> equipment. They cannot change.
>
>
> Regards,
> Marc Andelman
>
>
Hi Marc,
I disagree. I think there should be places where advanced study can take
place. This study should not be targetted. It should be funded with better
long term assurance than the 2-3-4 year funding periods in present grants
or better chances for funding renewal. Currently, a given NIH grant has a
30% + chance of non renewal on the first renewal, and a 60% chance on the
second competitive renewal. We now have most PIs spending 6-9 months of
each year writing, rewriting, and resubmitting proposals instead of doing
more reading in the library, better manuscript preparation, and better
thinking.
I certainly cannot recommend to a young person who is really excited about
doing research all of his life to spend 5-7 years getting a PhD, another
5-10 years on one or more postdocs (expanding his CV while waiting for a
faculty position), and then waiting another 5-6 years to come up for
tenure and then get dumped out on the street if his funding lapses for one
or two years. I actually know some very good people who had the "grant
lottery" misfortune and were saved because they had tenure. Within 1-2
years they got their grants back. But the disruption in research progress
was also damaging.
We can argue about details, but research is a long term operation. Even
product development (eg. by drug companies) is a long term operation, and
they usually come up with the funding for it from their own resources or
investors, etc.
Art Sowers
-------------------------------------------------------
Written in the public interest, the essays on
"Contemporary Problems in Science Jobs" are located at:
http://www.access.digex.net/~arthures/homepage.htm
Snail mail adr to me: P.O.Box 489, Georgetown, DE 19947
-------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: "Arthur E. Sowers"
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 23:21:03 -0500
Mike gave us his anti-tenure thoughts without giving us his situation
vis-a-vis the subject. I have seen, in my days, tenured faculty who
exemplified the epidomy of lazyness, arrogance, unreasonableness, and
being generally out-of-touch-with-the-world. I have met secretaries,
janitors, and members of our military that were better human beings than
some profs. Academia (and its culture) has its own peculiar version of
"rot" which alows a lot of unfairness be perpetuated (I have on
my web page a series of essays devoted to parts of this situation). If
anyone, mark my words, will compare the fraud, deceit, lies, chicanery,
and malfeasance on campuses with what goes on in the
industrial/commercial/government cultures, then it is miniscule by
comparison. People who are rich can often get away with murder (and other
crimes), figuratively or literally. There are many many books written
about these areas and if Mike really wants to get mad about something,
I'll post some titles for him to read.
Pure academic campuses are where a tenured prof may enjoy a
status which is highly "protected." However, that, and the priveledges
Mike refers to below, do not tell the whole story. First, tenure, per se,
does not mean permanent employment in many many cases. Many many campuses
are, or already have, watered down tenure to the point where it means very
little (this is also covered in my essays on my web page). In a large
number of cases, tenure may be associated with the "appointment," only.
Its relationship to the salary is quite another thing. At a large fraction
of the better schools, at least a minor fraction comes from grant money.
For many faculty, 100% of the salary comes from grants. What good is
tenure if one's salary drops to 10-20% of "normal?" This situation, as far
as I have been able to determine is the case for a significant fraction of
the faculty at medical schools (medical school faculty account for about
10% of all faculty [USA statistics]). The situation in many
non-medical health science schools is similar. And, tenure-track positions
are being abolished for new faculty at many campuses and being replaced
with "postions" which are tenure-eligible, but I know from people in some
of these departments that chairs have been not recommending tenure for
many years.
At non-medical schools, what is happening is that many faculty are being
hired in non-tenure track or "adjunct" postions which have lower pay,
little or zero fringe benefits, and are characterized with zero job
security (their appointment may not be renewed and no reason need be given
for this regardless of how well they perform; most people, in general, are
not aware that even in tenure-track positions, a chair can usually
terminate a faculty member with approximately zero (if you count minutes)
notice (I have heard of several cases and have documentation for this) and
this having nothing to do with performance, but politics (eg. the faculty
member did something to piss off the chair). I know of one case in a
medical school where a new chair came into the department and literally
fired the whole faculty (obviously no one had tenure) lock, stock, and
barrel.
So, this is the purpose of tenure. Chairs have incredible power and deans
almost never (oh, maybe 0.0001% of the time) meddle with a chair's
operations (I can cite maybe two cases where I know of publication of the
information and I know of a couple of cases where the removal of a chair
was hushed up very effectively). Again, this is more in health science
campuses, but I have heard similar stories from departments at some of the
most limelight of campuses.
I have a faculty handbook which devotes extensive space to how much
professional commitment a faculty member MUST have towards his/her
institution, but there is practically nothing about any commitment on the
part of the institution towards the faculty member (except for annual and
sick leave). I would like to go into some detail about this someday.
But, I favor tenure (and not just in appointment, but also for a
significant fraction of the FTE salary) because:
To become a prof at any worthy institution requires not only grad
school to a PhD (or other Dr degree), but usually at least 4-5, and up to
10 years of postdocing. We're talking about major commitment and devotion
of a very large part of ones best adult years (not to mention possible
debt financing) to preparation for devoting a lifetime to an indepth
study. Although this is primarily for the sciences, I respect all other
intellectual endeavors as well (arts, music, humanities, etc.). Why should
one piss away their life for stupid one year appointments? Uncertainty of
grant renewal in the sciences. And when the grant funding does not get
renewed, the guy in question gets dumped down the chute into the trash can
without even a going away party AND finds that the outside
industrial-commercial world will probably view him as overqualified for
almost everything from McDonald's burger flipping and Wal-Mar floor people
on up.
Try to think of nonfaculty people who have job security and good
paycheck security that are above that of most faculty and are also not
accountable. I can think of many corporate officers, employees within our
law enforcement infrastructure, a large fraction of our military
personnel, and many support staff infrastructures, to name a few. I think
if we add all of these up, we will find a much larger population of people
with all of the characteristics Mike listed for his "model" tenured prof.
Thank you for your time and attention, and forgive my bad spelling
tallents,
Art Sowers
-------------------------------------------------------
Written in the public interest, the essays on
"Contemporary Problems in Science Jobs" are located at:
http://www.access.digex.net/~arthures/homepage.htm
Snail mail adr to me: P.O.Box 489, Georgetown, DE 19947
-------------------------------------------------------
=== no change to below, included for reference and context ====
On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Dettol wrote:
> DOES ACADEMIC TENURE HAVE ANY PLACE IN THE MODERN WORLD?
>
> I find the whole idea of someone being given a job for life abhorrent
> but I think what irritates me the most about academia is the lack of
> accountability of tenured staff.
>
> I'd like to hear if anyone knows of a tenured academic who has been
> sacked for poor performance. I am personally aware of two academics
> who have been sacked [one broke the law (theft of university property)
> and the other was "invited to retire" rather than face a harassment
> suite] but none who have even been discipline for poor performance.
>
> What is so special about academics that they deserve privileged
> treatment? The idea of a job for life has been tried in the broader
> community and has failed. The reasons for the failure are generally
> given as lack of incentive, lack of competition, lack of efficiency and
> productivity and so on.
>
> Isn't it time we abandoned failed socialist ideas of a job for life?
>
> When discussing this issue with others the point is often raised what
> criteria should be used to assess performance. Also it is often
> suggested that poor performers exist in the real (ie, non-academic)
> world.
>
> As a first instance could I suggest a minimum requirement of turning up
> to work for at least twenty hours a week. I'm sure failure to turn up
> for work would result in dismissal in private industry. I have been
> associated with three academic chemistry departments and this criteria
> alone would result in three staff members being sacked. At the moment
> of course they are tenured and therefore accountable too no-one. The
> off-the-record feeling of others in these departments is that there is
> nothing that can be done so just ignore the problem and try not to make
> the same mistake when hiring the next time.
>
> Admittedly academic absenteeism is probably only a problem in a
> relatively small percentage of cases but it highlights the lack of any
> systematic accountability.
>
> I think a far worse and endemic problem is fraud. I'm choosing to use
> the word in its broadest sense. Perhaps "parafraud" is a better word.
> It is the word used by Harold Hillman in an article published in The
> Times Higher Education Supplement (1995) titled "Peccadilloes and Other
> Sins" to describe a multitude of academic "sins" some of which included
> :
> "research workers who do not report their own experiments or
> observations that are incompatible with their beliefs.
>
> Academics who do not quote publications who's conclusions they do not
> like.
>
> Scientists who do not carry out the relevant control experiments either
> by omission or refusal to do so, when attention has been brought to
> them...
>
> Some supervisors expect to share in authorship of research work in which
> they have made little or no intellectual contribution..."
>
> It is this final point that I think is the most widespread.
>
> The current system of reward in academia encourages quantity rather than
> quality of research publications. I'd like to take a hypothetical
> example of an academic who works diligently during their initial years
> of academic appointment. Through hard work and flair in their field
> they may attract research funds which in turn enables them to attract
> graduate students and, if the researcher publishes and gains more
> recognition (= more funds), post docs. There reaches a stage when a
> research group has enough graduate students and postdocs for the whole
> process of engaging in scientific research to be self propagating
> without the need for input from the principal investigator (PI).
>
> At this stage the PI faces a moral dilemma. One can become an absentee
> PI, turn up for work very now and then and still watch one career flower
> due to the output of the laboratory or the PI can continue to
> participate actively in the process. Sometimes a problem exists in that
> despite the best intentions of the PI the research group becomes too big
> for the PI to have a realistic input to all projects. In this case and
> more so in the case of the absentee PI they are needed solely to sign
> purchase orders. My point here is that these people have become
> glorified lab managers and are no longer needed for the scientific
> process to continue (other than getting their signature on a PO).
>
> I think that without tenure this situation would be less likely and
> where it existed the university would be able to dismiss the faculty
> member and appoint someone else.
>
> The next thing that often gets raised when I have this discussion is
> that in the situation that I have described (and witnessed) the PI is
> still productive based on the only measure of productivity that seems to
> exist in academia, namely quantity of publications.
>
> This is where a huge reform in attitude is necessary. Recall the final
> point that I quoted from Hillmans article. I've asked people why
> such-and-such a person was listed as a co-author when they have made no
> scientific contribution. A typical response is that "they raised the
> money."
>
> For those of you who are chemists check out the ACS ethical guidelines
> for publication (I'm sure the other societies have similar). It is
> quite clear in those guidelines what constitutes authorship and what
> doesn't. Raising the money does not constitute grounds for authorship.
> If it did a philanthropist could choose to fund research projects and
> very soon become the most published scientist of our time.
>
> The problem that is rampant in academia is that PIs take credit and
> co-authorship when they do not ethically warrant it, and thereby
> increase their quantity of publications, enhance their reputations and
> make funding all the easier to acquire the next time. And so the cycle
> continues and a PI can build a 30 year career by turning up to work in
> the first ten years.
>
> At the moment it is a foolproof system. No accountability exists. The
> people in a position to observe this parafraud, the graduate students
> and postdocs, depend on the PI for their salary but perhaps what is more
> important they depend on the PI for a reference for future employment.
> Why be a "whistle blower?" You are only there for a few years, it is
> too easy not to rock the boat.
>
> PIs will continue to be "raising the money" and paying graduate students
> and postdocs and churning out quantities of papers and raising more
> money and so on...
>
> The cycles continues and academia has lost its way.
>
>
> Mike
>
>
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: Anthony Potts
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 15:50:43 GMT
On Thu, 23 Jan 1997, William R. Penrose wrote:
> These are some good points. Generally speaking, academia has little to fear
> from suppression of ideas, but petty personality conflicts go on all the time.
> The office politics in academic departments are the most vicious and cutthroat
> of any professional endeavor, IMHO. There always seems to be an 'in' group
> and an 'out' group. Assistant profs who associate with the out group,
> willingly or unwillingly, bring doom on their chances for tenure. If a member
> of the in group, they have to screw up pretty badly to be denied. From a
> personal survival point of view, I would rather do gymnastics in a viper pit
> in a bathing suit than work in a university.
>
> Bill
>
Added to the personal side of things, working in academia has many other
things counting against it. One year contracts are pretty usual, with no
guarantee of anything at the end. Wages are absolutely diabolical, and
even in the best universities, office facilities can be dire.
At my institution, we turn out physicists who could very easily get jobs
anywhere in the world in academia. Instead, most of us head off for the
financial markets, or for consultancy work, when we finish.
A future in academic physics, even at the very top level, just isn't a
very pleasant thought any more.
Anthony Potts
CERN, Geneva
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: wpenrose@interaccess.com (William R. Penrose)
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 10:06:58
>:
>: Teaching an "incorrect idea" is no longer a real danger. More likely
>: than not, a professor will be done in by an offhand remark.
>: "Homosexuality is not normal." or comparisons of a woman's body to Jello
>: were reasons that faculty members jobs were threatened. The point is
>: not whether the ideas were incorrect (in fact, they involved value
>: judgements or just plain bad judgement) but whether faculty have the
>: right to say anything at all- no matter how silly (unless the prof
>: happens to be black and insults Jews). Of course, in industry, what one
>: says in such an offhand remark can be grounds for dismissal.
>I was not referring to political correctness, or just plain insults, rather
>actual statement of fact; eg., the moon has craters. This simple statement
>got a certain Italian astronomer in hot water. This, IMO is the major
>threat: that the administration/politicians/anyone else tell me *what*
>to think about or that a conclusion I have reached (however unpalatable
>to some) is factually incorrect. Only the process of science can
>determine that.
These are some good points. Generally speaking, academia has little to fear
from suppression of ideas, but petty personality conflicts go on all the time.
The office politics in academic departments are the most vicious and cutthroat
of any professional endeavor, IMHO. There always seems to be an 'in' group
and an 'out' group. Assistant profs who associate with the out group,
willingly or unwillingly, bring doom on their chances for tenure. If a member
of the in group, they have to screw up pretty badly to be denied. From a
personal survival point of view, I would rather do gymnastics in a viper pit
in a bathing suit than work in a university.
Bill
********************************************************
Bill Penrose, President, Custom Sensor Solutions, Inc.
526 West Franklin Avenue, Naperville, IL 60540
630-548-3548, fax: 630-369-9618
email wpenrose@interaccess.com
********************************************************
Applications of gas sensors: Contract R&D;, product
development, and consultation.
********************************************************
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: David Schaafsma
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 13:41:00 -0500
Lloyd R. Parker wrote:
>
> Dettol (mikeh@gold.chem.hawaii.edu) wrote:
> :
> : BTW I think you're skating on thin ice citing Japan. Because of the
> The current economic troubles in Japan are mostly due to the collapse of
> the real estate market. Real estate values in Japan, and especially
This may be partly true, but Japan is also headed for a cultural
upheaval like the one we had in the 60s. The reason the Japanese don't
have much of a welfare system is that they are a completely homogenous
culture - they take care of their own, and nothing more. But they are
soon to discover that even with their kind of isolationism, socialism
has its costs.
It's not an accurate picture to say that Japan's success is due to their
lifelong servitude system. While we have always been wallowing the the
Quarterly Report, they have looked 5 or 10 or 20 years into the future.
Their farsightedness is now paying off. We need to return to a system
with a consistent vision, which is not something that is guaranteed by
giving people tenure.
> : Firstly, I think it would be fair to say that the numbers of Nobel prizes won is probably more
Where are both of you getting your statistics? I don't know about
chemistry, but I would hazard a guess that Nobels in physics are about
evenly split between industrial and academic. The true greats -
Einstein, Bardeen, even Feynman - did some of their best work outside of
academia, without tenure.
> Do you like Rowland would have had the guts to proclaim CFCs were the
> cause of ozone layer destruction if he hadn't had tenure and a U Cal
> trustee had decided that was liberal nonsense?
Admittedly, most regents and administrators are orders of magnitude less
ethical than most scientists. But that does not mean that tenure is the
way to protect decent working folk from the likes of them. I think
universities as a whole need to become more accountable. I know of no
one outside of some univ. admin. system who can explain what these
schools do with all the money they rake in, with endowments and tuition
and fees. Why has the level of service and the quality of education not
gone up with the astronomical increases in tuition in the last 10-20
years?
Now, with the formation of university-corporate partnerships, designed
to allow university-funded research to be used to start private
ventures, the universities stand to gain even more. Who's to bell the
cat? Universities have tax-exempt status! All they need to do is spend
an equally obscene amount of cash as they take in and they're covered!
Tenuring professors is not the answer to protecting them from
administrators - collaring the administrators is the answer.
--
David T. Schaafsma, PhD
Optical Sciences Division, Infrared Materials Group
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Washington, DC
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: DrHeasley@Chemistry.com (Frank)
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 21:03:19 GMT
On Wed, 22 Jan 1997 23:02:51 -0500, "Arthur E. Sowers"
wrote:
>I certainly cannot recommend to a young person who is really excited about
>doing research all of his life to spend 5-7 years getting a PhD, another
>5-10 years on one or more postdocs (expanding his CV while waiting for a
>faculty position), and then waiting another 5-6 years to come up for
>tenure and then get dumped out on the street if his funding lapses for one
>or two years. I actually know some very good people who had the "grant
>lottery" misfortune and were saved because they had tenure. Within 1-2
>years they got their grants back. But the disruption in research progress
>was also damaging.
Research is definitely not something that should be recommended as a
means of earning a living. That was the case back in the '50's and
'60's, when our government had the money to spend and we were involved
in a major science and arms race with a perceived hostile enemy.
Times have changed, the $$ are no longer there, and neither is the
external motivation. The result is that jobs in science have dried
up.
The unfortunate outcome of our lack of interest in pursuing science is
that our knowledge at present is just sufficient to get us into
trouble, but not large enough to get us out of it.
Numerous potential technological pitfalls lie in the years ahead. We
have chosen to ignore them, and one or more will eventually catch up
with us.
>
>We can argue about details, but research is a long term operation. Even
>product development (eg. by drug companies) is a long term operation, and
>they usually come up with the funding for it from their own resources or
>investors, etc.
>
I'd have to disagree with this. Most drug companies, like most other
companies, have learned how to "belly up to the public trough" to
obtain funding for their development efforts. If you dig deeply
enough into the real source of the money, you'll find that most
developmental research is government funded, whether it is the
harvested fruit of academic effort (frequently by the PI starting a
personally owned company) or direct grants to corporations.
The fact is that there's not much profit right now in solving problems
that have yet to become crises. Unfortunately, given the basic nature
of the problems that we are likely to encounter (genetics run amok,
wierd chemical escapes, global warming/cooling, germ warfare, etc.
etc.) it is likely that when we are faced with a complex crisis,
without having the basic understanding of the causes, any solution we
find will come too late to be of any use.
As they say, "a day late and a dollar short".
or more succinctly: "SOL"
Frank Heasley, Ph.D.
Principal
FSG Online - Careers in Science, Biotechnology and Medicine
http://www.chemistry.com
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: mmd@zuaxp0.star.ucl.ac.uk (Michael Dworetsky)
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 18:42:49 GMT
In article
"Arthur E. Sowers" writes:
>
>
>On Wed, 22 Jan 1997, Michael Dworetsky wrote:
>>
>> In following this mainly American thread, I see that no one has hit upon
>> the uniquely British solution incorporated in the 1988 Education Act by
>> the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher.
>>
>> Tenure for all new employment contracts was abolished so that academics
>> could be dismissed for 'good cause' (I won't go into details, but imagine
>> the lengthy and difficult process of setting up tribunals, appeals,
>> etc--there have been very few dismissals for this reason) or for reasons
>> of 'financial redundancy', e.g., if one's university was no longer going
>> to have a department or group teaching and researching one's subject. The
>> latter provision has been the subject of some abuse by administrations,
>> according to the university staff unions.
>>
>> The Education Act specifically has protections of free speech written
>> into it to counter the claim that tenure is required in order to protect
>> freedom to advocate unpopular or unusual ideas. I'm not sure how well
>> this works in practice.
>>
>> What is bizarre, of course, is that being promoted in effect changes
>> one's contract, so that ***those who earn promotion*** (mainly through
>> research excellence, though teaching also counts) lose tenure, but those
>> who are unpromotable (or, at least, unpromoted--even if deserving) retain
>> tenure if their contract was dated before 1988.
>>
>> I understand that in the USA one receives tenure upon promotion.
>
>Not necessarily. Many schools, particularly medical and health science
>centers, have been or are planning to separate promotion from tenure
>consideration. Many schools (particularly the ones in the limelight) have
>also separated the "appointment" from the salary. They have also linked
>the salary in many cases to grants, and de-linked the salary either mostly
>or completely from institutional resources. This means that if you lose
>your grant, you lose your job. I know of many examples where tenure means
>that if you lose your grant, then your paycheck goes immediately down to
>50% of full salary for one year. After that one year, if you don't get
>your grant support back, then your salary goes to zero. Sure, the
>appointment is tenured. You have, maybe, an office. But your lab gets
>taken away. This is not that common, but on the other hand, I've heard of
>it from a good number of people I know.
>
There is a difference universally evident when a position is dependent on
'soft' money, i.e., money from a grant or foundation which is clearly or
potentially temporary in nature. In the UK as well, if an academic post
depended on grant money, it was not tenurable. I was referring
specifically to appointed posts which are funded by block grants for
general operation, including academic salaries, from the main funding body
of the country or state (Britain has only one small private university;
the system is essentially state funded for teaching and the research
base, though shamefully badly).
In the UK very few if any academic posts depend on research grant money;
most grant funding is for post-docs. (Medical charity money may be an
exception, and I include endowed chairs, etc in basic block funding though
the source is private.) It is not possible to obtain grant money for
academic salaries, in fact; academics are considered to be paid for a full
working year, not for 9 months or whatever as in the US.
The tenure discussion should probably be limited to those funded by
'hard' money.
--
Mike Dworetsky, Department of Physics | Bismarck's law: The less people
& Astronomy, University College London | know about how sausages and laws
Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT UK | are made, the better they'll
email: mmd@star.ucl.ac.uk | sleep at night.
Subject: Nobel prize rubbish
From: Dettol
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 15:58:59 -1000
Lloyd R. Parker wrote:
>
> Dettol (mikeh@gold.chem.hawaii.edu) wrote:
> :
> : BTW I think you're skating on thin ice citing Japan. Because of the job for life thing in
> : Japan, it has an underlying (ie.true) rate of unemployment far in excess of the official rate.
> : Effectively this means that there are large numbers of very well paid welfare recipients which
> : must drain the economy in someway. The Japanese economy has been stagnating since about 1991
> : and the stock market has nearly halved in that time. The japanese economy is in need of reform
> : but there seems to be a lack of political will at the moment.
>
> The current economic troubles in Japan are mostly due to the collapse of
> the real estate market.
You're right of course. Thurow has written extensively about this and other problems in
the Japanese economy however I'm sure that their are probably alternative viewpoints out
there.
Initially I said that jobs for life were bad news and you responded with words to the
effect what about Japan and Korea over the last 50 years. The point of my response was
by linking jobs for life to a booming economy do you now link it to a stagnating one.
Jobs for life are not the cause of Japans current problems but it means that Japan has
additional lead in its saddle bags and may contribute to the current inability of the
economy to recover.
Jobs for life has landed Japan with, in effect, corporate funded welfare. This doesn't
seem to have effected Japans corporate competitiveness yet but it eventually will.
: Firstly, I think it would be fair to say that the numbers of Nobel prizes won is
probably more
> : an indication of the commitment of the country to fund science and secondly having a sizeable
> : population of scientists to do the research. The number of Nobel prizes won says nothing about
> : whether research is carried out efficiently, whether academics are accountable and whether
> : fraud, or if your prefer, parafraud or unethical behaviour, is widespread.
>
> But fraud has nothing to do with tenure; neither does unethical
> behavior. Reading the Chronicle of Higher Education will show that.
The thrust of my original post was that I think it would be easier to get rid of fraud
and have more accountability in the absence of tenure.
>
> The fact is, we turn out scientists in this country that dominate science
> world-wide. Our academic scientists, most of them tenured Ph.D.s, win
> Nobels at a rate exceeding the rest of the world combined. And one of
> the reasons is their job is not subject to the whim of a regent or a trustee.
I repeat the comments above and my response to your original post and add that for that
most of last fifty years the government in the US has funded science, particularly in the
50s and 60s has been generous. Most commentators link this with the cold war (eg. Time
August 26 1991). Funds are now more difficult to attract and if congressman and senators
share you complacency this will become worse not better.
Unless funding levels are amntained or increased, particularly for basic research, then
the story may well be different in the next 50 years.
Finally, you seem to be very US-centric but I repeat what I said before, that my comments
are not directed only at US academia. The culture is worldwide and in my original post I
quote from Hillman, a British academic writing in "The Times".
Mike
Subject: Re: Tenure? On the whole, yes. Was: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: itsd1@teleport.com (Thomas L. Billings)
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 00:09:08 -0800
In article ,
"Arthur E. Sowers" wrote:
Much that is good. I would like to add a few comments.
> Mike gave us his anti-tenure thoughts without giving us his situation
> vis-a-vis the subject. I have seen, in my days, tenured faculty who
> exemplified the epidomy of lazyness, arrogance, unreasonableness, and
> being generally out-of-touch-with-the-world. I have met secretaries,
> janitors, and members of our military that were better human beings than
> some profs. Academia (and its culture) has its own peculiar version of
> "rot" which alows a lot of unfairness be perpetuated (I have on
> my web page a series of essays devoted to parts of this situation). If
> anyone, mark my words, will compare the fraud, deceit, lies, chicanery,
> and malfeasance on campuses with what goes on in the
> industrial/commercial/government cultures, then it is miniscule by
> comparison. People who are rich can often get away with murder (and other
> crimes), figuratively or literally.
When they do, they do so because they have a group of people below them to
absorb, obfuscate, or confuse any reaction from the rest of society. That
group is almost always a hierarchy. Hierarchies are good at controlling
people's actions in regards fixed resources, like a tenured position, in a
fixed location.
I know of one case in a
> medical school where a new chair came into the department and literally
> fired the whole faculty (obviously no one had tenure) lock, stock, and
> barrel.
>
> So, this is the purpose of tenure. Chairs have incredible power and deans
> almost never (oh, maybe 0.0001% of the time) meddle with a chair's
> operations (I can cite maybe two cases where I know of publication of the
> information and I know of a couple of cases where the removal of a chair
> was hushed up very effectively). Again, this is more in health science
> campuses, but I have heard similar stories from departments at some of the
> most limelight of campuses.
Again you are demonstrating the power of being at or near the top of a
hierarchy, with no effective means of reaching around that social
structure. This is often the case even when the decisions of such a
person harm the purposes of the Institution itself. In the case here,
those would be the excellence of the scientific work and teaching
involved.
This has generally been called "agency cost" by economists. It is the
cost resulting from the difference between the optimum activities for the
purposes of the Institution, and the activities undertaken more for the
benefit of the individual with the resources or power granted by the
Institution. Worse, in hierarchies, agency cost is mostly unacknowledged,
and mostly unaccounted for. It thus blossoms in baroque profusion. Most
of the time this concept is focused on costs to the Institution, but you
have shown here a cost moving not only up, to affect the entire
Institution, but also downwards, to affect the people in the line teaching
and research positions.
The members of the armed forces have long had a phrase to describe this in
a hieararchy, which fits here very well:
"Shit Rolls Downhill"
The military, outside of combat, is the prototypical controlling
hierarchy. In combat, where they MUST be productive of their purpose, or
perish, that changes fast!
> Try to think of nonfaculty people who have job security and good
> paycheck security that are above that of most faculty and are also not
> accountable. I can think of many corporate officers, employees within our
> law enforcement infrastructure, a large fraction of our military
> personnel, and many support staff infrastructures, to name a few. I think
> if we add all of these up, we will find a much larger population of people
> with all of the characteristics Mike listed for his "model" tenured prof.
>
Indeed, many of them have similar characteristics because they function in
similarly hierarchical organizations. Each of them denies, for the most
part, the existence of agency cost.
> Thank you for your time and attention,
>
> Art Sowers
Thank You, for the coherent exposition.
I would agree that allowing tenure to collapse in the face of academic
hierarchy's agency cost would destroy much good work in the future.
I would ask futher though; Why must we accept a hierarchy as the
organizing paradigm for research and teaching? It is at the core of each
of the negative behaviors you have described here. While this is still
the numerically dominant form of human organization recognized by
governments, they themselves being hierarchies, there is no reason that
the other forms of human organization cannot be used to achieve the ends
of scientific research and teaching.
Indeed, when formal hierarchical personal relations come to dominate an
Institution too completely, the communications needed to be productive dry
up, with horrific results for any Institution. The answer to this in the
military, in research, and more and more now in business, is communicating
teams. These teams, and many individuals as well, are linked by networks
that have become more and more electronic in the last 3 decades. It is
these networks of teams and individuals which form the best alternative to
a top-down resource controlling hierarchy. Reduce the agency costs of
hierarchy by flattening it deeply. Then the need for tenure, the control
over granting of which forms THE worst prop for the hierarchy and worst
present control on diverse views in the academic community, would decrease
even more steeply.
What you seem to describe above is the impact, of putting in first place
the needs of maintaining a hierarchy, with it's attendent agency costs, on
the productive networks and teams. But, you do this while defending the
tenure concept that is the firmest, and most seductive, underpinning of
that hierarchy. This is because attainment of tenure is so greatly
desired that candidates will do much, or set aside much, to attain it.
It seems to me that to get rid of these agency costs you so correctly
deplore, that the security of tenure must be given up as well, along with
much of the rest of the current hierarchical structure that controls
academic resources. Expanding the ability of academia's netorks to move
financial resources, as well as information, seems to be a key need. This
would allow the hierarchies to disperse without collapse of the productive
networks, and the teams and individuals that form them.
The prototypical network, for most purposes, is still the marketplace.
The marketplace has it's own agency costs. The nice thing is that, there,
they are mostly acknowledged and mostly accounted for. We call them
profit.
The control over academic resources now runs thorough government and
university hierarchies down to the teams and networks that are actually
productive. The higher and steeper the hierarchy, the worse the agency
costs, IMHO. Why not keep that from happening by distributing the
decisions about where the funding will go throughout a much wider group?
Research and teaching vouchers that teams could be given directly by the
taxpayer would be an excellent start on this. This would include a larger
group within the networks of researchers and instructors, the consumers of
their production.
When a researcher has developed his communications with this wider network
of funders, the degree of control that a superior has over his opinions
would lessen or vanish. The need to keep teams together in this
circumstance would ensure that team leaders are the strongest
communicators between team members. The general productivity of the teams
may well increase because of these changes.
I would note that, even as we speak, the frustration with the academic
hierarchies is being taken out in smaller budgets from the top of the
funding hierarchy, the U.S. Congress. Some of that distrust and
frustration comes from the rising tide of scriptural literalism sweeping
to some future peak of political influence. Much of it comes, though,
from a legitimate frustration with the performance that is attained for
the money spent. The lack of communication and interaction with those
paying the bills is starting to take a heavy toll.
So, my prescription would be to encourage BOTH research and teaching
vouchers, which would be dibursed in academia by BOTH taxpayers and
students. As this becomes a larger and larger portion of total resources
for research and teaching, the power of the hierarchies to control will be
lessened, and tenure can be safely allowed to slide into history. The
trust needed to fund the research and instruction can be restored, and the
continuing industrial revolution can gain from both, to the benefit of us
all.
Regards,
Tom Billings
--
Institute for Teleoperated Space Development
itsd1@teleport.com(Tom Billings)
ITSD's web site is at, http://www.teleport.com/~itsd1/index.html
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: rmg3@access5.digex.net (Robert Grumbine)
Date: 24 Jan 1997 15:25:21 -0500
In article <5c3t1r$p88@news.ccit.arizona.edu>,
Frank Manning wrote:
>
>On 13 Jan, I saw an interesting article in our local paper. Arthur R.
>Butz, a professor at Northwestern University, has for decades vocally
>denied that the Holocaust happened (the "extermination legend," he calls
>it.)
>
>But he has tenure, and Northwestern has tolerated his views all this
>time. I personally think that's only proper -- academic freedom and all
>that. His opinions are nonsense, IMHO, but there's a free speech issue.
>
>But wait. There's more. Look what happened to an engineering instructor,
>who was presumably untenured -- "When Sheldon Epstein, a Northwestern
>engineering instructor outraged by Butz's 'hate, lies and libel,'
>recently attacked Butz's views in class before a relatively small number
>of students, he was fired. The reason: He had strayed from the class
>curriculum." [*]
A bit of observation. I was an NU undergrad, with many friends in EE
(Butz's department). Two things they agreed on: he was a good EE teacher,
and he kept his politics out of the classroom. From the reports I've
seen, such as quoted above, unlike Butz, Mr. Epstein did not keep his
politics out of the classroom.
The thing which prompted the wider issue (and Mr. Epstein's comments)
is that NU now has faculty web pages and Mr. Butz is using part of his
for material related to his book. Certainly there are freedom of speech
issues, but it isn't so clear to me that tenure is truly the root of
the problems reported.
Things, including Mr. Butz's conduct, may have changed since I was
at NU. When I was there, Northwestern set the division 1 losing record
in football and considered not finishing last in the Big 10 a major
achievement.
--
Bob Grumbine rmg3@access.digex.net
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: "Todd K. Pedlar"
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 16:06:58 -0600
Frank Manning wrote:
>
> In article
> wpenrose@interaccess.com (William R. Penrose) writes:
>
> > In article <32E44E4A.6BEF@gold.chem.hawaii.edu> Dettol
> > writes:
> >
> >> DOES ACADEMIC TENURE HAVE ANY PLACE IN THE MODERN WORLD?
> >
> >> I find the whole idea of someone being given a job for life abhorrent
> >> but I think what irritates me the most about academia is the lack of
> >> accountability of tenured staff.
> >
> > It's tempting to dismiss your statement as the bitter response of someone
> > who flunked tenure, but I'm afraid I have to agree with most of what you
> > said. [...]
>
> More about this below.
>
> On 13 Jan, I saw an interesting article in our local paper. Arthur R.
> Butz, a professor at Northwestern University, has for decades vocally
> denied that the Holocaust happened (the "extermination legend," he calls
> it.)
>
> But he has tenure, and Northwestern has tolerated his views all this
> time. I personally think that's only proper -- academic freedom and all
> that. His opinions are nonsense, IMHO, but there's a free speech issue.
>
> But wait. There's more. Look what happened to an engineering instructor,
> who was presumably untenured -- "When Sheldon Epstein, a Northwestern
> engineering instructor outraged by Butz's 'hate, lies and libel,'
> recently attacked Butz's views in class before a relatively small number
> of students, he was fired. The reason: He had strayed from the class
> curriculum." [*]
It was a technicality, yes, but a right charge. The story was that
Epstein taught Holocaust history, and made frequent reference to Butz
and his "libel", as you quote, in his Engineering class. Hardly
standard curriculum. Butz to my knowledge has never mentioned the
words Holocaust, extermination, or Jew in his classes, and there the
distinction lies. Epstein's efforts in class were to counteract Butz's
public disdain for Jews, and were misplaced. I think, though I disagree
entirely with Butz's personal views, that Epsteins release was valid.
To allow Epstein's inclusion of such material in class would open the
door to forced inclusion of Butz's in his. Nobody wanted that, so
Epstein was let go. [He was only an adjunct lecturer as it turns out
and not paid]
------------------------------------------------------------------
Todd K. Pedlar - Northwestern University - FNAL E835
Nuclear & Particle Physics Group
------------------------------------------------------------------
Phone: (847) 491-8630 (708) 840-8048 Fax: (847) 491-8627
------------------------------------------------------------------
WWW: http://numep1.phys.nwu.edu/tkp.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: shinbrot@nwu1.edu (Troy Shinbrot)
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 16:59:03 -0500
In article <32E93282.FF6@numep0.phys.nwu.edu>, "Todd K. Pedlar"
wrote:
> It was a technicality, yes, but a right charge. The story was that
> Epstein taught Holocaust history, and made frequent reference to Butz
> and his "libel", as you quote, in his Engineering class. Hardly
> standard curriculum. Butz to my knowledge has never mentioned the
> words Holocaust, extermination, or Jew in his classes, and there the
> distinction lies. Epstein's efforts in class were to counteract Butz's
> public disdain for Jews, and were misplaced. I think, though I disagree
> entirely with Butz's personal views, that Epsteins release was valid.
> To allow Epstein's inclusion of such material in class would open the
> door to forced inclusion of Butz's in his. Nobody wanted that, so
> Epstein was let go. [He was only an adjunct lecturer as it turns out
> and not paid]
Now, now, let's try to be precise. "The story" and the "standard
curriculum" according to Epstein, are that "The course syllabus contained
an element required by the Acceditation Board for Engineering Technology
(ABET) on ethics and social responsibility in engineering."
More info. is available at http://www.k9ape.com/c96/candor.html.
-Troy
Subject: Re: How do oceanographers chose that career?
From: sertman@ocean.ocean.fsu.edu (Stephen C. Ertman)
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 22:01:12
Most oceanographers start out studying something else, such as biology,
physics, math, or geology, then shift over to oceanography later on. The
reason for this is that few colleges or universities offer a Bachelor degree
in oceanography (a "Bachelor" degree is the first degree you get after about 4
years of study), so you have to study something else first, then continue in
college to study oceanography.
I was just about your age when I decided I wanted to be a "marine biologist."
To get myself ready, I took a lot of science courses in junior high school and
high school. Not just biology courses, all of them; physics, chemistry, etc.
Eventually, I went to the University of California in Santa Barbara to study
Marine Biology. I loved it. Marine animals, especially all the squishy ones
that live down in the mud, are fascinating creatures.
After studying for 4 years, I got my Bachelor degree in "aquatic" (marine and
fresh water) biology. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do then, so I joined the
Navy as an officer and learned how to drive ships (big ones! -- 450 ft long).
The Navy was hard work and not always fun, but it was a great way to really
experience the ocean. Boy, I enjoyed driving those ships! Standing out on
the bridge wing with the wind in my face and the waves crashing over the bow
of the ship, making the whole thing shudder and shake like a wet dog. That
part of the Navy made all the hard work and long hours worth it.
After 5 years in the Navy, I decided to go back to school and study more
marine biology. On a whim, I took a course in "oceanography" and fell in love
with it. Oceanography is very different than marine biology. To be a good
oceanographer you need to be good in all the sciences and in mathematics. So
you have to be a general science whiz, good in biology, good in physics, good
in chemistry....you get the picture. So if you like ALL science, and you are
interested in the ocean, then oceanography is a good choice for you.
What do I like most about oceanography? Really, it's more a matter of what I
enjoy about being a scientist. I like the discovery. Learning new things
that no one ever knew before. You can't get the answers out of a book because
YOU are the first one who ever did that particular experiment and found an
answer to the question you were curious about. To me, it is like finding
buried treasure or the ruins of an ancient civilization. It is the discovery
makes it fun.
You should know, however, that being a scientist is also hard work.
Scientists get their money for research from the government (state or
federal). To get the money we must write long papers about the research we
would like to do. If other scientists like our ideas, then the government
will give us some money to do the research. Many times, we will spend months
writing about our ideas for an experiment, but we won't get any money because
there is not enough for everyone. So, often you end up doing a lot more
tedious ("tedious" is similar to "boring") work, before you get to do the fun
stuff, like the experiments. You have to decide for yourself whether that is
a good balance...very hard work versus the thrill of discovering new knowledge.
Well, this is probably more than you wanted to know about becoming an
oceanographer. Feel free to write me if you have any other questions.
Steve Ertman
sertman@ocean.ocean.fsu.edu
Dept. of Oceanography
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-3048
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In article <32E2DB0A.25C5@pacbell.net> John Hawkins
writes:>I am a 6th grade student -I'd like to ask
oceanographers:>do you have a special area you study?
>how do you get most of your information (books, classes, computers,
>...)?
>what do you most enjoy about your job?
>How old were you when you started thinking about a career in
>oceanography?
