Parallel Universe Tenure Discussions

It'd be interesting to see what would happen if we could actually get these conversations to connect.

It would be like crossing the streams. Bad idea.

I'm talking about the horror of spending six years right out of graduate school worrying that offending a colleague or having a delay in a research project at the wrong moment might force you to start a job search with no financial cushion and with a black mark on your record.

So, like, how is this significantly different from the vast majority of jobs people have in the non-academic sector? Apart from the potential of not having to worry about it ever again if you *do* get the tenure.

(Note: I am not saying that academia should be more like the corporate world--far from it. But most people out in the world can get shitcanned at any point in time for any reason whatsoever.)

So, like, how is this significantly different from the vast majority of jobs people have in the non-academic sector? Apart from the potential of not having to worry about it ever again if you *do* get the tenure.

Academic salaries are generally significantly lower.

Which is, of course, largely a consequence of tenure-- lower salaries are the price we pay in academia for not having to put up with you-might-be-fired-tomorrow horseshit for our whole careers. It does, however, mean that the safety margin is thinner for a lot of academics than for people in corporate jobs. Especially when you factor in the fact that most academics have spent 5+ years obtaining a Ph.D., and are thus in a much more tenuous economic position at that point in their lives than the people they went to college with.

Of course, this just puts junior academics in the same basic situation as people in their early 30's who work in retail...

Full professors at top universities get paid pretty well, I'd say (six figures plus Summer salary if they're getting grants, certainly in physics). Sure, they can easily find PhDs earning more in other jobs, but they can probably find some that are earning rather less. Professors at less well-funded or competitive universities, of course, can be earning significantly less.

I agree that, without tenure, professors would have to be paid more to do the same job; that security is a significant bonus, once achieved. The downside, of course, is that tenure review can be a career cut-off, at a time/age when changing job, or even career, isn't trivial. That's something that hits a lot of non-academics too, however.

I can understand 100% why someone would wish to teach, also why someone would want to do pure research. However, not working in the world of physics, I do have a question. Just how hard is it for a person with a Ph.D in physics to get a better paying job than working at a university or college?

I've been reading back through your blog posts (very interesting by the way) and noticied how you mentioned other students leaving school to take lucrative positions woring in the computer science field. Or as the College of William and Mary said during freshman orientation "50% of you will earn a degree, eventually. Of that 50% only half will ever work in the field you earn your degree in." Telling students right off the bat that they may never work in what they currently consider their dream field was (in hindsight) admirable, start opening the eyes now folks. But its also a reality for say everyone who doesn't have a tenure position, or working at the post office. (nothing against postal officials, I still need my magazines to arrive)

I realize my previous post may be taken badly. The comment about opening the eyes was meant as it was the school telling the students. I did not mean for it to be taken as a comment towards those who are working towards tenure.

who correctly note that the biggest problem with the academic system is not so much what happens to assistant professors (save for a handful of insitutions with deeply insane policies, most people who come up for tenure reviews pass),

You're making the same mistake here that a lot of other people make.

The fact that most who come up for it pass is not sufficient evidence that the system isn't broken.

I also point to the tremendous amount of stress that people-- including people who end up with tenure-- often go through as evidence that there's something wrong with the system that we should keep thinking about.

I'm worried about all the complacency that comes with "by and large it's basically working" and "most people who come up pass." This is why the system keeps pounding on and stressing out at least a significant minority of the people who are pre-tenure : because we, and University administrators, all convince ourselves that we have data that the system is working.

-Rob

So, like, how is this significantly different from the vast majority of jobs people have in the non-academic sector?

I hear this a lot.

Two differences.

First, at the grad student and post-doc level: this is a culture in physics that going on to a University faculty position is "success," and anything else is "failure." I saw this even in grad school, and it's certainly true among post docs. Yet, the faculty positions are tremendously difficult to get.

You may lose your job in industry, but in most industries, you can go and find another job in a related industry. If you're a post-doc in physics or astronomy and don't get the faculty offer, you're done. You're out of the field.

Similarly with tenure. Not only have you gone through the stress of the post-doc job situation-- now relieved that it's over-- but now you work for 7 years, and suddenly face an "up or out" decision. Either you're set for life... or you're fired, and with the taint of tenure denial, it's a lot harder to get another faculty job. You're out of the field altogether.

The tenure decision is a HUGE decision, it's a gigantic tooth-filled monster waiting for you 15+ years after you graduate from college deciding if you get to stay in the field you love and that you've spent your life working for, or if you're considered a washout, a failure, somebody that the system pruned out so that it can keep working well by rewarding the worthy. Or something.

-Rob

I know I commented on the fact that tenure trades 7 years of massive productivity for 28 more years of academic freedom (and possibly lower productivity). Might not have been in one of your threads. The issue comes up in many places.

Chad, I love how you think this discussion has "wound down". It has been going on in physics for 40+ years. Only the participants have changed. It is so old that some have died! (May Fred's soul rest in peace.)

In one of your links (Bill Hooker's) I read "The system is broken: there are too many PhD graduates and not enough real jobs for them." This same sentence could have appeared in a letter to Physics Today in 1970, and probably did. Another cycle of such letters appeared circa 1990, so we are probably ready for it to repeat again. Go to the library and thumb through PT starting circa 1967, with focus on Letters and job stories, but also keep an eye on the "positions wanted" part of the classifieds. There was the famous "PhD seeks job as taxi driver" ad that ran in the mid 70s.

I'll leave the assumption that the only "real" jobs are as a tenured professor at an R1 university to others, or maybe blog it when I get a Round Tuit. The statement about the ratio between grad students and faculty jobs (right now it is pretty good, about 3:1) assumes that PhD programs exist *only* to produce new faculty. This is simply not true. It was never true (there are data from the 20s and 30s in past PT stories) *except* during the early 60s.

Hooker also wrote "A real job will not be yanked out from under you every few years, unless you or your boss can continually win funding...", which means he must not know anyone in the aerospace or software industry.

The tenure decision is a HUGE decision, it's a gigantic tooth-filled monster waiting for you 15+ years after you graduate from college deciding if you get to stay in the field you love and that you've spent your life working for, or if you're considered a washout, a failure, somebody that the system pruned out so that it can keep working well by rewarding the worthy. Or something.

Oh, I know that. I have been on both sides of the industry/academia divide (have spent longer on the academia side, actually). Got the PhD in physics, did the post-doc, saw friends and respected colleagues go through the tenure process w/ varying degrees of success. One of the reasons I got out of academia is that I didn't consider the "reward" of a tenured faculty position worth the additional 6-9 years of horrible stress I'd have to go through to get it. Note: I am still working as a physicist, so it's not like I had to give up physics and become an actuary or anything.)

I think I made the right decision for me, but I REALLY did not understand the level of stress on the industrial side where I CONSTANTLY don't know for sure if I'll have a job next week. Or next-next week. Losing a job you love and being thrown to the wolves does not feel any better just because that job is not the coveted Tenured Professorship.

The thing is, I don't see how the tenure process can be significantly improved, so long as there are vastly more potential professors of physics than there are available positions. Abolishing it all together would just mean that the stressful high-pressure assistant professor period never ends.

The whole "you are worthless and a washout if you do not become a university professor" attitude could do with an overhaul, I agree. I never had any good opportunities to explore options outside academia while I was a grad student or a post-doc. The hardest part about leaving academia for an industrial physics job was figuring out HOW TO DO IT.

Hooker also wrote "A real job will not be yanked out from under you every few years, unless you or your boss can continually win funding...", which means he must not know anyone in the aerospace or software industry.

Indeed. My fiancee has just been laid off for the third time -- she's a Java developer with a small sub-sub-contractor and has done work for NASA and for the military. For software people doing certain kinds of work, there's a certain expectation that you'll be leaving a particular job in a small number of years, and anyone who sticks with a single position for more than five years is considered "stale".

This doesn't make the tenure thing right, and my heart goes out to Rob -- the issue isn't that this sort of thing doesn't happen in industry, but that it's a problem when it happens to anyone.

For my money, the issue with Rob at Vandy isn't that professors as a class are mistreated (although they may be) or even that tenure itself is a bad idea (it may be, although I doubt it), it's that Vandy needs (or believes it needs) that NSF funding pretty badly, and so all effort is put towards finding candidates who will be able to generate that funding. Rob seems to be a highly capable professor (although of course I've never taken a class from him) and is clearly enthusiastic about his work -- that a tenure system would reject him in favor of someone else based purely on the NSF funding issue speaks to a problem with Vandy, not with Rob.

There's obviously much more that could be said, but that's my current two cents.

Is there anything that's like a short-term concept of tenure? Like, someone gets tenured but only for ten years, so that the college doesn't have to worry about what happens if the guy goes nuts but the professor doesn't have to spend the entire time preparing to find a new job on a moment's notice if need be?

I never had any good opportunities to explore options outside academia while I was a grad student or a post-doc. The hardest part about leaving academia for an industrial physics job was figuring out HOW TO DO IT.

This is a gigantic problem in the way we train grad students, and I've never seen anybody (myself included) do any more than give lip service to it.

When I was in grad school -- during the 1990's spate of "there are too many post-docs" letters to Physics Today that CCP mentions above-- we even had one astronomy (I think it was) journal club devoted to discussing the issue. All the professors were saying the right things: we need to be training our students so that they will be ready for alternate careers, etc.

However, you could practically hear each professor thinking, "but not my students. They will be the ones who are successful and go on to faculty jobs." Hell, it was Caltech, so we all probably thought that about everybody.

Lip service. That's all it gets.

How do you find the physics industry positions? I have no clue. Where are they? How do you get connections for them? Engineering schools seem to do a good job hooking their students up with employment opportunities, but both at the undergrad and grad level, we Physics professors are completely unequipped to advise students on anything other than grad school or getting a post-doc.

-Rob

Rob seems to be a highly capable professor (although of course I've never taken a class from him) and is clearly enthusiastic about his work -- that a tenure system would reject him in favor of someone else based purely on the NSF funding issue speaks to a problem with Vandy, not with Rob.

I certainly believe I'm highly capable. You can find people who've taken my nonmajors intro astronomy class who hate me, but that's true of just about anybody who's taught a non-majors intro class. I've gotten a lot of good feedback in the past from smaller classes, though, and even have a lot of good feedback from a lot of people in the non-majors intro course.

The thing is, Vandy won't be casting me aside to replace me with somebody who can just get the NSF funding, and can't do anything else. There is enough of an oversupply of people like me that Vandy can afford to say "you must be at least a pretty good teacher and get research funding," because for each person like me who doesn't get the research funding, there will be 10 hotshots ready to be hired, some of whom will be able to. The people getting tenured are really good. I do think I make some contributions that won't be made as well by some others, but the people who are getting tenured are good at what they do.

The injustice isn't that the wrong people are getting tenured. The injustice, if it is that, is that some of us who do make real contributions are devalued for reasons that at least I think aren't necessarily the best metrics of how well we do our jobs.

-Rob

A couple of quick-hits, because I'm busy with the day job:

CCPhysicist: Chad, I love how you think this discussion has "wound down".

I don't think the entire discussion has wound down, just this particular instance of it. I'm sure we'll have some similar conversation a year from now, or two years from now, or ten. But right now, the topic has lost conversational momentum on ScienceBlogs and Cosmic Variance.

Rob: How do you find the physics industry positions? I have no clue. Where are they? How do you get connections for them?

The short answer is: Keep in touch with your alumni. Some of them are bound to go into other lines of work, and they'll know how to get jobs in those fields. Over time, you'll build up a database of information about where jobs are and how to get them.

Wow, instance service.

The thing is, Vandy won't be casting me aside to replace me with somebody who can just get the NSF funding, and can't do anything else. There is enough of an oversupply of people like me that Vandy can afford to say "you must be at least a pretty good teacher and get research funding," because for each person like me who doesn't get the research funding, there will be 10 hotshots ready to be hired, some of whom will be able to. The people getting tenured are really good. I do think I make some contributions that won't be made as well by some others, but the people who are getting tenured are good at what they do.

Sorry, I was perhaps a bit unclear. My point isn't, "Vandy's gonna hire some incompetent clod to take over from Rob," but rather, "Vandy more-or-less doesn't care about anything but funding when it actually makes a difference." In other words, from your posts, I'd get the impression that the hypothetical Bor Ponk, who was aces at getting NSF funding but had real problems connecting with students and did nothing else to deserve further employment, would be much more able to get tenure than yourself. If I'm reading you correctly now, you're saying that Vandy really does want that fully well-rounded "superstar" candidate, who can do pretty much everything to a spectacular level, and that Bor Ponk gets kicked out on his ass the same way you seem to have.

The injustice isn't that the wrong people are getting tenured. The injustice, if it is that, is that some of us who do make real contributions are devalued for reasons that at least I think aren't necessarily the best metrics of how well we do our jobs.

Which, I think, comes to a certain fact about that kind of position: we're not just cogs in a machine. In a large, mechanical operation you can pretty much make up positions and find candidates that fill those positions, whereas something like a University is filled with a smaller number of individuals who fill these sort of odd-shaped "academic" positions, and all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Since Universities seem to pride themselves on having faculty and staff with a wide variety of talents, it seems odd that the criteria for continued employment are to stifling.

In a more "just" (for whatever meaning of the word you want to use) organization, in which the NSF funding really is important to the continued health of the organization but also cognizant of the fact that, well, it's hard out there for a pimp, it seems that there's be some sort of "temporary stay" action that they could put you in. By which I mean, "Oh, Rob didn't get his grant this year, but he's so strong in these other areas -- let's hold off making the tenure decision for another three years or so to see if the funding issues resolve themselves." Especially since the NSF is so famously difficult at giving money away these last few years...

I had more to say, but this is getting too long already. Suffice this: anyone who think academia is significantly less stressful than most industry is fooling themselves.

Actually, though I was commenting on a post about law professors, I was thinking mostly of the social sciences. The tenure clock means that any piece of work that gets delayed -- e.g., by an IRB -- can be a career catastrophe. That pushes junior people into doing "safe" tasks.

Pam: I think I made the right decision for me, but I REALLY did not understand the level of stress on the industrial side where I CONSTANTLY don't know for sure if I'll have a job next week. Or next-next week. Losing a job you love and being thrown to the wolves does not feel any better just because that job is not the coveted Tenured Professorship.

This is anecdotal, but while I know that this is not unique to your job or your company, I'm not sure it's the norm. Layoffs, mergers, consolidations, and "the boss doesn't like you!" are definitely very real, but they're not what I think of as constant threats. (That said, I was worried in the late 90's, because Raytheon did something incredibly stupid-- they decreed that every facility in our sector would lose 10% of their staff, right across the board. Our site went from 400 open job postings to 200 layoffs in the span of three months. That was painful and scary. To their credit, VP level people at our site fought that tooth and nail. I believe this because they were fired for not implementing the cuts.)

Even among the big companies, some places are worse than others, though.