Steven Levitt from the Freakonomics blog has started a discussion about whether the tenure system is worth it. His argument is that the tenure system supports the mediocre and should be scrapped:
If there was ever a time when it made sense for economics professors to be given tenure, that time has surely passed. The same is likely true of other university disciplines, and probably even more true for high-school and elementary school teachers.
What does tenure do? It distorts people's effort so that they face strong incentives early in their career (and presumably work very hard early on as a consequence) and very weak incentives forever after (and presumably work much less hard on average as a consequence).
One could imagine some models in which this incentive structure makes sense. For instance, if one needs to learn a lot of information to become competent, but once one has the knowledge it does not fade and effort is not very important. That model may be a good description of learning to ride a bike, but it is a terrible model of academics.From a social standpoint, it seems like a bad idea to make incentives so weak after tenure. Schools get stuck with employees who are doing nothing (at least not doing what they are presumably being paid to do). It also is probably a bad idea to give such strong incentives pre-tenure -- even without tenure young faculty have lots of reasons to work hard to build a good career.
The idea that tenure protects scholars who are doing politically unpopular work strikes me as ludicrous. While I can imagine a situation where this issue might rarely arise, I am hard pressed to think of actual cases where it has been relevant. Tenure does an outstanding job of protecting scholars who do no work or terrible work, but is there anything in economics which is high quality but so controversial it would lead to a scholar being fired? Anyway, that is what markets are for. If one institution fires an academic primarily because they don't like his or her politics or approach, there will be other schools happy to make the hire. There are, for instance, cases in recent years in economics where scholars have made up data, embezzled funds, etc. but still have found good jobs afterwards.
From the point of view of someone who is still a student -- and recently an undergraduate -- I couldn't agree more.
I will give you three good reasons why tenure should be scrapped.
1) Tenure supports bad teachers as much as it supports unproductive researchers. I can't tell you the number of bad lecturers that I have had over the years. It has to be like 90%. Science in particular is filled with a lot of very smart people, very few of whom have the slightest idea how to convey that miraculous intelligence to another scientists, much less a lay-person.
As it exists now there is no incentive to teach well after you receive tenure. Teaching duties are often inflicted on faculty members who have no real interest in them.
What I often hear from concerned faculty members when I say things like this is "but if we remove tenure, then we will be subject to the whims of our students. If we grade them harshly, then we will be risking our careers."
Well my first answer to that is good. Several faculty I have been exposed to are blissfully unaware that students exist and deserve a rude awakening.
Second, the system without tenure need not be structured such that students have the last say. Evaluations are good, but if a teacher is being negatively evaluated then the institution needs to take an honest look into why. If the professor is teaching poorly, the institution should do something about that. If students are just whining, the institution should disregard their comments.
Third, I haven't met that many students who would negatively rate a teacher for running a difficult course. They might rate them poorly if they were asked questions about material that they were never taught. In fact, I feel like most of us seek out the most difficult professors because the courses that challenge you are also the ones where you learn the most. Getting into college is no longer easy. Students work hard to even get there. A difficult course might make them complain, but it won't make them complain nearly as much as a course that is a waste of their time.
2) Tenure -- like Social Security -- is something I never expect to receive. There are an increasingly large number of graduate students vying for faculty positions that are not increasing nearly as rapidly.
Now I don't have a problem with the competition. I feel like that is in the end a good thing. What I do have a problem with is when someone who is not being productive is taking the spot that might otherwise go to a motivated young researcher.
The tenure system keeps many professors on life-support for decades when that money could be much better spent on hiring cheaper, young assistant professors.
Also, let's be realistic. Depending on the discipline in question, scientists usually burn out in their later years. We have all met someone who hasn't published anything interesting in a decade. When scientists get old, in many cases they stop being a force for the advancement; instead they become the enforcers of the status quo -- trying to impose the theories that they originated on new evidence even when those theories are past their prime.
Removing the tenure system would be increase the rate of turnover, allowing more young scientists to reach prominence in their turn.
3) I don't buy the argument about academic freedom at all. Be honest. When was the last time you met someone who was fired for saying something controversial? One, I have never met someone like that. I heard about Ward Churchill, but even he didn't get fired for what he said. He got fired for making stuff up.
Two, in the present day and age getting fired for something controversial is one of the best career moves you could possibly make. The competition for professors at the top levels is so intense between universities that someone even moderately good who got fired for their inconvenient views would get snatched up in another place in a microsecond.
By volume, for each person tenure shelters from persecution for their beliefs it shelters 10,000 people from their mediocrity and failure to produce.
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This whole business doesn't have the monetary tinge to me that it has for Levitt, but I do agree with him. Academia purports to be the place where new ideas are constantly debated, but in my experience -- particularly at elite universities -- it has become a debating society that rehashes constantly the same utterly irrelevant issues that it was discussing 20 years ago.
There are the rare few professors that are older and still excellent researchers and teachers. These few have served as my role models and inspired me to believe that the system can be made better. But they are the minority.
I view this like Congressional term limits. Academia is at its best when it is dynamic, and the tenure system suppresses that dynamism.
Hat-tip: Uncertain Principles (Who questions whether the removal of tenure is an attempt to make academia more business-like. I don't think so, but he has interesting things to say.)
UPDATE: Several of you have taken issue with my equation of bad teaching and the tenure system. Essentially people are saying that the two are separate issues. This is true, but let me explain why I think the two are related.
I can certainly visualize how a tenure system that would support good teaching. If that was already an institutional value, good teachers would be able to stay as long as they liked.
However, that is not the system we have. We have a system that does not support teaching AND has tenure. Thus, the tenure serves as a force-multiplier for already poor institutional values.
Say we were to this instant change the values of a institution to value teaching. Well, it would take 30 years for that change to actually take effect because you can't fire professors for bad teaching. Tenure delays any positive changes that could be made to rectify that by preventing faculty turn-over.
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I think the problem of faculty who are poor teachers is a separate problem from tenure. Researching and teaching are distinct skill sets, and under the current system, we assume that anyone who possesses the former must have the latter. That's bullshit, as anyone who's sat through a horrible lecture from a brilliant scientist will tell you.
Really, what we need are separate tracks for those who research well and those who teach well. Let the lab monkeys stay in lab, where they're happy, and let those who have interest in teaching the next generation of scientists have their positions too.
The AAUT tracks faculty fired for controversy.
The most recent case I know of in my immediate vicinity involved an art professor who offended an alumni donor by putting on an explicit performance show.
A lot more goes on then students are aware of.
There's a LOT more to academic freedom than simply studying something that's 'controversial.' Would a pre-tenure researcher feel comfortable devoting a tremendous amount of time toward a topic that might not bear much academic fruit? Academic freedom, to me, means not having to worry about the outcome of a study. This frees you up to tackle harder problems, problems that might take a few years to figure out and (hopefully) solve. Otherwise, you're in the tenuous situation of those pro-sports coaches during "rebuilding" years...
Also, many academic institutions value teaching more than research. Tenure only guarantees that you're good at what your university wants you to be good at. If it's teaching, you're probably a good teacher (many people are). If it's research, you're a good researcher. You CAN be both, but the tenure process appears to frequently be selective for one or the other. In other words, most research universities couldn't care less about how much undergrads learn. It's tough, but pretty accurate.
One reason for tenure is that it makes academe a career. If you are going to be fired after you hit your forties, why get into academe?
The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore, so it eats it!
(It's rather like getting tenure.)
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
Tenure is primarily a status symbol rather than a protection of academic freedom. It can certainly be done away with in many instances without harming academic freedom; however I hesitate to support abolishing tenure because I don't think it is a cause of bad teaching or of lazy researchers. Bad teaching is due to an academic culture that tolerates mediocrity within its ranks. If tenure were scrapped I believe that very few faculty would be fired. Especially, consider that tenured faculty will demand that their present tenure status be grandfathered into the non-tenure replacement system. You would have to wait 20-30 years for the older tenured generation to retire (or die) to see whether there is an improvement in teaching.
And tenure isn't all bad. It serves to keep salaries down. In fields like engineering the job security of tenure is compensation for the difference in salary between academia and industry. It's a valuable benefit that the university can offer faculty recruits and yet it costs the university nothing.
Jake, The Farm is not a place that actually puts much value (tenure-wise) on teaching excellence. Indeed, the joke among the faculty is that a teaching award can be a liability. (It's not like that everywhere.) But I don't think you should lay bad teaching at tenure's doorstep when it seems more likely that the problems is one of the overriding valuing of research (and getting big research grants) above all else. In such a university culture, tenure at an R01 can actually free up a professor to devote serious time and effort to teaching without getting spanked for it. (Said professor *might* get spanked by being held back from promotion to full professor, though.)
I disagree. I understand how competition makes everyone work harder, better, etc., I really do. But eliminating tenure would make academics a commodity, and the fact they're not exactly such is one of the things that sets them apart. All of those who make tenure spend many years of their life in heated competition to get there. Morons don't get through, or rarely. At that point, at the age of what, 40, don't professors deserve to mellow out a bit? I know the old tenured professors in our department arn't lazy or worthless, but they're much more willing to mull over a problem with a random student that isn't theirs, or take on weird research that may flop or not pull in dollars for the university from private companies, because finally, now that they're practically elderly, they don't have anyone breathing down their necks. They exist as reminders of what professional thinkers used to be like.
There's enough damn competition in the world. I have no problem with paying people who have long since proved themselves competent to live the traditional professor's life rather than try to model everything after the private sector. This doesn't mean they cease to be valuable, and if they do, there's a problem. But if there isn't enough money in academia for young competetive upstarts, that's a different problem.
Some comments (from someone without tenure):
"1) Tenure supports bad teachers ... unproductive researchers."
Bad teaching and tenure are different subjects, as pointed out by Chris
(first comment)
In a Research University, you do not get tenure for teaching, but for
attracting research grant money. This basic fact of academic life
at major research universities seems to be well-obscured by oft-repeated
speeches at Commencements lauding the importance of teaching.
(What else can you tell the parents, who coughed up the excessive tuition?
That your University needs more overhead from research grants to keep
its labs in shape, and reputation intact?)
But we all know someone, who won 3 prizes in a row for great teaching,
but then didn't get tenure (at a major research university; presumably
he/she could then apply at a small college).
Note, that at any institution, popular mediocrity will survive,
tenure or not, but unpopular brilliance is always controversial (or
generates envy.
" 2) Tenure -- like Social Security -- is something I never expect to receive."
Do you plan to die young?
Eventually, you'll be older, have family, and at age 50, can you go work
in industry, after 20 years teaching and researching [insert some esoteric
subject here]? Probably you'll be ready to become a Walmart greeter then.
Perhaps if you are in engineering or applied sciences, you can (move
to industry), but only if you kept in touch by consulting for industry
while you were holding your professorial post.
(Perhaps as a licensed MD, you are privileged, with less competition,
and have the possibility to go into private practice. But wait until
the insurance companies establish better cost-containment)
And then the students
will complain, that you have no time for teaching,as you are always off
consulting. and only chose research topics of interest to industry.
So job security in academia is worth something (it is also worth a lot
everywhere else, as the big number of older unemployed/prematurely retired
in this country shows.
"3) I don't buy the argument about academic freedom at all."
...
" The competition for professors at the top levels is so intense between
universities that someone even moderately good who got fired for their
inconvenient views would get snatched up in another place in a microsecond."
This might apply to, say a dozen, academic superstars in the U.S., but
for the rest of us (including school teachers, community college professors,
...) no other school will hire you if you are known to be 'controversial.'
And anyway, they'd have to fire one existing teacher to make room for you.
Actually, problems with academic freedom are more likely to occur with
smaller institutions, where personal dislikes can more easily find
expression.
And, especially in some areas in the U.S., if teachers had no tenure,
all biology teachers teaching evolution would be fired, whenever the
local school board election produced a board which happens to be against it.
Even if the next school board election, or lengthy litigation, reverses this,
it still would make biology teachers' life miserable.
You are most likely to be fired not for espousing unconventional ideas,
or incompetence in teaching or research, but rather:
- unpopularity (with dean, other faculty, chair), or
- the new principal/chairman wants to hire his friend from graduate/Ed school.
- your grant was not renewed, as the funding agency changed its priority.
- the chairman/dean... thinks that your research, which was much lauded and
generously funded in the past, is now no longer a priority for the
department, now that funding has slowly dwindled over the years, and
the department has a new focus on [worthy new subfield].
(Do not think badly of this chairman, he is under pressure to hire new
faculty for [worthy new subfield], but has been given only one position,
freed by an early retirement, when the University has already advertised
a major effort in [worthy new subfield].)
- and all the same reasons people are fired from their jobs in the private
sector.
" There are the rare few professors that are older and still excellent
researchers and teachers..." If they hadn't had tenure, is it not likely,
that they would have been fired once they'd reached 50? (Anti-age
discrimination laws nonwithstanding). Or their spouses would have told
them to quit, as long as they still could get an industry position, which
at least pays better.
(snark)
The tenure-free future for academia forseen here would just expand the
your postdoc appointment for a lifetime. So you can just have the same
experience by applying for a continuing research appointment.
(/snark)
In general, the harping about tenure seems to express an enviousness, that
somebody here has some modicum of (job) security, when most of us have not,
and are at the mercy of market forces, out-sourcing, deindustrialization...
It would be better to focus our effort to give more security to more
American workers, rather than reducing that of those who have it.
(This does not mean that incompetence should be rewarded by a permanent
position. After all, even tenured teachers can be fired for incompetence,
it just requires more paperwork -rightly so- ).
" There are the rare few professors that are older and still excellent
researchers and teachers..."
Let me second calling that crap. In my experience, they're the best teachers, and do interesting research that's different than what's commonly done by the younger professors.
2nd to A(noynymous),
Great post A. Best part was that we need to focus on increasing rights of all workers, not eroding.
And I have received a bad grade I did not deserve from an old tenured professor who probably should not have been teaching. I still learned a lot from the a***l, he did know his plant science and he was much nicer in lab. He deserved his tenure.
Let me hand you a towel for that water behind your ears...
Point 2 indicates your ignorance. Plese go to http://bruceweb.blogspot.com/, a blog run by Bruce Webb. He covers Social Security issues, and should have many, many links to the actual gov't tables to back his case up.
In short - the only ways that you won't collect Social Security are (a) dying young, (b) being on the lam, and not willing to file for SS, or (c) if the GOP gets even more power than Bush had, and succeeds in trashing the country.
Point 3 indicates that critial thinking isn't your strong suite. An illustrative analogy might be arguing for the repeal of the First Amendment on the grounds that you haven't heard of anybody imprisoned for practicing an unpopular religion, or for making statements which the powers that be really didn't like.
It's true that you probably won't get tenure. If you consider the actions the administrations oof major universities, they not only wouldn't mind getting rid of tenure, but they don't want to hire you as anything more than a temp. 'Adjunct' professors is their idea of a perfect system.
" The competition for professors at the top levels is so intense between
universities that someone even moderately good who got fired for their
inconvenient views would get snatched up in another place in a microsecond."
I've got to jump in on this. Why would a department hire somebody who's been fired for being 'controversial' (and probably blackballed, possibly with the public reason for firing being 'incompetancy' or 'misconduct')?
There'll almost always be a surplus of new Ph.D.'s, and professors looking for jobs (whether currently employed or not). It'd take time and effort to determine if a professor fired for ostensibly sound reasons was actually the victim of politics, and much more time and effort to demonstrate to that to higher-level administrators. If the professor's work was actually politically problematic at the former institution, it'll probably be so at any hiring institution (with, of course, some exceptions). It'd be far faster, easier and safer to hire somebody who hadn't 'caused trouble'.
The exceptions, of course, would exist, but how many have you seen? How many professors, if a political firestorm kicked them out of their present university, could pick up another position within a year or two? Compare that to the number who'd be SOL.
Now, add to that the fact that this would enable various factions to have much more immediate impact on academia. The example of firing biology professors for teaching evolution is a good one. Firing professors for such things would lead quickly to the rest falling in line - when you're a 50-year old person with a spouse, children, a mortgage, and you're not a rainmaker, getting fired screws you up for the rest of your life. One or two waves of that, and most fields would be intimidated quite nicely.
You are supposd to be in an M.D./Ph.D. program and we've come to associate that with a certain level of intelligence. Your idiotic rant against tenure reveals that the association isn't valid in your case. You come across as someone who is very ignorant, suggesting that your prediction of when you'll graduate (2032) may not be far off.
It's amazing, and sad, that someone can spent so many years in an academic environment and still no have a f**king clue how the system works.
Let's just deal with the first of many stupid statements in your posting ..
As it exists now there is no incentive to teach well after you receive tenure. Teaching duties are often inflicted on faculty members who have no real interest in them.
In every single major research university there is no incentive to teach well before you get tenure either. How can you possibly think that teaching is an important factor in tenure decisions after being an undergraduate at Stanford for four years and a graduate student for 2(?) years? Did you have your eyes closed the whole time, or only your brain?
Teaching, especially undergraduate teaching, is not the primary role of a university and it's not how we select scholars and academics. It's about time you learned that simple fact and stopped showing off your kindergarten-level understanding of universities. You should know better by now.
And before you dig yourself any deeper, this does not mean that teaching shouldn't be valued and it does not mean that Professors can't do better. My point is that you need to demonstrate that you understand and appreciate how universities work before we start to take you seriously.
Manual TrackBack.
Barry: "The exceptions, of course, would exist, but how many have you seen? How many professors, if a political firestorm kicked them out of their present university, could pick up another position within a year or two? Compare that to the number who'd be SOL."
If universities were able to easily dismiss faculty then they might also be willing to take a chance on someone with a controversial background. That person could always be kicked out again if they don't work out.
There's nothing preventing them from doing so now. New hires are tenure-track, not tenured. They will be considered for tenure in X years, where X is a number the university/department deems is sufficient to determine whether the hire is someone they want to keep around.
Indeed -- for many of use, this is precisely the appeal of academia, and precisely why we eschew higher-paying work in industry.
And I'll second Larry's points, modulo the invective.
However, that is not the system we have. We have a system that does not support teaching AND has tenure. Thus, the tenure serves as a force-multiplier for already poor institutional values.
Say we were to this instant change the values of a institution to value teaching. Well, it would take 30 years for that change to actually take effect because you can't fire professors for bad teaching. Tenure delays any positive changes that could be made to rectify that by preventing faculty turn-over.
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You offer an abusrdity. These top tier research insitutions are not going to do that. They bring in significant money from grants. As Larry Moran pointed out their mission is not to teach undergrads.
Secondily any university that made such a change to weigh teaching more would put its money where its mouth is. They would hire more faculty who can teach and push the older ones into basically being research only positions. If unproductive, the departments shrink the lab space of those faculty members, move them. Seen it done in top univerisities to make room for new hires. Senior faculty members I have seen have actively gotten as many grants as they could to keep that from happening, showing that they are still kicking and valueable.
You act like univerisities are helpless to tenured faculty. They are not. These institutions are doing exactly what they want. They valued research over teaching and that is what they got.
Well, from the comments already posted, its clear you hit a nerve. That said, I found your comments incredibly sophmoric... you clearly have never been the focus of controversy (rightly or wrongly). The academic world is full of insanely petty politics whereby hard-working folks can be denied tenure for small slights; imagine if that were the case throughout one's career? Which brings up the issue of who would want this job anyway? The answer is that given the workload and incommensurate pay, no one, unless there were incentives. Not everything is served well by a free market model. In terms of older faculty being lazy or bad reasearchers, I have never found that to be the case. I too am a scientist and I've always appreciated the depth of wisdom that can only be won through experience; those comments come from the naivete of youth.
We have a system that does not support teaching AND has tenure. Thus, the tenure serves as a force-multiplier for already poor institutional values.
1. Assume good faith.
Why? because our understanding changes in response to new info like fashion changes in response to the weather (locally and globally), celebrity behavior, political events, new materials and construction methods (i.e., technology), etc., and because removing tenure would cause as many problems as you're saying tenure causes. And because every system has built-in mechanisms for re-establishing balance when shifts occur. Your argument assumes bad faith on the part of teachers and administrators (note that any attack assumes bad faith).
2. Show good faith: take responsibility.
Your argument seeks to relieve your generation of the hardship of enduring bad teachers. However, 1) removing bad teachers won't end bad teaching, 2) bad teaching can be an impetus for change (we are a slow species to synchronize because we only recognize contrasts), 3) you can actually learn more when you challenge bad teaching. If you recognize bad teaching, you must stand up and say so -- doing so charitably would show as much good faith as you should assume.
Your strongest argument in this post rests on the necessity of a quicker mechanism for change. I would argue that the best way of accomplishing that is not removing bad teachers, but openly challenging them. What's that? Afraid it might hurt your grade? Hmmm, maybe you just understood the negative power of academic politics... should we therefore get rid of grades?
Btw, do you extend your understanding of this system to your patients? Can you listen to criticism from your patients? Can you learn anything from them, or are you threatened by their learning? Do you stiffen when you hear a patient say, "I've read that [what you're saying may not apply to me/is untrue/doesn't make sense]," or "On the internet, your colleagues say [something different from you]."
By the way, there's a difference between bad teachers and bad teaching. Deciding who is a bad teacher is clearly problematic, because different people learn differently. Should we rely on student evals in identifying bad teachers?
The worst teacher I had as an undergrad was a poli sci instructor who could work a crowd - and she played to frats because they had the power to fill her classes with favorable "votes". She was on the best teachers roll every semester she taught, even though she was teaching that gerrymandering is a thing of the past because computers are "fair and objective". Holy merde! can you believe this twit was teaching Political Science?!
Jake's statement: "What does tenure do? It distorts people's effort so that they face strong incentives early in their career (and presumably work very hard early on as a consequence) and very weak incentives forever after (and presumably work much less hard on average as a consequence)."
Jake's underlying assumption: People are more likely to respond positively to the negative pressure of " I need to work hard otherwise I may lose my job" than they are to the many positive incentives which flow from secure tenure. My observations over some years now has led me to a different conclusion and that is people respond to negative pressure negatively. More typically the attitude becomes "They clearly have no commitment to me, I will not commit to them or the task at hand. Show me the easy short term fix
There is something paradoxically non-economic about Levitt's argument. Two matters are ignored.
First there is a huge opportunity cost in becoming an academic (yes, really). Once sufficient time and effort has been spent in becoming sufficiently specialised to function adequately as either a researcher or teacher (let alone both) it is likely that the individual will be ill-adapted for other ways of earning a living. If we want people to work in academe in either capacity, we have to be prepared to pay them for taking the chance that it will not work out perfectly. They need to be maintained; and if they are to receive a stipend, then probably it is efficient for them to be required to do some teaching and research, unless the standard is so low that this would be damaging (in which case they should indeed be sacked).
But need the stipend be so high that it deters unsuccessful academics from seeking other work? Market theory suggests there will be a price (call it the "exit deterrent stipend") below which there will be (relatively) free movement in and out of academe. Tenured salaries should be fixed at a margin below the exit deterrent level (but above subsistence) and all will be well. This is how the system functioned, reasonably well, for a couple of hundred years in most of the western world.
I haven't met that many students who would negatively rate a teacher for running a difficult course
Yikes! Surely you know better...
For a slightly, well, broader view on evals:
http://abe.villanova.edu/proc2002/slagle.pdf
http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/sef.htm
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/18013/
http://jmd.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/22/2/108
http://ets.org/Media/Products/StudentEval.pdf
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCG/is_3_26/ai_62980762/pg_1
People, people, chill. He's a trainee. He doesn't know everything, even though he's got a blog. sheesh.
With that said, Jake, consider your positions on tenure as outlined here and your position on the "problem with funding of university hospitals..." post. competition, pressure to produce each and every day....a good thing? or a bad thing? which is it?