In Sept. 2008, University of St. Thomas professor Susan Alexander wrote a short defense of tenure in the university’s blog The Scroll, saying it did not mean employment for life: There are very specific conditions under which faculty may lose employment. These range from financial exigency to moral turpitude, aka depravity. Admittedly, fairly serious grounds. Read more →
University of Minnesota College of Design Dean Thomas Fisher explains in The Huffington Post what faculty must do to keep public support for tenure, a perk that is coming under fire in these tight financial times: “Drawing attention to the public benefit that tenure provides seems essential at a time when some will want to Read more →
No, we’re not talking spring break here. Former Wall Street Journal editor Naomi Schaefer Riley takes a shot at tenure and the “lazy,” “incompetent” and “distracted” professors she says protects them when she discusses her book,The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get The College Education You Pay For on her old paper’s Read more →
The idea that treating new hires well might result in gains for an institution seems not to have taken universal hold in what should be our country’s most enlightened sector. But according to a study written up in the Chronicle of Higher Education, one Minnesota college — St. Olaf — seems to get it. It Read more →
Here’s poll by the Atlantic magazine on what 30 college and university presidents thought would happen to their institutions if tenure were abolished immediately. Interestingly, the magazine saw little consensus or a “rallying cry” for either tenure supporters or opponents. Some chiefs talked about the pros and cons of ending it. But what would take Read more →
Most people claiming that tenure protects their radical ideas from censure by malevolent outside forces appear to be flattering themselves with the conceit that anybody knows what their ideas are in the first place. — Kevin Carey, policy director for Education Sector, an independent think tank in Washington, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Read more →
MPR/Tim Post Professors are bracing themselves Yesterday Tim Post reported that Mankato State is giving layoff notices to a dozen faculty members, a third of whom are tenured. A third tenured — that’s rare. For tenured professors to lose their jobs is a sign of a severe financial situation, say university and faculty representatives. “The universities haven’t Read more →
St. Cloud State has begun its attempt to cut as many as 90 probationary (tenure-track) faculty by sending out layoff notices to 26, the St. Cloud Times reports. The notices are a sort of early warning to the 26, and are not a final dismissal. Those 26 represent just over $2 million in payroll, and the university faces Read more →
Alex Friedrich