Tenure, Respect, and the Technology Gap

A recent blog entry, on whether the tenure (or, for that matter, hiring) process can be considered fair if the bar for many of today’s junior professors is higher than it was for some of the senior professors passing judgment on them, generated some interesting responses.

According to one respondent, supertatie, what ails the tenure process isn’t rising requirements, but those people who treat it like a popularity contest:

The system is questionable, not because those using it wouldn’t now satisfy it, but because it has become what it was intended to protect faculty from: a blunt instrument of power held in the hands of a few [...] to keep out people [they] don’t like, whether their work is satisfactory or not. It has become like the “intellectuals’” version of fraternity and sorority rush.

skaking agrees, adding that unfairness tends to creep in when fuzzy terms like “collegiality” are bandied about:

The problem comes when subjective stuff works itself into the equation, such as ‘collegiality’ or things that can be really vague in assessing, such as ‘mentoring students.’ And that’s when it becomes poisonous. And as the academic VP at my school said, it’s not administration that the junior faculty have to fear, it’s senior faculty who can be horrible. And given my experience, I’d have to say he was spot on.

As another respondent, hillaryprocknow, sees it, however, the problem is that the rising publishing expectations for tenure not only generate a “ridiculous” volume of published works, but are a huge hoop that “must be jumped through in order to play the game” — particularly when one considers that there’s little, if any, correlation between an excellent publishing record and excellence in teaching, she adds.

kerr7920 concurs, but notes that …

the tenure process at most institutions overemphasizes publications, precisely because they can be counted. [...] Only an academic could fool themselves into believing that their article in an obscure journal which contributed some fragment to a debate going on between a handful of scholars is more important than the teaching they do in the classroom, or even the work they do to keep the department major updated and functioning. The overemphasis on research reinforces the most self-centered, myopic part of our jobs. What we really need is a conversation about how to measure teaching, mentoring, and departmental and university contributions more effectively, so that we can give them their proper weight in the review process.

Meanwhile, David Perlmutter’s recent column has sparked a similar and thoughtful discussion in the Forums about the lack of respect some junior professors have for some of their senior colleagues as a result of today’s different tenure standards: 

A poster who goes by the moniker engedprof, for example, says s/he feels let down by some of his/her senior colleagues:

The loudest talkers about how junior folks get denied tenure through no other fault but their own are the ones who haven’t published in years. These same folks shockingly have either one co-authored publication, or a review, or an encyclopedia entry as documentation for their tenure. Looking at their CV’s is incredible. Was there a time when you got tenure on this kind of research record?

larryc, however, is quick to point out that, contrary to popular belief, publications alone do not make the academic world go round: 

A lot of this cognitive dissonance comes from the narrow world view of recently trained academics—peer-reviewed publications are seen as the primary determinant of professional worth. Teaching might be a marginal bonus item.  

But you can’t run a department where everyone teaches their courses then goes home to write. Sometimes the old guard contributes in ways that are not immediately apparent—community connections, institutional history and politics, advising and helping to create a camaraderie.

tenured_feminist agrees:

I’m more than willing to give a full pass to the “deadwood” faculty member who still reads in the field, teaches well, manages a crew of grad students without problems, and does the necessary but difficult and time-consuming [work] to keep the department on course.

Hug the senior person who agreed to serve on that committee from hell so that you weren’t put on it — and therefore had the time to place another peer-reviewed article pre-tenure. 

fannie says she doesn’t give a hoot what her junior colleagues might think of her and advises them to “get over themselves.” She notes that “going through the tenure process pretty much pricks that balloon of arrogance,” so the sooner they realize they “aren’t the best thing that ever happened to this campus or this profession,” the better.

prytania, meanwhile, advises today’s young turks to consider the matter more carefully before complaining:

Here’s the thing: to complain about senior colleagues or “deadwood” is the same as saying, “I don’t believe in tenure,” and if you don’t believe in tenure, so be it, but if you do, then you need to consider your senior colleagues as a product of their times and remember that one day you might be a senior colleague as well.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, and on a somewhat related note, The Little Professor and Undine (of Not of General Interest) point out a flaw in James McWilliams’s argument that universities would be justified in raising the tenure bar even higher, since, in his opinion, today’s technology actually makes conducting research so much easier than it was in the past (take that, young turks!). Although Undine admits that it’s certainly “easier to search for things electronically than to lug a stack of index cards to the long tables of reference books,” she rightly notes that many professors don’t have access to the kind of fabulous electronic databases McWilliams raves about (in fact, McWilliams got access to the historical database he describes through a friend at an Ivy League institution, since his own university can’t afford to subscribe to it): 

“These resources aren’t free and available to everyone, and access to them shouldn’t depend on being a faculty member at Moneybag$ University or on having an obliging and well-connected friend who doesn’t mind lending an access code.”

So much for that idea.