COLLOQUY

I would have no problem at all with eliminating tenure if college professors earned, on the average, as much as other professionals with significant postgraduate education. How about an average of $200,000 for a full professor of history? How about an average of $800,000 for a full professor of computer science?

Trustees and politicians, mostly lawyers, love to point out the peculiarity of tenure compared to the "real world." Their criticism is utterly hypocritical, because they would not dream of addressing the compensation issue.

Apart from the academic-freedom issue, which is very serious, is it not simply reasonable and fair to grant tenure to people who forgo years of earning potential in graduate school and then can look forward to only modest compensation in comparison to other highly educated professionals? And doesn't it seem morally bankrupt that many of those calling for tenure's elimination earn and expect to earn so much more money than the people whose job security they threaten? There is something seriously wrong with this picture!

Don't these conscientious realists know that if you trim all the benefits from the professoriate, if salaries are low and the limited job security tenure offers is decreased or eliminated, that gifted people who might otherwise have chosen the professoriate will head in other directions?

The sad truth is that many opponents of tenure are really opponents of perceived "ultra-liberals" in the academy. If the perception were that the academy were dominated by conservative ideologues (such as the economics faculty at Chicago), many of today's tenure opponents would be defending it. Politics replaced government some years ago; now it may replace education as well.

--Brendan McManus, Adjunct Lecturer in Medieval History, State University of New York, Oneonta, N.Y. (posted 3/2, 7 p.m., E.S.T.)