COLLOQUY

I speak as one who has worked in a college that does not have a tenure system. I have been here for 11 years. I have also worked as adjunct in colleges that have tenure.

My position is the following: Other than parenthood and the Catholic clerical state, there is no such thing as guaranteed job protection. Such protection has not protected free speech, but has given some teachers a sense of insulation from the kinds of worry that their students (and their students' parents) face every day.

Tenure is really not about what is good for the student. It is about what makes it harder for the employer to get rid of employees they do not like (want).

The Carnegie Report made it very clear, to me at least, that too many professors are not in the business of teaching. They are in the business of scholarship. All well and good, but that is not the expectation of the student who is, one way or another, paying for the professor's time.

The idea that the professor can enrich only if she is enriched is very true, but why does that enrichment need to be risk-free? Why does the "teaching load" of so many in higher education reflect an extra-classroom priority? And it does.

Has tenure "freed" teachers to address truth to power or has it made them arrogant and self-absorbed? Why has the issue raised its head? Because, I think, the "outside world" is catching on to the fact that if the university is going to charge $100,000-plus for an education, people want the recipients to be more accountable and more student-oriented.

--Kenneth J. Zanca, Professor, Marymount College, Palos Verdes, Cal. (posted 3/19, 11:20 a.m., E.S.T.)