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[hilde]

The issue is not that they *tell* people anything about the AP position. Certainly if they lied outright, that would be a problem. But they list both TT and non TT AP positions equivocally in official publications without specifying. (That's why I said they "blur" the line.) If you ordered a "chicken sandwich" in a diner and got chicken and your friend ordered a "chicken sandwich" and got tofu, that would be analogous. The effect, I am asserting, is to mask.

[alsorun]

My department has 4 tenure/tenure track and 4 non-tenure professors. There is no difference in responsibility and qualification between them and the department never mentions the difference in the website and anywhere. I think it is a good policy.

But the supply of candidates is a little below demand in my field. So even good people do not have problem accepting non-tenure track positions for  family or geographical reasons. We can easily move to another place if we are successful in the non-tenure track position.

[alsorun]

By the way, a non-tenure track professor in my place is officially called a research professor (full time, three years renewable contract). So long as he/she is not called a tenure track professor, there is no cheating or lying.

[hilde]

Thanks, alsorun. That expands my knowledge of titles.

My concern, which seems not to apply to your school, is the use of the title "assistant professor" used equivocally for two different types of jobs. "Research professor" is a different title, so I don't see how this helps with the question as posed. And your other post didn't specify if ap is used for both tt and non tt, so I don't quite see how your school experience addresses my question.

But thanks for adding to the knowledge base.

[not_at_a_college]

I understand that the OP was concerned with what appeared to be fraud, and I don't want to slight this attention to scrupulous honesty.

However, I've got another take on this issue. For those of us who don't work in higher education, many of the distinctions about the tenure process and levels of employment don't matter that much.

In terms of the chicken sandwich analogy, it's more like we know we're getting real USDA approved chicken because an instructor has a PhD, and if we’re interested we can find out what grade and flavor the chicken is by looking up a CV or biography.

The parents and students care if the teacher can teach: does he or she have the specialized knowledge and can he or she impart that knowledge to others?  Sure, there are a few household names that would impress parents, but in general the parents wouldn’t value the publications that allows a person to get tenure.


Now, I do think that classes taught by graduate students can create bad feeling because there exists a sense that a bait and switch has occurred, and if “professor” was being used for graduate TAs then the tofu/chicken analogy would be apt.

[gastr1]

Now, I do think that classes taught by graduate students can create bad feeling because there exists a sense that a bait and switch has occurred, and if “professor” was being used for graduate TAs then the tofu/chicken analogy would be apt.

With all due respect, you are grazing the tip of the iceberg. For one, research and publications are important because professors, like doctors, have to be aware of current knowledge in their fields. You don't want your student taking classes from someone who teaches political science from a 1985 textbook. Continued research proves that a professor is seen as relevant. This will show up in the coursework.

Second, research brings in money and prestige (which then brings in more money via reputation and donors), which then bring in resources that enable further research and/or effective teaching. What follows is that everyone's research is not equal, and that with some of those other distinctions such as between adjunct and lecturer, etc., all instructors may not even have the terminal degree in the field. When universities stop making these distinctions and/or hire adjuncts instead of tenure-track positions (as the field is trending), its teaching personnnel simply will not be as informed or effective. Hence, what appears to be jargon has a direct relationship to the quality of the institution.

This is why universities track and advertise the percentage of its tenure-track faculty and of those that hold the terminal degree.

[hilde]

These last two posts by not_at_a_college and gastr1 really bring out an important point.

not_at_a_college makes a valid point that many people just want good teaching. And I know from the students I have taught that this is often true. In community colleges and less competitive schools, in fact, this is the *best* students can hope for--and often all they really want.

But gastr1 makes the point I would have made: that research is very important for all the reasons stated, and it's simply honest of colleges to not fudge up the markers of who on their faculty does what.

By analogy, many of the labels in the business world don't mean very much to me. A senior sales associate, a sales associate--just sell me a TV already! But of course the existence of the hierarchy has all kinds of ramifications.

At the end of the day, I'm still bothered most by the ethics within the university that gives different folks the same title...

[not_at_a_college]

I think in scientific fields, current research is essential and rewarding to the institution and to students, but I'm not sure that the tenure process really rewards essential research and publications in many fields, particularly in the humanities.

How much essential research, rather than flashy, trendy, or excruciatingly specialized research is being done in literature these days? I suspect a recent Ph.d could teach most English courses from a 1985 text just fine, unless of course, it was a contemporary lit. class.  Sure with recent subjects, you're going to need recent research. But with older subjects, in the eyes of the general public, current publications may just reflect what's trendy right then with college professors; it may or may not have any universal or enduring value.

Also, I think that you're fibbing to yourself about the weaknesses of many adjuncts' publishing (and more importantly, awareness of current research in their fields).

Often the strength of one tenure track professor's CV as compared to a visiting prof. with a Ph.d is probably not quite the difference you imagine it to be, particularly from the perspective of someone outside of the field.

If you have participated on hiring committees, think of the how close the qualifications of the person hired for TT were to the finalists in the process. Those finalist went someplace. Did they all land TT positions?

I'm not arguing we should do away with tenure and replace everyone with adjuncts. In fact, I'd like to see more instructors receive the benefits of tenure. I just don't accept that the standards used to select people for tenure track jobs are necessarily meaningful outside of that department.

[trabb]

However, I've got another take on this issue. For those of us who don't work in higher education, many of the distinctions about the tenure process and levels of employment don't matter that much.

In terms of the chicken sandwich analogy, it's more like we know we're getting real USDA approved chicken because an instructor has a PhD, and if we’re interested we can find out what grade and flavor the chicken is by looking up a CV or biography.

At the risk of running this thread to a place that OP never intended, this quote from not_at_a_college identifies exactly what the ethical problem really is (and I use that word "ethical" in a very loose sense) in terms of university hiring practices.

I assume that not_at_a_college actually does know something about the different levels of employment, the tenure process, etc.  The vast majority of people here in the U.S., however, are woefully ignorant of such matters.  Most folks send their kids off to college expecting them to be taught by people who have earned a PhD and who devote themselves pretty much full-time to teaching and (maybe) to research.

Instead, a large percentage of classes are taught by people who have not earned a PhD (grad students) or who are paid so little that they're scrambling around piecing together work from two or three different universities just so that they can make ends meet (adjuncts).  In both cases, parents and students aren't getting what they're paying for.  To borrow your analogy, instead of the Chik-fil-A chicken sandwich, complete with recognizable lettuce, tomatoes, and chicken breast, they're being fed Chicken McNuggets - something only dressed up as the real thing.

The ignorance of the public at large about hiring practices, professorial ranks, and the tenure process fuels the system.  I would guess that if parents and students had a clue about who actually does the teaching, about what those individuals are paid, and about the working conditions of many in the adjunct pool, things would change rather quickly - not because they necessarily care about the wellbeing of grad students and adjuncts but because they're not getting what they think they're paying for.  As a case in point, I sent my students this semester to the AAUP numbers for faculty salaries.  Their jaws hit the floor when they pieced together my rank with those numbers and realized that my salary is significantly less than what they pay for tuition + room and board each year.  There was a palpable sense of outrage, especially when I explained to them that some of the other jobs that I do to bring in some much needed extra cash take away from my ability to teach them as well as I would like.

Two disclaimers:  First, having my students look at their school's faculty salaries fit within the context of that particular course.  I don't regularly bring this kind of university politics into the classroom.  Second, when I say that adjuncts are only dressed up as the real thing, I am calling out the universities and departments that take advantage of the oversupply of PhDs to staff many of their classes with underpaid workers who don't even get the benefit of knowing whether they will have a job six months down the road.  I have nothing but respect for anyone (whether adjunct, tt, or tenured) who makes a career of teaching at the college/university level.

And with that, I step down off my soapbox for the time being.

[zenprof]

I think we are blurring several important distinctions here.

1) rank
2) contractual status
3) professional qualifications

"Asst Prof" "Assoc Prof" "Full Prof" "Lecturer" "Instructor" and so on are ranks.  Ranks do not reflect contractual status (at least not at the universities I've been associated with---but that's what Personnel Documents and the Faculty Handbook are for, to clarify such things).

Contractual status is a silent matter, not reflected in a public title, between the individual an the institution. Tenured, tenure track, three year renewable, one-year non renewable, semester-to-semester, and so on. Any rank---yes, even Full Professor---may at many universities be conjoined with any contractual status.

Professional qualifications may earn a person a particular rank and also a particular contractual status, but this is obviously not a perfect system. Again, a title reflects rank and may correlate quite imperfectly with contractual status and professional qualifications.

The only ethical issues I see here are 1)universities trying to cheese out by substituting mere title/rank for a more secure contractual status (and paying less to people of greater qualifications); and 2)as a previous poster mentioned, individuals trying to use this blurriness to boast of a status they do not possess.

There is confusion in the minds of some (many?) people, but that in itself is not unethical.  I hope this helps.
z

[zenprof]

[[sorry, folks--was not allowed to edit the last post for some reason. Substance is the samebut clarity is better here.]]

I think we are blurring several important distinctions here.

1) rank
2) contractual status
3) professional qualifications

"Asst Prof" "Assoc Prof" "Full Prof" "Lecturer" "Instructor" and so on are titles that specify ranks.  Ranks do not reflect contractual status (at least not at the universities I've been associated with---but that's what Personnel Documents and the Faculty Handbook are for, to clarify such things).

Contractual status is a silent matter, not reflected in a public title, between the individual and the institution. Tenured, tenure track, three-year renewable, one-year non renewable, semester-to-semester, and so on: these are different kinds of employment arrangements, contracts. Any rank---yes, even Full Professor---may at many universities be conjoined with any contractual status.

Professional qualifications may earn a person a particular rank and also a particular contractual status, but this is obviously not a perfect system. Highly qualified people are teaching year-to-year, and I see total buffoons with tenure and Full Professor ranks. Again, a title reflects rank but may correlate quite imperfectly with contractual status and professional qualifications.

The only ethical issues I see here are 1)universities trying to cheese out by substituting mere title/rank for a more secure contractual status (and paying less to people of greater qualifications); and 2)as a previous poster mentioned, individuals trying to use this blurriness to boast of a status they do not possess.

There is confusion in the minds of some (many?) people about exactly what a title implies, but that in itself is not unethical.  I hope this helps.
z

[aandsdean]

Let me throw another wrench into this discussion....

At my university, during a period of fiscal strain, the VPAA (not the current one, and certainly a lousy one in many ways) didn't let schools and colleges do much tenure-track hiring, but there was a pretty extensive amount of full-time hiring regardless.  This was some time ago, and thank goodness we're not doing it any more (I wouldn't have taken my current job if we were).

Now, a number of the people hired in this regime are still here, 10 years or more later, still in non-tt positions.  In fact, our faculty handbook recognizes this situation as endemic in that it allows non-tt professors to drop the title "visiting" (our official nomenclature) after three years of continuous service.

All of these people are, in effect, tenure-track or even de facto tenured, according to AAUP protocols, as they have 8+ years of continuous service and I, for one, would have a very hard time countenancing their dismissal.  The inverse of this problem, though, is that our faculty handbook also (sensibly) requires a proper national search for all TT positions.  To "convert" these people to TT faculty, we would effectively have to "pull an Ivy" (and we are indeed not an Ivy) and do a national search; there is no provision to do it less formally.

It's likely--in fact, we know it would happen--that in some cases (where there's a buyer's market in the field), we would quite likely not hire the long-term non-TT person into the position should we advertise it nationally, because we'd get people who are likely in some way to  be "better" (for example, a Ph.D. in field rather than an Ed.D. in "Field X education"), and we would be compelled by our basic sense of professionalism to pursue those sorts of candidates.

Now, for you ethicists among us, what would you do?  We have about 10 long-serving, dedicated full-time non-TT faculty who have devoted themselves to the wellbeing of the institution.  They would likely not survive a national search, some of them, despite their exemplary work here.  They are paid in the ballpark of equivalently experienced TT faculty, and in essentially no way is their work qualitatively or quantitatively different.  They are more than adequate to the jobs they are required to do.  Would you continue to commit the kind of "sin" the OP is concerned about and just let these people finish out their careers under this symbolically perilous but practically secure regime, or would you do national searches with the possiblity that you would seriously hurt, even betray, half a dozen such people in the process of trying to convert them to TT?

I don't think there's a good answer to this one, and it's a residual of a bad and, yes, unethical administration, but some of us who have come after are now left with a dilemma that has no really clearly clean-hands solution.

It's not always as simple as the OP's original question suggests it might be.  I personally think not searching these positions is ethically superior to risking the betrayal of people who have made big contributions to the university.  If they were genuinely inadequate to the positions, that would be different, but they're not.  I also don't want to countenance the kinds of "sham" searches with internal candidates that are so often complained about by job seekers here in these fora.

[zenprof]

aandsdean writes:

It's not always as simple as the OP's original question suggests it might be.  I personally think not searching these positions is ethically superior to risking the betrayal of people who have made big contributions to the university.  If they were genuinely inadequate to the positions, that would be different, but they're not.  I also don't want to countenance the kinds of "sham" searches with internal candidates that are so often complained about by job seekers here in these fora.


Agreed, for this situation.

And why can't all deans be like you?

[hilde]

aandsdea said

Now, for you ethicists among us, what would you do?  We have about 10 long-serving, dedicated full-time non-TT faculty who have devoted themselves to the wellbeing of the institution.  They would likely not survive a national search, some of them, despite their exemplary work here.  They are paid in the ballpark of equivalently experienced TT faculty, and in essentially no way is their work qualitatively or quantitatively different.  They are more than adequate to the jobs they are required to do.  Would you continue to commit the kind of "sin" the OP is concerned about and just let these people finish out their careers under this symbolically perilous but practically secure regime, or would you do national searches with the possiblity that you would seriously hurt, even betray, half a dozen such people in the process of trying to convert them to TT?

OP, here, and several previous posts have clarified my thinking about the issue.

I want to answer the above question, first.

I have only an idealistic reply to this trenchant question: Poster aandsdea is demonstrating that universities are served by people who (a) are not researchers but (b) deserve all the job benefits and security that come with tenure.

This makes me believe that the answer is to develop a "teaching route" to tenure in conjunction with universities's becoming more willing to stop placing all their pride in something which has been artificially (in many cases) demarcated as "research." This would involve an abandonment of the quantitative bias towards "beancounting" that makes certain acheivements count over others.

In my department, our best adjuncts have been with us for 10 years. But they still are only allowed year-to-year contracts. And our state, Colorado, is not committed enough to education to allow our department to offer contracts with more stability. Or more pay--our top rate is around $36k for a 4/4 load, with medical (only recently added).

As far as the mission of my school goes, I cannot in all honesty say that I am contributing more than my wonderful non-TT colleagues; I certainly cannot say they deserve nearly 40% less than I make; and I dare not even think that they only deserve one-year contracts.

They are not researchers, but they deserve a path to security and remuneration.

Zenprof said

"Asst Prof" "Assoc Prof" "Full Prof" "Lecturer" "Instructor" and so on are titles that specify ranks.  Ranks do not reflect contractual status (at least not at the universities I've been associated with---but that's what Personnel Documents and the Faculty Handbook are for, to clarify such things).

I will take your word on this, and it does affirm what some others have said. My only comment is that nearly everyone I've asked about this has linked rank and contractual status. What does that say? Maybe just that my experience is idiosyncratic. But I challenge readers to go out and ask the question themselves.

Finally, not_at_a_college said,

How much essential research, rather than flashy, trendy, or excruciatingly specialized research is being done in literature these days?

I can hear Lynne Cheney singing in the background. Yes, there is research that is trendy or narrow. But what percent is this? And by whose standards? This comment is, in effect, an ad hominem attack with no data. It proceeds with an affirming answer presumed.

Is there too much published? Yes, but this is because people need job security and most people get that by publishing--when in their heart of hearts, they want to be teaching. (See comment above about the need for a "teaching route" to tenure.)

But nevertheless, scholarship is about keeping current--maintaining a presence in communities of scholars and bringing that larger sense of what an educated community thinks into contact with students. The bridge between teaching and research, then, is a bridge between generations. When a teacher is content to stop revising their material (which I consider one form of research), they have taken a step away from their scholarly community--toward solipsism, toward deadwood. There are people who defy this generalization (I *know* I'm generalizing, please!) but they show their freshness in other ways.

[not_at_a_college]

Just out of curiosity, who is the victim of my ad hominem attack?

How many research publications or topics of publication about literature from the last 25 years do you think could the average person name? (Maybe something by Said or Bloom? Something by Sontag?) And yet, the same member of the public could probably easily name 25 scientific or technical developments or perhaps even historic discoveries/developments. 

Why would this be? I tend to think it's the nature of the research and publishing being done.  (Why would general interest magazines pick up and summarize the results in some fields, but assume the general public wasn't interested in others?)


I agree that staying current with research is essential to good instruction; even in fields in which the research is trendy, it's important to keep up with what's going on.

My comments were intended to emphasize the disconnection between what the tenure process rewards and what the general public wants. I agree that the emphasis on publishing, rather than research itself,  is the problem.