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[will_rally_soon]

Anyway, maybe when the OP comes back, we'll get some clarity.   

If.

ps-- there was very little activity on this thread initially, so I stopped following it while I was away.

[bonn1997]

Maybe the issue is that the service department faculty have to teach more courses than other faculty?

I was wondering about that -- or perhaps they teach more students?  

Or, perhaps the OP is responding less to the service department aspect and more to a situation wherein a person with a 4/4 of high-enrollment service courses has to publish the same amount as someone teaching a 2/2 of small majors only classes, where the subject of the classes is related to a research agenda?

Anyway, maybe when the OP comes back, we'll get some clarity.   

Yes, you've captured the situation.  Friend has 4/4 load and teaches only required, gen-ed courses with higher enrollments than one would get teaching major seminars.  No major seems to translate into fewer library resources, yet the expectation--because the market allows for it--is that hu publish about the same as more research-oriented departments.  Departments like hu's usually have fewer full-time members, which means that service requirements are heavy for the few full-timers there. 

I felt angry for hu and just wanted to vent.  What keeps institutions from placing unreasonable demands in this market?

Well I hope your friend is able to leave and get a better job then

[lyndonparker]

Maybe the issue is that the service department faculty have to teach more courses than other faculty?

I was wondering about that -- or perhaps they teach more students?  

Or, perhaps the OP is responding less to the service department aspect and more to a situation wherein a person with a 4/4 of high-enrollment service courses has to publish the same amount as someone teaching a 2/2 of small majors only classes, where the subject of the classes is related to a research agenda?

Anyway, maybe when the OP comes back, we'll get some clarity.   

Yes, you've captured the situation.  Friend has 4/4 load and teaches only required, gen-ed courses with higher enrollments than one would get teaching major seminars.  No major seems to translate into fewer library resources, yet the expectation--because the market allows for it--is that hu publish about the same as more research-oriented departments.  Departments like hu's usually have fewer full-time members, which means that service requirements are heavy for the few full-timers there. 

I felt angry for hu and just wanted to vent.  What keeps institutions from placing unreasonable demands in this market?

Institutions do so because they can. I sometimes wonder about the high publishing requirements at 4/4 places, but in theory we are all prepared for this.

[tuxedo_cat]

OP, you're right, the burdens your friend is facing are indeed rotten.  And putting that kind of pressure on junior faculty who teach a 4/4 does *not* serve the students at that institution.  My experience has been that there is often a Dean up the chain who wants to burnish his/her reputation by strong-arming faculty into producing more scholarship -- usually with no course release or additional financial support.  And then there's what the market will bear.  There isn't anything standing in the way of a school with a 4/4 load demanding a book for tenure, so far as I know.  Even with academic book publishing in the state that it's in. 

But you would think that the professional organizations could actually step in and issue a statement about reasonable requirements for tenure.  I'm curious to know if any have done this -- and if it's ever even been discussed.  There are already enough inhumane things in this profession.

[lyndonparker]

Tenure requirements vary vastly, even at places on the same "level." There is also a huge difference between promulgated requirements and what a place actually will accept. I have seen some fourth-tier MA level places with 4/4 loads ask for 2 books for tenure. They seldom get this, of course, yet still seem to tenure folks.

[quietly]

Like others, I don't think the "service department" bit is relevant.  Whether or not you teach majors has nothing to do with your scholarship.  After all, my biology department represents the largest major on my campus, but we also teach TONS of service classes for other departments and there are certainly faculty who have a majority load in those courses.  Should their publishing requirements be different from those who teach more majors? The two are unrelated.

The course LOAD (3/3, 4/4, whatever) is of course relevant, but presumably that's preserved across the campus, right? To know whether the requirement is really reasonable, you need to know more about how many others at your friend's school have been able to achieve it.

That said, there are certainly plenty of universities where predominantly service courses are taught by "teaching track" faculty instead of "research/teaching track" faculty.  But that's a major institutional change and the "teaching faculty" often are paid significantly less and not tenure-track, just on renewable full-time contracts.

Q.

[lyndonparker]

Publications are the one aspect of my career I have control over. The quality of my teaching and service are subjective. Research is one area that is outside the control of those I work with, so I put some emphasis on that.