The Tenure Trap
Wondering if anyone else out there has read Naomi Schaefer Riley's new book on tenure. Naomi is a former colleague of mine at the Wall Street Journal, and full of robust horse sense on this and other issues.
One of the more interesting sections is where Naomi discusses the affect of tenure on non-tenured faculty: specifically the relationship between tenure and the growing calls for unionization on campus. As a result of tenure, many younger Phds and others have a difficult time finding jobs because the system is so top-heavy. We're used to the indictment of capitalism from academe, but closer to home tenure has really created a system of haves and have-nots. And no one in business has the control over an employee that a tenured facultymember in the science exerts over the career of one of his grad students doing all the research.
In any case, a fine book, incredibly relevant today. Must be a great many of you out in Ricochetland reside at our colleges and universities, and would be curious for your experiences here.
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Aug '10
Re: The Tenure Trap
Bill McGurn
And no one in business has the control over an employee that a tenured facultymember in the science exerts over the career of one of his grad students doing all the research.
This is an area where you really have to distinguish between fields that work on a "lab" model (eg, psychology and most of the STEM fields) and those that don't (most social sciences and humanities). In lab-based fields research is intensely collaborative, grad student funding is tied to their advisor's grants, grad student research is usually a minor corollary of the advisor's agenda, and advisors generally have tremendous power over grad students. In contrast in fields not organized on a lab model, research is nearly solitary, funding (such as it is) is tied to the student, student research is inspired by the advisor's research but not tightly integrated with it, and students can switch advisors with relative ease. The downside is that such autonomy (as well as weaker admissions standards) tends to lead to higher attrition ad longer time to degree. Also, students in non-lab fields often face very weak job markets.
Jun '10
Re: The Tenure Trap
"And no one in business has the control over an employee that a tenured facultymember in the science exerts over the career of one of his grad students doing all the research."
Completely disagree here. This is exactly how the businessworld works in virtually any field. New kid on the block is completely at the mercy of the higher up who is responsible for her review. Every kid with a brain knows that he must make his boss look good and will not be likely to share the credit. The ambitious young hires aren't working 80+ hour weeks because they are not interested in social life. This professor/grad student relationship may be the only piece of academia where the real world has an influence.
Re: The Tenure Trap
StickerShock, I'm not so sure. Grad students working for a prof are very dependent on his/her recommendation, etc. Lots of ambitious people get fired, stalk out, or just find someplace better every day in the business world. Of course some of the difficulty in academe is due to the lack of openings at the lower levels.
In my life, the news businesses, when I was starting out lots of *my* bosses made *me* look good: my byline got the credit when it was their editing and instruction that saved the day. Then again, that's journalism.
Anyway, thanks for the response. Curious about others. Anon-academic makes a good distinction between lab fields and others.What does life look like for, say, a history or philosophy Phd just starting out?
Jul '10
Re: The Tenure Trap
Do you know how hard it is to get a poorly performing graduate student to move on to other opportunities? The bar at many universities is set so low that there is a glut of Ph.D.s who can't find their posterior with both hands. No department wants to be seen as a grist mill, but that's exactly what many of them are.
Sep '10
Re: The Tenure Trap
anon_academic
In contrast in fields not organized on a lab model, research is nearly solitary, funding (such as it is) is tied to the student, student research is inspired by the advisor's research but not tightly integrated with it, and students can switch advisors with relative ease. · Aug 4 at 10:07am
I don't know what field anon_academic is in, but in mathematics (a STEM field but not a "lab model" field) research is nearly solitary, but students cannot "switch advisors with relative ease". A student who tries to switch advisors may find that he/she is regarded as radioactive by other faculty. Not always, but it happens.
As for job opportunities: a new PhD in mathematics looking for an academic job typically sends out 200 - 300 applications. Of those, perhaps a dozen will receive replies of some interest, and of those, perhaps one or two interviews will result.
Fortunately, PhD mathematicians have job opportunities outside academia. In fact, those jobs frequently involve less stress, fewer hours and much higher pay.
Aug '10
Re: The Tenure Trap
dogsbody
I don't know what field anon_academic is in, but in mathematics (a STEM field but not a "lab model" field) research is nearly solitary, but students cannot "switch advisors with relative ease". A student who tries to switch advisors may find that he/she is regarded as radioactive by other faculty. Not always, but it happens.
Yeah, math is an exception to the lab thing, I'd imagine because it's analytical rather than empirical and so there's no need to share the work of data collection. (Like I said, psychology is an exception in the other direction since psychologists usually do original data collection with experiments rather than secondary analysis of surveys).
I agree with you that it's a really bad sign if a student reforms a committee but would add that this is only once ABD. At least in my field there is no expectation that you put the faculty with whom you did your MA work on your dissertation committee.
I myself am in a non-lab social science.
Aug '10
Re: The Tenure Trap
Two questions:
1) If university professors are unionized, does that not mean that all university professors will enjoy de facto tenure?
2) If there was no such thing as tenure, don't you think university professors would have unionized themselves decades ago?
Dec '10
Re: The Tenure Trap
A 1999 Futurama episode captures this quite sardonically. This exchange occurs as a big ball of garbage (from the 21st Century) returns and threatens NYC:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0584423/
Sep '10
Re: The Tenure Trap
anon_academic
I agree with you that it's a really bad sign if a student reforms a committee but would add that this is only once ABD. At least in my field there is no expectation that you put the faculty with whom you did your MA work on your dissertation committee.· Aug 4 at 12:17pm
You're right--I should have been more clear that I was referring to ABD students. (For those who are blessedly outside all this, ABD stands for "all but dissertation".) In many mathematics programs there is no requirement to get a Master's degree; one goes straight to the PhD, so one is ABD with one's first advisor.
Sep '10
Re: The Tenure Trap
Now that I've dragged the comments thread deep into odd facts about dissertation committees and other minutiae, I'll try to address the original question. The system is top heavy. When I started graduate school, people expected that many older professors would be retiring by the time we got our degrees. Well, that didn't happen. Tenure is one reason; a more important factor is that faculty retirement accounts took a dive with the stock market in 2008 and haven't fully recovered yet, so no one wants to retire.
I still encourage gifted students who want to apply to graduate programs in mathematics, but I also warn them that the academic job market is lousy, and the probability of getting a good academic job is dismayingly low.