[Alumni-chat] Tenure = Haves, Non privledged People = Non Tenure

[Christopher Adams]

This is just foolish.  Tenure is not a gift.  It is earned.  And, most 
importantly, it is a tool that the institution uses to keep gifted 
faculty.  The institution at which I am a faculty member just reinstituted 
tenure.  Because you have to have it in order to recruit good faculty.
One of the clear negatives behind the university model is that untenured 
adjunct faculty produce a substandard product.  And this is no slight on 
the people in those positions, but pure logic.  If you have exemplary 
teaching at such an institution, those exemplary teachers will leverage 
that ability into a tenure track position some where else.  In the long 
term, the quality of the education suffers.
Yes, there are bad apples.  There are tenured faculty that use tenure as an 
opportunity to slack off.  However, our internal research indicated that 
tenured faculty are highly productive for far longer periods of time than 
untenured faculty.
The bottom line is that loss of tenure at Antioch college is a ticket to 
mediocrity.
C Adams '87
At 08:48 PM 6/25/2007 -0400, you wrote:
>Gotta' admit that Bangalore may be on to something here.  The US employment
>scene sucks.  "At-Will" employment means people can be fired for any reason
>or no reason at all.  Why, objectively, should things be different for
>professors than they are for everybody else?
>
>Not that I want to fire the professors: I think that is garbage.  But I do
>wonder why Antioch -- or anyplace else -- would offer professors absolute
>"job security" (using the term loosely given the present circumstances) that
>no other non-academic employer could or would offer.  Good/great professors
>will always have secure jobs -- just like good/great plumbers will --
>because their employer would find them extremely difficult to replace.  Why
>isn't that good enough job security?
>
>Michael.
>
>PS: Confession -- in trying to figure out what a "saved" Antioch should look
>like I'm trying to provoke challenges to the status-quo.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: alumni-chat-bounces at w3.antioch.edu
>[mailto:alumni-chat-bounces at w3.antioch.edu] On Behalf Of TheBangaloreBlue
>Sent: Monday, June 25, 2007 8:34 PM
>To: Alumni Chat List
>Subject: [Alumni-chat] Tenure = Haves, Non privledged People = Non Tenure
>
>Tenure?  Congratulations!  You have won the power & privledge lottery!
>
>   Hearing liberals whine about tenure is like listening to environmentalists
>whine about taking mass transit.
>
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Christopher S. Adams, Ph.D
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
Room 501
1015 Walnut St.
Philadelphia, PA 19107

Phone: 1-215-955-8754
Fax: 1-215-955-9159