Scholars say tenured professors are rarely fired.......
And that's the big problem.
No one should be guaranteed a job for life. Especially someone in the field of educating our kids. It rewards mediocrity and incompetence.
What is the history of tenure? Why was it put in place to begin with?
In theory the professor is supposed to have shown excellence, before he or she receives tenure. Theory and practice don't always coincide.
Too often, the professor who are good teachers don't get tenure, because they aren't always good researchers. But it's research that is usually the more important aspect of tenure these days, so teaching gets short shrift -- and is often handed off to teaching assistants and junior, often non-tenure-track, faculty.
Guaranteed a job for life?? Isnt that some sort of French plan?? No wonder its so screwed up.
I'm heading into an academic job myself in a few months. I'm not sure how I feel about tenure, but I had another career before getting the PhD. I find that people who know they can do something else don't find tenure to be the answer to everything.
I think tenure can reward mediocrity and incompetence, but many schools have post-tenure reviews, it's becoming harder (at least at Research 1 schools) to be deadwood.
The problem I see with tenure is that it maintains professors whose areas/skills are no longer needed. I'm a big fan of learning all kinds of esoteric stuff, but if students no longer see 14th Centure French poetry as vital to their education, it's time for the person teaching that course to go or develop a new area of expertise.
I'm on a message board for academics and you should hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth by new PhDs who can't get a job because schools just don't want their area anymore. They bemoan the lack of tenured jobs, mostly, I think, because they know if they had to leave 1 job teaching French poetry it's going to be hard has hell to find another. I don't think these folks are incompetent; they just teach in unpopular (and to students, unproductive) subject areas. Academic freedom be damned, what they want is to keep their jobs even if there are no students in the classroom.
For me, I don't have a need to bring politics into the classroom, but if tenure can protect libs spouting off all kinds of crap, I'd like to think it would protect a conservative who makes the 'mistake' of putting an American flag on her office door.