Posted on 08/17/2015 9:50:34 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
He may not be getting as much attention as The Donald but Governor Scott Walker’s higher education reforms in Wisconsin are having a real world impact there. “Who wants to work in a state where tenure is an abstraction?,” Kelly Wilz, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Marshfield/Wood County, writes in a column which appeared on the Academe Blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
Apparently, not many of her colleagues, even the tenured ones. “The emails keep rolling in,” Wilz writes. “More colleagues leaving–not for better pay, not because they didn’t love their jobs, but because of uncertainty.”
Governor Walker urged state university administrators to take a fresh look at tenure in making administrative decisions. Interestingly, from neighboring Illinois, two law professors from Northwestern offered a surprisingly different perspective on tenure in a column which appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
“All the pressures facing American higher education make this a good time to reconsider its unusual employment structure,” John O. McGinnis and Max Schanzenbach wrote. “False claims about academic freedom are not going to protect higher education from the realities of technological change, an aging professoriate, and an increasingly demanding and indebted student body.”
“Mr. Walker is doing the educational establishment a favor by suggesting gradual reforms before a crisis necessitates more radical ones.”
IKR Welcome to the real world professor.
Tough part is, you have to produce vanilla crap and stay under the radar until you get it.
research
That is all they care about....grants....they didn’t care if i dropped dead.
“ALL administrators should publish at least one article a year.” What exactly do you mean by administrators? Deans, provosts, department chairs? Don Marquis is a professor emeritus of philosophy here at KU. His article, “Why Abortion is Immoral,” has thousands of citations. Wouldn’t you think people who are widely cited should be exempt from such a requirement? I would propose a more qualitative approach to getting rid of bad professors.
It is a political move.
If not then they are leaving because they realized their competency will not pass scrutiny.
you think I did a hit piece on Walker? I must save that for my scrapbook;>)
The professors I know are extremely dedicated. They’re wrong about 90% of the things they know, but they’re all workaholics.
Kelly Wilz
Lecturer
Women’s Studies
715-346-3803
CCC 116
I guess it’s a tier 1 research school? Did he go to another university?
The poor abused little academics don’t like having to compete for a living. Cry me a river.”””
Hard to explain how hard I have worked for the past 58 years to get & hold a job. Have been self-employed since 1980, with NO benefits of any kind...no paid vacation—no health insurance paid for by others—no pension plan-—
The only 2 benefits I liked were that I could drop clients I didn’t trust ( am a bookkeeper) and I could schedule my own time. That independence was GOLD sometimes.
It is a hell of a note when a professor of lesbian studies cannot screw-off and not worry about losing her phony-baloney job, indoctrinating students.
A meritocracy is badly needed in academia!
There’s nothing abstract about it.
In academia, there are many, many hungry mouths waiting for a turn at the trough.
I’m sure the Associate Vice-Dean for Transgendered Bathrooms ($150k/ per year, natch) protested mightily your impugning his vital work for the University.
Why do they need tenure? Are any of them refusing to carry the party line? If there are any, they are the ones that don’t receive tenure anyway!
It should only be offering protection to the differing voices, not for simple job security to those that are not willing to challenge the status quo. Otherwise, there is no promotion of thought, which is a tragedy in a University setting.
Except that I believe the legislature is working on legislation doubling the number hours a professor is expected to teach. So those wanting to do research won't be looking at Wisconsin.
They would be happy to ditch the tenured profs for adjunct faculty serfs, with the savings going into raises for themselves and more administrators.
Not so sure: I saw some studies that tenured faculty taught more hours in the 1960’s than they do now, even at research universities.
“Kelly is teaching at the lowest, podunk level of the UW System. No one cares if Kelly leaves.”
She isn’t going to leave. She knows she’s in the best job she will ever get.
Yes, I can remember an assistant professor back at my undergrad who was well known as one of the best teachers, but his publications/research wasn’t up to snuff so he was informed that tenure was unlikely to happen so he moved on. Then again it was a private research university, so I don’t really fault the department that much. The department got its money from the research grants (private or public), as the teaching didn’t contribute much to their budget.
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