Tenure, RIP: What the Vanishing Status Means for the Future of Education (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Some time this fall, the U.S. Education Department will publish a report that documents the death of tenure. ¶ Innocuously titled "Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2009," the report won't say it's about the demise of tenure. But that's what it will show. ¶ Over just three decades, the proportion of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track plummeted: from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007….
Yep, in many sectors of higher ed, essentially, tenured professors will grow older and retire, and as they leave, by degrees, tenure will leave with them. As we all know, for many years, instruction has trended toward reliance on adjunct (part-timer) instructors, who have few rights and little authority.
So it's a movement toward de facto top-down-itude, and that will continue, only at a faster pace.
Meanwhile, the for-profit institutions are donning ever-brighter clown pants and ever-snidelier grifter smiles; they'll sell more and more miracle online snake oil. They're luring more of the "customer base"—those millions of marks with their expensive loan money, made possible by Uncle Sam, a clueless shill, and the ultimate mark.
It doesn't look good for American higher ed.
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3 comments:
Two frightening developments. Only 31% *now* have tenure--? Wow. It's unclear how one can fight these awful trends. Thanks for sharing this, though. It does seem to be sneaking up on us (the tenure thing)--a stealth attack on a crucial institution.
This is a clear threat to academic freedom.
Actually, it is lower -- that is the proportion who have tenure or are on the "tenure-track" (in other words, may get tenure. Oh, and that was in 2007, before the current spat of budget cuts reduced the tenure-track and tenured force even more...
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