Is Tenure a Matter of Life or Death? | Hacker News Reader

Is Tenure a Matter of Life or Death?

chronicle.com

13 pointspg18 comments

There is a cognitive dissonance between what students are told by professors about an academic career, and the opportunities available for academic job candidates after having spent several years earning a PhD in their field of choice. I was lucky. I confessed once to an anthropology professor that I was considering switching from CS to anthropology, and he dissuaded me. A linguistics masters student also encouraged me to continue my study of CS. Now at least I enjoy what I do to a certain degree, can feed myself and my family, and can read all the books I want about anthropology and linguistics.

I quit my Ph.D. program in mathematics because I saw that the opportunities for reasonable employment were very limited. Tenure track positions are very hard to get. Increasingly universities are relying on adjuncts and their pay is dismal.

Another article in which academics illustrate how completely out of touch they are:

Neoliberalism set universities "free" in the market to be able to charge higher tuition as students took on more debt in a deregulated banking system....Academe overproduced Ph.D.'s,...answers to these structural issues...Take universities out of the market by federally financing them.

Universities overproduce one of their products? Solution: subsidies.

Universities overcharge? Solution: subsidies.

The cost of universities has everything to do with the federal student loan program.

One reason universities overproduce is because graduate students provide a cheap supply of labor. Also, much funding is contingent upon research and this means, for the most part, a research department which means graduate students.

The reason we need universities to be better funded, though, is moral. Fewer than 50% of all people who start a 4 year degree every complete it. These people end up with a great deal of debt and it's debt that can't be forgiven. In an effort to cut costs universities are increasingly using adjunct labor. I believe that most people who teach in higher education are not tenured.

The reason we need universities to be better funded, though, is moral. Fewer than 50% of all people who start a 4 year degree every complete it.

I'm not sure I see the moral case for subsidizing people who try college but fail to complete it. Could you explain?

In an effort to cut costs universities are increasingly using adjunct labor. I believe that most people who teach in higher education are not tenured.

Why is this bad? Lower cost labor means that the taxpayers and students get more bang for their buck.

Because it means that we end up producing more Ph.D's than can be supported by the job market. It leads to a glut of Ph.D's. The lower cost does not mean that taxpayers get more bang for their buck. The low cost has bad consequences. Right now, in areas like physics, mathematics, etc. it's simply not worth it to get an advanced degree. Also, increasing the supply of graduate students leads to a denigration of standards.

There are very bad long term consequences when a society is such that getting an advanced degree is not economically worthwhile. It typically takes 7 years to get a Ph.D. in mathematics. Pay is low during this time and usually have no benefits. It takes another 4 - 7 years to get a tenure track position and getting such a position is hard. A person is economically better off doing something else.

It is immoral to make people an indentured servant. This is the current setup we have in our university system. This is particularly true for poor people.

Our greatest generation was great because they largely had free higher education. We took a generation of people and paid for them to get degrees if they could get into school and finish. This was of great benefit to society. We gone from this model to the current model where a person pays for the chance to get a piece of paper in the hopes of getting a nicer paying job. For many, they end up being slaves to their debt and don't end with the nicer paying job. It's an immoral system.

Because it means that we end up producing more Ph.D's than can be supported by the job market.

No, we have more Ph.D's than can be supported in the academic job market. It's not the same thing.

I'm a math PhD. I've got 3 job offers in the pipeline, and I haven't even started actively looking [1]. My experience: people assume I'm smart given a PhD, but perhaps overly theoretical. A coding test lets me refute the second guess. A math PhD does help you find non-academic jobs.

Yes, a PhD is hard to get, though if it takes 7 years you are just lazy (and you do get benefits). Tenure, aka permanent lifetime employment with almost 100% flexibility in your work life is hard to get. Uh, yeah, jobs paying $500k/year are also hard to get. In general, the better a job is (in terms of job security, work conditions or pay), the harder it is to get.

No one is an indentured servant, and no one is stuck in PTL hell. A person stays in PTL hell because every semester, they choose to apply for more PTL positions rather than applying for jobs as coders or quants.

We gone from this model to the current model where a person pays for the chance to get a piece of paper in the hopes of getting a nicer paying job.

The piece of paper doesn't get the job because we give out too many pieces of paper. We give out too many pieces of paper because when you subsidize something, you get more of it.

[1] Passively looking: Notice someone mention they are hiring on HN, send an email. Visit stackoverflow once, notice their job board, send out a resume or two.

Your information is wrong. You clearly don't know statistics on the average and median time it takes to get a Ph.D. in mathematics in the United States. Furthermore you clearly do not understand the American university system and the economic forces that bely it. I suppose you aren't even aware that community colleges do around 1/3[1] of the higher education teaching in the United States.

Many graduate programs do not provide any benefits for their students. Purdue provided no benefits for it's teaching assistants in mathematics as of December of 1999.

It is poor thinking to take your experience and assume it is normative.

[1]Edited for accuracy. My original statement said 1/2 which is too much.

You clearly don't know statistics on the average and median time it takes to get a Ph.D. in mathematics in the United States.

I'm aware of the averages. This does not mean that the average/median are reasonable. A large chunk of graduate students are unsuited to research [1] and they drive the average up.

I'm also uncertain why you think it's relevant that 1/3 of education is provided by CC (which I'm well aware of, having attended one), or why you believe I don't understand the economics behind the university system. Could you explain?

[1] Typically they want a teaching job, don't really understand what research entails, and don't treat research as a full time job.

Fourth, we need to become as good at providing career and emotional support as we are at criticizing performance (a very highly honed skill in most academics). However, research and experience show that the ability to cope with failure varies a great deal across people and situations.

Interesting how it works both ways between students and professors. At my University, professor evaluations were weighted somewhat according to students' comments and overall "learning experience," and did determine which professors achieved tenure (and when).

Some brilliant people, however brilliant they may be, just don't belong in the teaching field when they can't genuinely motivate students to learn. However, individual academic institutions still need to have / make a place for them where they can maintain a standard of living without resorting to such drastic things.

professor evaluations weighted somewhat

When universities say teaching is "weighted somewhat" in tenure decisions, it is code for "weighted barely at all". They say this to deflect the (usually valid) criticism that most professors are at best mediocre instructors. In practice, tenure decisions are based overwhelmingly on research. (Incredibly, this is true even at most "liberal arts" colleges.)

In The Machinery of Freedom, David Friedman reprints an essay with a brilliant analysis of academia, including a withering critique of the university system and its misalignment of professor/student incentives. The author of the essay? Adam Smith. (Yes, that Adam Smith.) This is not a new problem.

Is that the same Adam Smith essay I keep bringing up at every opportunity? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118334

That's not it, but you motivated me to finally find a copy online. As with the passage you linked, the essay I have in mind is from The Wealth of Nations, in this case Book V.1.135–143. It starts here: http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN20.html#V.1.135

Could they not find even one STEM professor to comment? A highly biased opinion from this bunch:

"...it is not surprising that the tenure decision is freighted with anxiety. It takes anywhere from 10 to 20 years from entrance into graduate school for the tenure decision to be made. By that point, in their single-minded pursuit of their personal holy grail, most academics have purged themselves of skills that might be useful for the private sector."

Didn't Bishop have a reasonably successful business on the side? Something to do with automating petri dishes and culturing? I can't help but think all these english, history and sociology professors ascribe so much anxiety to tenure because their fields are so poorly valued by the private sector. But in many fields, such as Bishop's, there are plenty of opportunities for PhDs who can't or don't want to go for tenure. If nothing else, you're probably a pretty good coder after completing a STEM PhD. (Hey maybe it's matlab or fortran, but that's a good start.)

"Why were her victims disproportionately of color?"

Could it be because it's a lot easier to get a visa to come here and study STEM than sociology, women's, and gender studies?

The decision for tenure is a critique of a person's entire life's work within a field. As such, many of those in the process take it as an objective value of their life's worth. It is not much of a surprise then that the decision to deny tenure always leads to crying, outbursts, resignation, and often lawsuits.

Academia is cult-like, in my memory of it. There's an us-versus-them attitude toward the outside world; in that view, academia is prestigious and involves interesting work, and people in "industry" are doing useless, bullshit grunt work. The difference is exaggerated immensely. It's a self-defeating attitude since most academics will have to leave the ivory tower.

It's an up-or-out system-- and one where promotion decisions often have more to do with politics than merit (although that's the case in most industries)-- that does absolutely nothing to help the "out" find decent alternatives. In CS and economics, they usually don't need help, but humanities PhDs are completely screwed.

Of course, it didn't help this woman that her track record indicates someone with severe mental problems. She probably had no alternatives; McKinsey's not exactly an option for someone like that.

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