Tenure

I am feeling a bit cynical these days. Being an academic has simply failed to live up to my expectation. I really should move on. But, academia has a tradition called tenure that encourages faculty to not move on. Instead it encourages you to stay stuck in the mud becoming increasingly cynical and alienated as time goes by. OK, maybe I overstated that a bit. But, as I said, I'm feeling a little cynical.

Presumably the august tradition of tenure protects intellectual curiosity. It allows the development of bold new ideas. And, if that were the case, then it probably would be a good idea. But, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality tenure protects both mediocre people and mediocre thinking. Which is to say that it is one of those good ideas that doesn't really work out very well in practice.

Consider the plight of a new PhD coming into the academy full of ground breaking new ideas. For their first six or seven years as an academic they will be on what we call 'the tenure track'. During this time they will have to convince their senior colleagues that they are worthy of life time employment in their prestigious institution. Do they do this by showing their senior colleagues that they are irrelevant? Do they do this by attracting attention with bold new ideas that rub everyone the wrong way? No. They do it by showing how they can conform to the standards of the day. 

Senior academics often tell their junior colleagues to tow the line until they get tenure. And once they are tenured they can begin a new spree of free thinking. But, think about this. After five to seven years in a doctoral program and seven more on a tenure track, does anyone have any creative ideas left? Or has the process squeezed all their originality out of them? Overwhelmingly, the later occurs. 

Does anyone ever make novel contributions after tenure? Of course they do. But they are in the extreme minority. And it is those few, and I mean very few, that are used to justify the systemic mediocrity of everyone else.

Would it be better without tenure? Unfortunately things are never that simple.In order to evaluate alternatives to tenure, we would have to examine them in terms of the purpose of the university. In order to do that we would have to understand the purpose of the university. We would have to know exactly what it is that universities are supposed to do. And that is another hornets nest entirely. I will pick that up in the next post.