I have four friends that are tenured Profs. One of them recently posted on Facebook his displeasure to see that his school is eliminating a program and as a result two tenured profs have been given a 12 month termination notice. Since I didn't have anything nice to say about his post, I decided to say nothing. Aside from the optics of him complaining about two art history profs being let go, with a year's advanced notice, while a staggering number of much harder working folks in lots of other occupations are out of work with pretty much no notice, no health insurance, etc: I've disliked tenure since I first learned what it is. There is pretty much no occupation comparable to the privileged position of a tenured prof. They can coast on their past achievements for 20 years, no problem. Anyway, I guess I have a couple of questions since this is the OP post. Not sure anyone will even see it buried in this category - doesn't involve Trump or Biden at all! Is my friend's complaint about his school letting two tenured profs go justified? Does tenure ensure academic independence or does it promote academic mediocrity?
Tenure is the cow dung used to keep liberal professors in line. That's why colleges are graduating idiots with masters degrees.
I have to say "academic mediocrity" but I was tormented by a college professor to the point that I transferred universities. The school would do nothing about him although he played the same games with several students' lives. Nobody should be "above the rules" no matter what their occupation is or how well they are respected/(seemingly) respectable.
Yep, I had one prof that was right close to your experience. One Prof. I managed to graduate from his program because the dept chair overrode him before I had to try and raise my complaint to the provost after the dean of the school backed the profs illegitimate ruling on a certain matter of military service credit toward the schools coop program coupled with a massive fail of a coop semester. That failed coop story is kinda epic. Howard, my gay boss. Dude would freshen up with a boatload of Grey Flannel in his cubicle next to mine everyday before he went to lunch. No thanks, Howard, I don't want to go to lunch..... He had this bitter maladjusted chic with a PhD in surface water biology on his team. And a new civil engineer that just wanted to shoot herself having been stuck in H & K's group. She read paperbacks all day, and even in meetings. I think it was Halloween when I told H that I had enough and left. Yay Me! I told a coop job to go f itself! Woo Hoo! Not proud of that at all actually, but it had turned into a Kobayashi Maru....
