
Is it time to eliminate tenure for professors? - teaman2000
https://theconversation.com/is-it-time-to-eliminate-tenure-for-professors-59959
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teaman2000
Since the tenure system is so inflexible, universities instead rely on
semester-to-semester adjunct faculty.

Sounds like someone needs to make Uber for higher ed.

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daly
I've taught at 3 Universities as, two of those were as adjunct faculty. I've
worked in an industrial research lab. I've worked as a University employee on
research grant projects.

You seem to dismiss "the freedom to do research" as an important goal, needing
much less priority than teaching.

Let me share some pseronal observations about both teaching and research.

Adjunct teaching is free labor these days. I love to teach but my adjunct gigs
barely covered the cost of travel and food. Given the number of hours spent
preparing courses, running labs, office hours, and actual teaching, the
paycheck was WAY below minimum wage. I can't afford to teach.

There are some facts about research you need to consider. First, research
takes time. Second, it takes money. Third, it takes focus. Fourth, research
usually doesn't succeed. Fifth, we really NEED researchers. Lets look at them
one at a time.

Research takes time. A research project can take 10 years to produce something
that can be useful. Do you like the wonderful new AI Neural Network projects?
Are you amazed at the Alpha-Go program that beat the world Go champ? I worked
on that exact problem...in the early 1990s...using Neural Nets. After a couple
years I gave up. The current leaders (overnight successes) didn't give up and
didn't succeed until around 2010. That's the advantage of being a tenured
professor.

Research takes money. There used to be government research labs (until Reagan
killed them). Big companies ran big labs. Xerox had PARC (which gave us
windowing, mice, and the ethernet), Bell Labs gave us microwaves (the device),
and check readers (early Neural Nets), IBM gave us disk drives and scanning
microscopes. Universities gave us AI and robots. ARPA (the government) gave us
funding for a thousand new things.

Now? Not so much. Government labs are gone. Xerox PARC and Bell Labs are gone.
IBM management is doing everything they can to starve IBM Research. Microsoft
killed a research division. Google (Alphabet) is killing research efforts.
ARPA became DARPA so all your research had to be for "defense".

All of the tenured professors I know spend a LOT of their time begging for
money. A tenured professor's "research" these days amounts to hunting for
money to pay for students to do the actual research. The military is the
primary source of funding these days... and you wonder why "killer robots" are
coming?

Research takes focus. IBM Research (Ralph Gomory) pointed out that a research
project takes an average of 10 years to produce a result; e.g. Axiom, a
computer algebra system developed at IBM Research, took over 10 years. It
involved dozens of researchers and millions of dollars as well as dedicate
management and lab space. It was a career project for the project lead
(Richard Jenks). The Neural Network story is the same, except it happened in
Canada. Tenure gives you the chance to create an area of science (e.g. Gilbert
Baumslag in Infinite Group Theory).

Research rarely "succeeds". Gomory (IBM Research Pres.) pointed out that less
than 10% of all research projects produce a useful result, e.g. my work on re-
writable paper, similar to the Kindle paperwhite, my work on automated robot
assembly from CAD drawings, etc. Unfortunately you can't predict which
research projects WILL succeed. Certainly nobody would have predicted that
Neural Nets would beat a Go champ (and thus, my NN-Go work would be
vindicated?).

Fifth, we really NEED researchers. When my parents were born plastic did not
exist. Everything was wood and stone. Look around you and count the number of
plastic things you can touch. When I was born transistors didn't exist. You
probably can't count the number of transistors you use in a day. When you were
born self-driving cars didn't exist. In 20 years you won't know a single
person who knows how to drive.

So now you propose that professors no longer get tenure. You want them to
justify their job every year (they do already in the form of grant
applications). Next you will propose that professors get rated on a scale of
1-5 and that the '5' performers should be fired. IBM Research did that and it
killed the whole division. Edward Demming (helped restore Japan to a world
economic power) debunked the whole rating idea but management won't listen.

Tenured professors are the "last man standing" in the research arena. Beware
what you kill; there will be nothing left.

I have a counter-proposal... Professors should get tenure AND GUARANTEED 100k
per year minimum funding for the life of the tenure. Sure, some will "retire
on the job" but some will create Deep Neural Networks. Place your bets.

