Tenure Games

This topic could be a book rather than just a blog, so I'll try to keep it manageable.  First, let me frame the topic by stating that though I directly benefit from the tenure process by essentially being guaranteed a job for the entirety of my professional life, I am actually against tenure for college professors as we know it today.  I do understand the desirability of protecting academic freedom*, but it seems unfair to allow such job security without accountability.  It's kind of like the notion, which strikes me as absurd, that the actions of a human lifetime can determine the rewards and punishments of eternity.  And in fact, it's pretty common that once one gets tenured, s/he is on autopilot for the rest of the ride.  A few schools are going to five year reviews.  I think that makes sense, but not if the expectations are the same as those for getting tenure, which can burn people out.

When I was a student, I can recall a really excellent teacher, one of the maybe three good teachers I had in college, that suddenly disappeared one semester.  A lot of students complained, as we didn't understand how the college could let such a good teacher go.  But now I understand.  You can get fired for being a bad teacher, but you can't get tenured or promoted for being a good one. (Note "Student Evaluations" blog of 10/11/09, and especially the comments of EM)  As it happens, "Publish or Perish" is not only alive and well, but is thriving under the moniker of "teacher/scholar."

Now don't misunderstand me, a college instructor absolutely has to be engaged with his/her discipline.  My problem is the rigidity with which "traditionalists" adhere to that mantra, interpreting engagement as being published in "prestigious" journals, and often measured by an arbitrary and esoteric formula (Tier 1 journal? First author? X points for that....)  PRJs (Peer Reviewed Journals) are the coin of the realm in academia, and since these count the most (sometimes they're all that counts), the game is all about figuring out how to get published in these journals that hardly anybody reads, and less still understand.  In many cases, the overriding question piloting one's professional engagement is "Can this get published, and can I get credit for it?" not "Does this have value, is it interesting to me, does it make me a better teacher and scholar?"  Thus you see the same drivel sliced up three different ways with a slightly different spin (maybe) to get 3 hits to pad the vita, or faculty agreeing to advising students on their theses and dissertations only if they can later receive a coauthor credit.  Maybe I should expand on this in another entry, but the point is that tenure too often hinges on quantity rather than quality within rigidly defined parameters of engagement (i.e., a specific kind of scholarship, though creative projects, grants, etc., are "counted" in some fields), commonly established by those that never had to live up to such standards themselves.

And this is where the fun begins.  At somewhere around the fifth year, a tenure-track assistant professor (and as schools try to cut costs with adjuncts there aren't as many of those, as apparently hiring a $50,000+ a year History professor- and I'm not making that number up, as liberal arts professors often start in that range- is cost prohibitive) submits a portfolio in application for tenure (typically in conjunction with promotion to associate professor).  Some schools have college-wide tenure committees, others have committees internal to the department/area, but however constructed, a committee of one's peers will engage in serious review of the candidate's career to determine whether that career will continue at that institution.  There are 3 questions that typically underlie the deliberations, though few will admit to it: 1)  Is there anything about the candidate's teaching that is a serious problem?  (Really really terrible instructor, sleeps with students, lawsuit waiting to happen, things like that)  2)  Are the number and type of publications "over the bar?"  (The interesting thing about this one is that often nobody really knows where "the bar" is.)  and 3)  Do the other faculty like him/her?  (And this is usually a function of who happens to be on the committee, but this can only raise or lower the bar, not eliminate or infinitely elevate it.)   If the candidate is passable as an instructor, has listed enough acceptable publications on his/her vita, and hasn't aggravated those faculty members on the committee (sometimes multiple committees), then that instructor is awarded a job for life, called tenure, which comes with no further performance obligations beyond adhering to the rules and not engaging in illegal or immoral activities.

And students wonder why so many of their instructors don't seem to have a passion for teaching.

*And by the way, it is no small irony that the system designed to protect academic freedom and encourage free thinking may in fact be limiting it, as the haves are often judging the have nots, typically with a bias of maintaining the status quo.  That statement doubtlessly requires support, but I'm tenured, so I don't have to.

Student evaluations

In many schools, particularly research schools, student evaluations matter little. As long as they are not outrageously bad, it is one's publications that get one to tenure. And once tenured, those evaluations can be outrageously bad and not much can be done about it. In fairness, many research schools are becoming increasingly concerned about teaching, as many teaching schools are becoming relatively less concerned, a subject addressed a few blogs ago. Yet most teaching schools do care about student evaluations, as they constitute a, if not the, major means of evaluating teaching. There are some schools that do make an effort to more thoroughly and comprehensively evaluate teaching, and this does seem to be the trend, typically by reviewing a teaching portfolio consisting of syllabi, teaching philosophies, methods, and materials, peer observations, student evaluations, and increasingly assessment and outcome evidence. But many teaching schools do rely heavily on student evaluations for decisions about tenure in particular.

This is rather odd in that student evaluations rarely are good measures of teaching effectiveness. Not only are the questions used in evaluations of questionable validity, but the responses are often biased and easily manipulated. For example, I actually once knew a guy who near the end of the semester would give a test and make sure the grades were high, then throw a party at his house for his students, and then give the student evaluations. In fact, there are many ways to influence if not manipulate student evaluations. The halo effect is powerful.

But at the heart of the matter is that student evaluations are not measuring teaching effectiveness, but rather student satisfaction. Sadly, to many students these are the same constructs, as many students, particularly less mature ones (in age or perspective) judge a class and its instructor by its entertainment value, or worse yet, by its ease. Instructors know this of course, and those that sell their souls for the sake of gaining high evaluations do not find it particularly difficult to pander. Just offer easy classes with easy grades, be animated with unsophisticated humor, accept any excuse for anything, and play (by that I mean, the gratuitous use of videos, stories, games, experiential exercises, etc.). Some instructors will even socialize with students (more on that soon). These and many other ploys will get many students to like you. Some panderers are sophisticated enough to understand that high grades may be noticed by department chairs, so an old trick is to create the impression that students have high grades, give the student evaluations, and then slam them with the final to lower final grades and escape the scrutiny of colleagues.

There's a lot more to this issue, and I don't mean to imply that student evaluations are useless or universally abused. They can have utility when they are just one part of teaching evaluation and are well conceived, well administered, and honestly answered. But in cases where they are not, fortunately the good students will want more than just entertainment, and increasingly, because of accreditation, the teacher-scholar model, continuous improvement, outcomes assessment, and more, departments are weeding out the panderers. Yet many still make it to tenure (and Rate My Professor) before being found out.