Comments on: “Dead wood,” mandatory retirement, and advancement (oh my!) Plus the Isley Brothers.

By: Link Love (last one before classes start!) « Grumpy rumblings of the untenured

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 08:08:41 +0000

[...] Historiann on mandatory retirement (with the Isley Brothers) [...]

By: Stop admitting Ph.D. students? : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:34:23 +0000

[...] But I’m also fine with Harris’s decision not to accept Ph.D. students–after all, nous devons cultiver notre jardins, n’est-ce pas? (As the Isley Brothers have taught us, “it’s your thing, do whatcha wanna [...]

By: Janice

Janice — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:34:25 +0000

I used to feel rather like TR. Then my university stopped replacing tenure-track retirements in all but a few cases. Apparently it doesn’t matter if the retirement will gut your program and lead to an accreditation crisis a few years down the road. Maybe they’ll hire replacements in time to avoid that. In the meantime, no jobs for anybody except the tenured faculty and a few established adjuncts.

If I died right now, I’m pretty sure the U would hire someone to finish out my courses for the term/year and then call that finished. Certainly doesn’t make one sanguine about the prospects of jobs in academe, I must say!

By: News: Politics or Civility? – Inside Higher Ed « Parents 4 democratic Schools

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:39:28 +0000

[...] Davidson crowdsources a syllabus about thinking…. Historiann critiques easy answers to higher ed’s problems…. [...]

By: I am SO glad I love math « Grumpy rumblings of the untenured

I am SO glad I love math « Grumpy rumblings of the untenured — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:14:23 +0000

[...] comment from Campbell in this post by Historiann. About being mid-30s and making 15k/year and older profs need to retire and we couldn’t [...]

By: Nicole

Nicole — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:19:01 +0000

That idea that there’s a fixed number of jobs and we need old people to make way for new people is very European. Only recently has their pension and protection legislation been changing to ease up from that idea.

Like truffula was getting at, capitalism means that when more people are working the economy is more productive and more people can buy more stuff which means more jobs. Fighting to work more really is a capitalist nocturnal emission.

It’s a little more difficult to see in the context of education, but it is obvious that tenure track positions are no longer being replaced one-for-one, at least not on any campus I’ve heard about in recent years.

By: Perpetua

Perpetua — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:31:17 +0000

Oh, God, clearly I meant “its” not “it’s” – blame sleep deprivation.

By: Perpetua

Perpetua — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:30:36 +0000

Speaking of the three-legged stool and turning the conversation in a slightly different direction, I just received stomach-churning news that my uni is about to ramp up it’s “tougher” tenure standards. Apparently it’s embarrassing that no one has been denied tenure in many years in my department. I know this is an issue we’ve discussed here before, but any conversation about excellence without money brings me back to this point (as someone on the brink of maybe tenure- maybe unemployment). Why not have rising tenure standards in a context in which junior faculty have less leave, less research money, and less time? As Historiann would say, *awesome*! This is particularly funny in the context of my department where I would say I find junior faculty remarkably unsupported (unmentored, silenced, etc). The whole idea of tenure-denial statistics meaning anything in the context of a department’s quality is as absurd as saying ‘This department can’t be any good – look at all the dead wood!’ Are rising tenure standards another “political tool for those who don’t want to fully fund higher education and adequately staff academic departments”?

By: Historiann

Historiann — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:07:13 +0000

Campbell, how exactly is a retirement somewhere going to open up a tenure-track line for you? Because I guarantee you that it won’t in my college. We’re already 6 or 7 tenure lines down from retirements and resignations by people who left for better jobs–but we’re not seeing them replaced by people in tenure-track lines. They’ve been replaced by adjuncts and lecturers.

And if you think most people commenting here make $75K, that’s hilarious. Indyanna and truffula are correct–and you’re just lunging at the chum that Mark Taylor and company are putting in the water.

Lance–awesome!!! (I could never do all-nighters, not even in college.)

By: Lance

Lance — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:59:01 +0000

I’ve been up for about 24 hours. I’m pulling my third all-nighter this year, freshly promoted, to grade papers and draft a powerpoint for an intensive August class for pre-freshmen. There is no end to my labor. I feel like I will work until I die. So I just wanted to thank y’all for the stimulation – and the Isley brothers!