Robert Mathiesen's message

[charlesg]

          One point that seldom is explicitly mentioned by all the
          people who talk about abolishing tenure: since a person 50
          years old whose contract as a Russian literature specialist
          or a Slavic linguist is not renewed is not likely to have
          other marketable qualifications in other professions,
          anybody with any sense will not go into college teaching
          except in professions like economics, medicine, law, etc.
          where one can also work outside of academe.  Bob's points
          are well taken, but the President of Brown does not seem to
          have thought through the whole question thoroughly enough.
          Tenure is not just to protect academic freedom; it is also
          to entice people into relatively low-paying professions by
          supplying, in return, real security if they make it through
          all the more and more daunting hoops that junior faculty
          have to go through.  Expectations keep getting higher and
          higher in the current buyer's market, and if anybody is to
          be both sane and have the motivation to take their chances,
          then there must be a commensurate reward at the end of the
          trial by fire.  Universities may indeed be quite different
          in 30 years, and it may be partially because departments in
          such subjects as the humanities will be staffed only by the
          independently wealthy, the insane, or the hopelessly naive
          (and all three of these categories will still have to be
          supermen and superwomen who can teach, do research, start a
          family, live on a low salary, and not drop over).
          Opinions strictly personal, not representing my university
          or anybody else.
                      Charles Gribble
                       Gribble.3 at osu.edu