Frances Newcombe wrote:
>> I am interested in knowing whether academic tenure at the
> universities of North America is still serving its original purpose.
> Does tenure promote and protect ethical behaviour and academic freedom in
> the tenured? Or do the tenured see tenure as security that allows them
> to exploit untenured academic workers?
Let men give you my biased view as one who has recently
been awarded tenure.
The University of Manitoba has recently fallen victim to what
many of us here percieve as a downsizing crusade on
the part of the highly-conservative provincial government.
(I said this would be a BIASED view.) That is, downsizing
has become an end in itself, both as a way of rolling back
decades of government programs that are unacceptable to conservatives,
as well as for the furthering of a particular conservative
agenda, which has been blatantly antiintellectual.
Faced with a contract renewal last year, the administration,
under pressure from the provincial government, proposed a
new contract which effectively eliminated tenure by instituting
a downsizing mechanism that would have given enormous
latitude to the administration for eliminating individual
academic positions, a practice referred to as 'cherry picking'.
This point, along with other proposals that would have given
the administration almost absolute power to micromanage
the univeristy. Our Board of Governors is largely
chosen by the provincial government, and the University administration
has typically acted as if its purpose was to execute
government policy, rather than to act as an advocate for the
University and its mission. (Our president just retired, so
I can't speak about the incomming president.)
After more than a year of contract negotiations in which
every proposal by the administration would have placed
even more power in their hands than the previous one,
the U. of M. Faculty went on strike for the first time
in University history. During the 23-day strike, the premier of
Manitoba, Gary Filmon, explicitly supported the administration,
to the extent of trying to appoint arbitrators known for
their blatantly anti-labor track records. There were numerous
cases in which non-tenured junior faculty members were
pressured, by deans or department heads, into not
participating in the strike.
In the end, a compromise was reached that limited downsizing to
the department or program, rather than the individual, and
required review by committees including faculty and student
members, and a requirement for the administration to prove
financial exigency by opening its books to the committee
(although not, it seems, to the public).
After this experience I am convinced of the necessity of
retaining tenure in academic positions.
You mention exploitation of non-tenured staff by tenured
staff. It depends on how you want to define exploitation.
Don't forget that all those tenured faculty got their
positions by working for years themselves as graduate
students and postdocs. By the time a person attains
the rank of assistant professor in their mid-30's, he or she
is a decade behind their counterparts in business and
industry, in terms of financial security. As a professor,
I have to develop, update and teach course material, polish
off mountains of paper work, write grant proposals to support
the people in my lab (and their families), and still
run a competitive research program. I feel 'exploited'
every time some administrator comes up with yet another
demand on my time, for which I will never be financially
compensated. Why, then, am I in
academia, when I would have a much higher salary, greater
research funds and facilities, and probably less aggravation
in an industrial setting? The answer is, I put up with these
things because I know that only in the academic environment
can I pursue research that _I_ think in important, in
the way _I_ want to do it. This is part of what we mean
by 'academic freedom'. Eliminate academic freedom, and
you eliminate the chief reason that people go into
academia in the first place!
The Filmon government has said that it wants to remake the
University into something that is more 'relevant' and
'accountable' to the people of Manitoba. These two words
become license to take management of the University out
of the hands of academics and into the hands of small-minded
political appointees who want to run it 'like a business'.
There is a perception that Universities are full of dead-wood
profs who either do no research or are poor teachers. I
can think of some examples of each. However, the vast majority
of professors I have known have worked very hard on doing
both jobs well. It is interesting to note the surveys
conducted by the U. of M. University Teaching Service
routinely report overall satisfaction by students with the
quality of instruction and the quality of education. At the
same time, downsizing has led to a decrease in the number
of faculty and TA's with no decrease in the number of courses.
Similarly, we must make do with smaller research grants, but
still crank out the same number of papers. So we're getting
the same job done with fewer staff and for lower pay.
Personally, the presence of a few 'dead wood' faculty members
doesn't bother me nearly as much as the inflation of university
administrations. Even 'dead wood' profs contribute something. At
the same time, the endless series of management fads, accompanied
by such terms as 'strategic planning', 'total qulaity management',
'accountability', 'relevance', and other warm fuzzies, is the
real problem in universities. In this way, university administrations
often make a NEGATIVE contribution to productivity.
===============================================================================
Brian Fristensky |
Department of Plant Science | Best advice I've heard in a long time:
University of Manitoba |
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2 CANADA | "Don't confuse having a career with
frist at cc.umanitoba.ca | having a life."
Office phone: 204-474-6085 |
FAX: 204-261-5732 |
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~frist/
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