It’s hard to see any alternative to this trend in light of the number of students that colleges and universities enroll each year.  Over-enrollment (or under-employment professors, if you prefer) has colleges and universities addicted to the indentured servants known as “graduate students.”  Most of them (at least in the humanities fields) are happy to get one of those adjunct jobs.    

It’s hard to see any alternative to this trend in light of the number of students that colleges and universities enroll each year.  Over-enrollment (or under-employment professors, if you prefer) has colleges and universities addicted to the indentured servants known as “graduate students.”  Most of them (at least in the humanities fields) are happy to get one of those adjunct jobs.    

Not making that assumption at all, Burned.  I’m asking the very preliminary question of what the costs of tenure are.  The next question is whether it’s worth those costs.  Part of that question probably implicates what you’re saying about management.

Any intelligent debate about tenure (not saying that most debates about tenure are intelligent) comes down to weighing the costs and benefits of procedural protections for teachers.  I’m not in a profession that uses tenure.  In my profession, people get “let go” all the time, and in my experience they’re fired for one of two reasons:  (1) performance or (2) economics.  That said, do I wish there were rules that made it more difficult to fire me, even for performance/economics reasons?  Heck yes, I would.  Why? Because it benefits me, and I tend to accept things that benefit me, as long as I’m not hurting somebody else.  The awful truth, though, is that in those situations, I’m probably not the best judge of whether I’m hurting somebody else.  And given that money, resources, jobs, etc. are not infinite, a benefit received by Peter is a benefit that can’t be received by Paul.  If Paul’s an honest, hardworking, nice guy, should that matter?  If Paul’s a corporation with publicly traded shares, should that matter? Does the answer end the analysis, or does it just make it more complicated?  It usually isn’t clear, which is why it’s debatable. So I accept that the procedural protections of tenure make it more likely that a teacher facing termination will be treated fairly than would be the case without tenure.  I also accept that tenure protections are good for teachers.  But are they good in general?  Are they good for children?  Sometimes things that seem good in isolation aren’t good in practice because the costs they would impose are too high.  One example economists like to give is automobile safety.  Most people would agree with the statement that one death from auto accidents is too many deaths. And car manufacturers could make dramatically safer cars, and legislatures could enact dramatically lower speed limits, and law enforcement could enforce them with dramatically higher penalties.  But nobody wants to pay $200,000 for a budget sedan, and nobody wants a speed limit of 10 mph.  So we’re willing to accept tens of thousands (or more, I have no idea) of deaths on the highway.So a discussion about tenure should start at the point of analyzing costs versus benefits.  It can’t just be about vague invocations of fairness.  If fairness didn’t cost anything, we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. 

Well, ok. But people who are unfamiliar with that process should know what that means. And as the tenure debate continues, you can expect that a more nuanced critique of tenure, which responds to the “due process” argument, will develop and settle in among the other talking points of the anti-tenure crowd.First, “due process” in this context shouldn’t be confused with constitutional due process.  The process that’s “due” before a tenured NYC teacher can be terminated comes from NY state law, enacted by heavily lobbied NY state legislators.  Due process, in most cases, is full-blown litigation.  It culminates with an evidentiary hearing before a panel of arbitrators with a court reporter present.  Before you get to that point, you have subpoenas, requests for document production, depositions, full motion practice — the works.  If, after all of this, the panel rules against a teacher, the teacher can appeal the decision in NY state court. This process can take years in some cases.  I’ve read that the average case takes about one year, and costs about $200,000 (a taxpayer expense).  I don’t know firsthand, but I’m an attorney familiar with arbitration and that timeframe seems about right to me.  Quantifying costs can be difficult when you’re dealing with salaried attorneys rather than outside counsel who bill, and there’s certainly some analysis that was done to derive the $200k figure, but that doesn’t mean the analysis is necessarily unreliable.  So is tenure a “guaranteed job for life”?  Certainly not.Is it difficult to fire a tenured teacher?  Depends what planet you’re living on.   

2. the attorney will tell you that you don’t need to prove your case in a complaint. you only need to allege it.  

3. how does the teacher know the reason was discrimination?  there’s a fairly good reason that evidence is necessary.

4. evidence need not be a smoking gun. it can be circumstantial. ask the employment discrimination attorney about this. 

5. do you think teachers are the victims of discrimination more often than other workers? 

unless the reason is the teacher’s age, race, religious beliefs, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or marital status, for starters.

thank you for rendering the words “criminal” and “illegal” meaningless. hopefully we won’t have any need to use those terms anymore.