A couple of weeks ago
a number of bloggers were talking pro and contra the tenure system (too many to list everyone - for which I feel kind of bad but what can I do). Though my response may be a bit old hat now, I want to record it anyway, since the problem I see at the root of any issues with tenure is not going anywhere.
First off, I don’t believe tenure per se is really “the” problem. Other things, like the corporatization of academia, deterioration of popular respect for knowledge (having to do with the corporatization of media), federal policies eroding the quality of education for the last several decades, and, last but probably most important: lack of universal healthcare and complete and utter and mind-boggling lack of any kind of federal support for mothers and parents are, in my view, the real culprits. And by the way, those two last things are related: they reflect an institutionalized disavowal of social responsibility on the part of the U.S. government.
In fact, I believe the lack of universal healthcare is responsible for many, if not most of the problems of the American work force: privately negotiated, employer-provided health insurance gives far too much power to employers over employees’ lives.
But let’s talk specifically of academia.
Timothy Burke and Lumpenprof make some points I want to pick up on. Burke writes that the conditions of labor outside the tenure track are exceptionally poor, but the tenure system itself is so frozen in a procedurality that it’s a risky investment to attempt getting into it. Lumpenprof writes that the problem is the amount of time it takes to get tenure, and that any academic work done prior to the tenure-track does not count towards the required number of apprentice years.
Two issues relate here: the amount of time and the conditions of work outside the tenure track. If the conditions of work outside the tenure track were comparable to conditions on it in everything except the nature of the contracts (i.e. that non-tenure-track contracts cannot result in tenure), then the amount of time issue would become far less pressing. But - for example - part-time work almost never comes with health insurance. Let alone a retirement account. Or (and this is as important as health insurance) any chance at maternity or childcare support. Tenure-track jobs or full-time lectureships do but full-time lectureships are fraught with the anxiety of falling downwards to part-time adjunct work, which would destroy most people’s ability to focus on their work sufficiently to achieve a tenure-track job.
As best I can tell, the only type of position that truly reliably affords health care is a tenured position.
Employees are of course not the only ones to suffer. It is a tremendous burden on employers that they are the ones who have to arrange that people have health insurance not least because health insurance is VERY expensive - anyone who’s been on COBRA or has ever bought an individual healthcare plan will know just how expensive. Having to provide it is an unfair burden on employers but it is even more unfair towards employees: it places far too much power over life and death questions into the hands of employers. We are all at their mercy for our health, and for the health of our children.
The point I’m trying to make is that the problems of academia may simply be symptoms of larger social problems in the U.S. - social problems that result in markedly different working conditions for tenure-track, tenured, and non-tenure-track academics. Tenure-track folks have health insurance and somewhat of a guarantee that they won’t suddenly lose it, while tenured professors can’t lose their health insurance in the same way Europeans or Canadians can’t lose theirs. Yet non-tenure-track academic workers typically have no way to get health insurance through their work.
These are the sorts of differences in working conditions that create strained and potentially poisonous power dynamics not only between universities (employers) and academic workers but also between tenured or tenure-eligible people, and those off the tenure-track. And amidst all the resulting tensions, the tenure system is what gets scapegoated for problems that stem from outside it. All this scapegoating very unfortunately threatens the kinds of freedoms - of speech, research, etc. - tenure is supposed to protect, and the kinds of freedoms essential to research and teaching. Of course, without truly free research and teaching society will be unable to become aware of its own problems and enact change… and begin the policy work necessary to achieve things like universal healthcare. Ironic, isn’t it?
