Inside Higher Ed has another article on the "end of tenure." I’m not linking to it because it’s really just cheap sensationalism. However, I will say this. If you want to eliminate tenure, you have to come up with an alternative. And you can’t really expect that a corporate model is a good idea?

Why?

Because corporations are such ethical institutions that operate fundamentally with common good of society in mind, treat their workers equitably, and develop products that benefit humans without a thought for personal gain? OK, maybe higher education doesn’t always do that, doesn’t always live up to its mission statements. But do you really think a corporately-managed, tenure-free university would be free of adjuncts?

Corporations are designed for their own institutional survival, to dominate the marketplace without a thought to the consequences for human or any other life, and to produce profit for shareholders. Everything else is window-dressing. Maybe corporations would be better off with a tenure system enforced. They’d have to put up with whistleblowers. They couldn’t just silence or fire employees who disagreed. They’d have fewer sychophantic "yes wo/men."

There’s an argument that a contract system would ensure that academics work harder, that we all know some colleague that’s just mailing it in. Maybe. But we all also have a dozen colleagues that are working very hard.

Honestly, without the tenure system, I think a school like mine would be more worried about how it was going to keep its good faculty than it would be salivating over the chance to hire new blood.

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