DeSantis effectively ends tenure for FL university profs
Apr 20, 2022 15:58:05 GMT -5
robeiae likes this
Post by Optimus on Apr 20, 2022 15:58:05 GMT -5
This is a really stupid law and I have very little doubt that it will have the exact opposite of every poorly-thought-out intended effect he thinks it will.
www.tampabay.com/news/education/2022/04/19/desantis-signs-bill-limiting-tenure-at-florida-public-universities/
Several things about this are really stupid:
1) Given that the complaint is that not enough conservative profs are on faculties, and not enough are granted tenure, what's to stop tenure committees (which are run by other faculty members) from denying continued tenure to conservative faculty from now on? He just made it easier to cull out conservative faculty, not liberal faculty.
2) This has immediately made Florida a place that nobody in higher education will want to go to or even apply to for work, except the people who are most desperate for a job. That will have an immediate negative effect on quality of new hires. This has made Florida the conservative equivalent of far-left hell holes like Washington (state) and California in terms of university job appeal.
3) Research has consistently shown that university education does not have much of an effect on political values (overall population effects). The most prominent effects are cohort effects (each generation trends toward being slightly more liberal) and the influence of same-age peers: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2015514117
4) There's a small but plausible chance that this could have a measurable effect on research funding in at least two ways: 1) If people with large grants are not granted tenure or their tenure is revoked after 5-years, they'll just go to another university in another state and take all their funding money with them; 2) Federal and private funding agencies may be less likely to grant funding to researchers if there's a chance they'll lose their jobs soon.
Overall, this is just dumb.
www.tampabay.com/news/education/2022/04/19/desantis-signs-bill-limiting-tenure-at-florida-public-universities/
Every five years, he said, tenured faculty would be required to go before their university’s board of trustees, which could part ways with them. The text of the bill does not give that level of specificity but rather states a five-year review would take place to be determined by the state Board of Governors. Each state university already requires tenured professors to take part in an annual review.
“Tenure was there to protect people so that they could do ideas that may cause them to lose their job or whatever, academic freedom — I don’t know that’s really the role it plays, quite frankly, anymore,” DeSantis said. “I think what tenure does, if anything, it’s created more of an intellectual orthodoxy. For people that have dissenting views, it becomes harder for them to be tenured in the first place and then, once you’re tenured, your productivity really declines, particularly in certain disciplines.”
House Speaker Chris Sprowls called the legislation a way to prevent “indoctrination.”
“Tenure was there to protect people so that they could do ideas that may cause them to lose their job or whatever, academic freedom — I don’t know that’s really the role it plays, quite frankly, anymore,” DeSantis said. “I think what tenure does, if anything, it’s created more of an intellectual orthodoxy. For people that have dissenting views, it becomes harder for them to be tenured in the first place and then, once you’re tenured, your productivity really declines, particularly in certain disciplines.”
House Speaker Chris Sprowls called the legislation a way to prevent “indoctrination.”
Several things about this are really stupid:
1) Given that the complaint is that not enough conservative profs are on faculties, and not enough are granted tenure, what's to stop tenure committees (which are run by other faculty members) from denying continued tenure to conservative faculty from now on? He just made it easier to cull out conservative faculty, not liberal faculty.
2) This has immediately made Florida a place that nobody in higher education will want to go to or even apply to for work, except the people who are most desperate for a job. That will have an immediate negative effect on quality of new hires. This has made Florida the conservative equivalent of far-left hell holes like Washington (state) and California in terms of university job appeal.
3) Research has consistently shown that university education does not have much of an effect on political values (overall population effects). The most prominent effects are cohort effects (each generation trends toward being slightly more liberal) and the influence of same-age peers: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2015514117
4) There's a small but plausible chance that this could have a measurable effect on research funding in at least two ways: 1) If people with large grants are not granted tenure or their tenure is revoked after 5-years, they'll just go to another university in another state and take all their funding money with them; 2) Federal and private funding agencies may be less likely to grant funding to researchers if there's a chance they'll lose their jobs soon.
Overall, this is just dumb.
