Althouse: "Some faculty members argue that surrendering the 'professor' title to some academic staff will further confuse students and the public."

May 27, 2019

"Some faculty members argue that surrendering the 'professor' title to some academic staff will further confuse students and the public."

"The greater harm, however, is in the potential elimination of tenure-track positions on campus, they say. Nationally, the percentage of faculty members who are tenured or on the tenure track has been declining for decades, according to the American Association of University Professors. Colleges across the country have shrunk the share of tenured labor force for more financial flexibility. Institutions then offset those positions with instructors who operate on short-term appointments with heftier teaching loads, lower salaries and less academic freedom. 'I believe what we are being asked to do today is to relinquish that,' physics professor Lisa Everett told the Faculty Senate last month. 'And no matter what statements are there in bold at the end (of these resolutions) about how we don’t want this to be used as arguments against hiring more faculty positions, I think it’s very clear that that’s already going on.'"

From "What does it mean to be a UW-Madison professor? New job titles will change its meaning" in the Wisconsin State Journal.

55 comments:

buwaya said...: A minor element of ongoing decadence.

A decaying institution will steadily add more process and overhead, creating more tail to tooth, more staff to line. And they will act according to internal rather than external incentives.

Its all in Schumpeter. It is also inevitable, until something external comes along to destroy the entire minimally functional system.; 5/27/19, 10:06 AM
John henry said...: I adjuncted at 4 schools between 1974 and 2010. All called me "Professor Henry" and encouraged students to do so.

My formal title was always "Adjunct Instructor" or similar. Never was formally "Professor"

In Puerto Rico K-12 schools teachers are traditionally called Profesor/Profesora. Spanish for teacher is "maestra".

John Henry; 5/27/19, 10:08 AM
John henry said...: To be clear, profesor/profesora is a courtesy title, not any kind of formal title.

John Henry; 5/27/19, 10:09 AM
Michael K said...: Burn them all down. Online education will allow the best lecturers to teach hundreds of thousands. Get rid of the millions of administrators.; 5/27/19, 10:11 AM
rehajm said...: It didn’t mean much anymore anyways; 5/27/19, 10:12 AM
rhhardin said...: I never noticed who was a professor and who wasn't.

I gather from (technical) emails addressing me as professor that it matters to people trying not to be offensive, that is to say, the general assumption is that it matters to professors.; 5/27/19, 10:15 AM
Hey Skipper said...: Don't like it "Professor" Everett?

Then. Do. Something. Else.; 5/27/19, 10:19 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: When I put up some of the first online courses for a publishing company back in the mid-90s, I figured that the brick and mortar academic biz would be doomed within 15 years.

The college biz survives as a source of featherbedding jobs, administrative kickbacks and government payoffs to cronies.

It's a house of cards propped up by Other People's Money. Milking the slush fund of the guaranteed student loan programs is the primary function of colleges.; 5/27/19, 10:21 AM
John henry said...: About 20% of my professors (AS,BA,MBA,MS) were actual full time school employees. I don't know what percent of them were actual tenured professors. A few for sure. The rest were adjuncts.

I was very impressed with the adjuncts I had, generally. I learned both theory and practice from them.

They were not adjuncts like we have today, trying to make a career as an adjunct. They were lawyers, account executives, bankers, economists and other professionals by day teaching a course or two from time to time for various motives.

No complaints about the actual professors in general. Since most of them didn't have experience in what they were teaching, they tended to not be as interesting.

I think Our hostess would probably have been an interesting teacher. I think in general, if I were going to law school, I would prefer to be taught by practicing lawyers. Or at least lawyers who had a number of years practicing in their field.

I find it sad these people who think that adjuncting is a career and they can somehow parlay that into a permanent job. I find it fraudulent that schools lead these people along through grad school programs for which there are no jobs other than adjuncting.

Adjuncts should be just that, people teaching as an adjunct to their regular job.

John Henry; 5/27/19, 10:22 AM
David Begley said...: I believe that Ann has written here that during her time in the law school, she had to spend more and more time on stuff other than teaching and writing law review articles.; 5/27/19, 10:22 AM
Seeing Red said...: When you choose yourself over parasites, there aren’t any butts to put in the seats. They are getting to a hard lesson on markets.

No butts, no professors, support staff or bricks and mortars.; 5/27/19, 10:24 AM
Nancy said...: Getting rid of tenure would be awesome. It works like rent control, distorting the academic market.
I worked at a research company for 34 years and they could have fired me at any time. Their fear was that I would want to leave.; 5/27/19, 10:24 AM
rhhardin said...: Derrida has a nice essay on the university and the job of professors
http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/%20%20%20glossator%20%201/NIetzschenachgloss/Jacques%20Derrida%20-%20Without%20Alibi.pdf

"The University without Condition" paper page 202 pdf page 237

originally a talk at SUNY or CUNY but I can't find it online.; 5/27/19, 10:25 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: I'm no longer impressed with the tenure/academic freedom argument.

Long term tenure in academia seems to produce a lot of commies, with their attendant homosexual worship.; 5/27/19, 10:27 AM
John henry said...: Michael,

I have an MS in education and paid particular attention to online education when I was working on it. I also taught online for about 4 years in SNHU's MBA program.

Lectures may have some place in online education but I think more in the form of 10 minute or less clips rather than the traditional 3-4 hour lecture. Think Khan Academy, for a good example. They have some excellent stuff.

The classes I taught online for SNHU were much more structured than the ones I taught in-class. Lost of cases in both but also blogs and wikis in which students had to participate and were graded weekly.

I think there are real advantages to both face to face and online. I think some will do better in one than the other. I don't think I would do well with online as a student. I think, as a student, I would have needed the discipline of being in the classroom every Tuesday night from 6-10. I also liked the social interaction of actual classes.

OTOH, I did spend 2-/12 years working 7-5 then driving an hour to class, getting home ab out midnight. Normally 2, sometimes 4 nights a week depending on what classes were offered and when. That sounds pretty daunting now and perhaps I would have opted for online.

If I could have gotten that sweet, sweet, VA money for online, that might have been enough motivation.

John Henry; 5/27/19, 10:33 AM
John henry said...: Blogger David Begley said...

I believe that Ann has written here that during her time in the law school, she had to spend more and more time on stuff other than teaching and writing law review articles.

That was one of the things I liked about my years adjuncting. The only time I ever went to a meeting was when it was snowy in New Hampshire and someone from the main campus would decide to come down to do some faculty development.

I didn't even have to go to them. I did it as a favor to my boss who was a pretty great guy.

John Henry; 5/27/19, 10:37 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I think giving nontenure track people the title "professor" is a way to compensate them without using money, but it's a short term strategy only. Once the title loses its prestige, it's not usable as a substitute for better pay, and it doesn't mean much to anyone anymore.

It's like giving everyone a trophy. Nice. Now, we're all equal. Now, what? Only one thing: MONEY! Or that other thing: Doing what you love. If you love anything. And you've got a money stream coming from somewhere.; 5/27/19, 10:39 AM
Wilbur said...: I had an old professor in law school who had been and remained a practicing attorney, as were most of the faculty. 90% of his class time (Civil Pro and Evidence) was the telling of war stories, most of which had little to do with the subject taught. He was very popular with most students; in fact at the urging of students the school named something after him, some building or wing or something.

The best professor I had never stepped in a courtroom in his life, in fact, had never taken the bar exam. So, work experience is helpful but it isn't everything.; 5/27/19, 10:42 AM
chuck said...: Someday the administrators and staff will make all the money and have the lifetime positions while the teachers labor in underpaid obscurity. Will the professors fight the trend? It is already too late.; 5/27/19, 10:45 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "I believe that Ann has written here that during her time in the law school, she had to spend more and more time on stuff other than teaching and writing law review articles."

What I objected too was the way committee work became way more complicated and time consuming. The healthy interest in efficiency was replaced by a bureaucratic mindset. It was as though we were sentencing ourselves to hard labor and monitoring each other to make sure we were all serving our time, with ridiculous record-keeping responsibilities and the persistence of a belief that score was being kept and raises should be tied to things that did not substantively matter.; 5/27/19, 10:46 AM
gilbar said...: Nationally, the percentage of faculty members who are tenured or on the tenure track has been declining for decades,

doesn't this make sense, though? What is the point of college?
It is to provide salaries for Administrators. Any funds spent on teaching/research/etc is WASTED!; 5/27/19, 10:55 AM
rcocean said...: I've met few people who think "professor" is a title that deserves respect. Too many people since 1970, have gone to college and met real-life professors. My parents respected Professors, because they hadn't known any.; 5/27/19, 10:57 AM
Mark said...: To be clear, profesor/profesora is a courtesy title, not any kind of formal title.

There no prestige in the title "professor," although some may seem to believe so. Neither is it a participation trophy.

"Professor" is merely a title of courtesy and etiquette, like calling someone "Mister" or "Ma'am" or calling a judge "Your Honor" even when he is a stupid, ignorant, corrupt excuse for a human being, much less a lawyer. "Professor" has no more prestige than calling your adversary "Counsel" when in the courtroom, yet call them by their first name when out of court.

And also -- abolish tenure.; 5/27/19, 10:59 AM
John henry said...: Wilbur,

Is a "war story" like a "sea Story"?

We got a lot of war stories too in grad school and I found them generally very interesting and useful. In many cases, more useful than the regular book material.

For example, in a Marketing Research class in '78 my professor was the account manager for India Beer. At the time of my class they introducing a light beer called Medalla which has become very successful.

I learned more from him telling about what they were doing and why, than I ever would have learned from the book. For example how to do beer taste tests. You do them differently depending on the results you want.

Want the testees not to be able to pick out their favoite beer? Serve 4-5 samples, all very, very, cold. Want them to pick your beer as the favorite? 3 samples, normal beer temperature, your beer the middle one.

Just one of the many important things I learned in that class.

John Henry; 5/27/19, 11:02 AM
Mark said...: By the way, that courtesy is a two-way street. Anyone who deigns to call herself "Professor" should also refer to students as "Mister" and "Ms" when in the classroom.; 5/27/19, 11:03 AM
Temujin said...: Surrendering the 'professor' title to some academic staff will further confuse the students and public?

The students and public are already confused about how to refer to themselves or their kids. What gender they want to be this day or that. And how awful it is being white, or even worse, white, heterosexual men.

The people who spent the last 10 years working on getting everyone totally confused as to what they can say, when, and to whom they can safely say it, are now worried that we won't know if we should call them professors or idiots?; 5/27/19, 11:07 AM
Michael K said...: I think there are real advantages to both face to face and online.

SC Medical School had a program in medical education that I worked with. They offered a PhD but I was interested in the MS program. I worked with a couple of people on online medical post grad education, a big deal as not is required for licensure for both MDs and RNs. We worked on how to do it and developed some courses that involved discs for AV files (This was before broad band) and the user would log on and take a course with a quiz and the certificate would be mailed or could be printed.

At the Collage of Surgeons meeting that year, we had a presentation in a moderate sized room., So many signed up that they shifted us to a larger room but it was still SRO. One example was a baby with a congenital condition like Hirshprungs. The mother would give the history on video but clips could be edited so that asking the right questions would give you the right answers. If you didn't ask the right questions, you would miss important answers, etc.

Before we got ready for prime time, WebMD bought a somewhat similar system from somebody else for $300 million. I have not seen anything like what we planned show up but it dried up any money.

As for human interface, SC has some courses in local industrial parks. I fail to see the value of the brick and mortar and climbing wall/luxurious dorm model.; 5/27/19, 11:12 AM
AndyN said...: Nationally, the percentage of faculty members who are tenured or on the tenure track has been declining for decades, according to the American Association of University Professors.

A lot of us believe that quality of a university education has declined significantly. Is there a correlation between that decline and the decline in number of tenured faculty members? If you think that universities employ too few tenured faculty members, why don't you apply for a grant to study the negative effects of that trend? Of course, doing so would require you to admit that the quality of the service that your institution is selling to people has declined, and it will no doubt hurt the feelings of non-tenured staff, but one of the points of giving you tenure is to ensure that you can conduct controversial or unpopular research without fear of reprisal.

I'd bet my rent money that every member of Naomi Wolf's dissertation committee was a tenured professor. I'm positive that pretend Nobel Laureate and creator of the fraudulent hockey stick graph Michael Mann is a tenured professor. The list could go on and on, those are just the two that came off the top of my head. If you're concerned about the title professor meaning something, how about raising your voice when tenured professors make a public mockery of the concept of academic rigor?; 5/27/19, 11:13 AM
MadisonMan said...: My salary at UW is all externally funded, so perhaps I could become a Research Professor. But why do that? Why jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops for very little benefit to me?

Having the word 'professor' in front of you is essentially meaningless when you are out in the real world. I say that as the son, grandson and brother of Professors, and as the son and grandson of Asst Deans.

How much money is being wasted in floating this idea -- and what does it do for retention of productive staff? That's the only questions that need to be answered.; 5/27/19, 11:16 AM
Michael K said...: learned more from him telling about what they were doing and why, than I ever would have learned from the book. For example how to do beer taste tests. You do them differently depending on the results you want.

This was a lot of the model we followed in medical school. I finally wrote a couple of books describing it.

For practical cases, we employed models, a method pioneered by Howard Barrows, a faculty member when I was a student in the 1960s. It is now universal in medical education and in law schools' moot courts.; 5/27/19, 11:16 AM
John henry said...: Blogger Mark said...

By the way, that courtesy is a two-way street. Anyone who deigns to call herself "Professor" should also refer to students as "Mister" and "Ms" when in the classroom.

I used to have a lot of military people in my classes. Ranks from E-3 to 0-6 and everything in between. I discouraged wearing uniforms because I did a lot of class discussion and found that uniforms, and the disparity in ranks hindered it.

In the Navy "Mister" implies 01-03.

John Henry; 5/27/19, 11:19 AM
Wilbur said...: John Henry:

My objection to the constant use of war stories is that they had little or nothing to do with the class subject being taught. He was very entertaining and genial, but he wasn't teaching me Evidence or Civil Procedure.

Anecdotes are a great method of teaching, if used properly, but they can't substitute for "real" teaching just because he loved the tummy rubs from his students. Anyway, it was 40 years ago; he's dead and I did OK in my career in spite of him.; 5/27/19, 11:20 AM
blnelson2 said...: Tenure should be eliminated. It has been weaponized, and is now used to keep leftist "professors" safe from any dissent, safe from the consequences of their actions. It is now also used (refusal to grant it, that is) to keep anyone holding dissenting ideas out of the system; now leftist ideas at colleges and universities are the mainstream and any other idea is out-of-the-mainstream. That was not the original intent of the idea of tenure (originally it was to protect those holding dissenting non-mainstream ideas); and it actually turns that original intent on its head and is achieving the opposite of its desired effect. The best thing that could happen to students (short of getting the government out of education and education funding altogether) is to be exposed to non-leftist thoughts and ideas.; 5/27/19, 11:38 AM
Yancey Ward said...: It is just like the explosion of Associate Directors in corporations.; 5/27/19, 11:41 AM
Huisache said...: I'm a tenured professor in Texas. I've been involved in leadership of our faculty assembly for a number of years and get around a bit. Some schools in our state have been adopting titles like "professional professor" for non-tenure-track teaching faculty. Such positions come with a higher teaching load, no research requirements, and, of course, fireability.

The thing is, no one really gives a damn what comes out in your research. Most likely no one will ever even read it. The things that that will get you fired happen in the classroom, the faculty governance organization, or the public square. Make yourself a thorn in the side of the provost for offending some rich donor's kid, for sticking to your guns on academic affairs, or for exposing high-level mismanagement, and you'll find yourself in the crosshairs pretty quickly. And don't kid yourself. Having tenure doesn't mean you can't get fired. It just means that they have to ruin your life in order to do so.

The tenure system needs reform. I was a student too recently not to know that. But the erosion of tenure isn't occurring as a service to the public. It's occurring as a way for the highly paid, bloated, largely useless caste of administrators to get even more power, more prestige, and more money. The multiplication of moronic bureaucratic hoops to jump through and the ever-expanding sway of "institutional effectiveness" departments is part of the same picture.; 5/27/19, 11:44 AM
Huisache said...: I see a lot of comments about how tenure protects "leftism." Actually, when abused, it mostly just protects laziness. You get tenure and you're set for life, so long as you don't set your expectations too high. The pay gets higher and higher while the workload gets smaller and smaller.; 5/27/19, 11:55 AM
Greg Hlatky said...: . It has been weaponized, and is now used to keep leftist "professors" safe from any dissent, safe from the consequences of their actions.

Those demanding revolutionary change for the rest of us cling fiercely to their own secure positions.; 5/27/19, 11:57 AM
walter said...: Tenure can function as gatekeeper, sifting for conformists..or protection (to a degree) for "heretics".
See CAGW

"Institutions then offset those positions with instructors who operate on short-term appointments with heftier teaching loads, lower salaries and less academic freedom."
My Niece (early non-trad professor) teaches in UW system and had carte blanche in terms of setting up her curriculum in Physics. She's all in on liberal orthodoxy, so she will likely do well. She does lament the lack of preparedness in many students. But I bet she thinks it's a primary school funding issue..though she was home schooled.; 5/27/19, 12:12 PM
rehajm said...: As titles go I respect chef more than prof.; 5/27/19, 12:21 PM
Michael said...: I see they differentiate between Teaching Professor and Research Professor. Part of me says "Good", as there are different skill sets between the two and few can master both. The cynic in me knows that research grants are a huge income stream for universities so this is just another way to reduce teaching salaries.; 5/27/19, 1:12 PM
Narayanan said...: Is there "Tenure Ceremony" and making oath to Minerva or Sophia?; 5/27/19, 1:25 PM
rhhardin said...: Tenure to manure.; 5/27/19, 2:33 PM
FIDO said...: We pay our teachers to think, to give facts, and to uphold our cultural values.

Have they done even one of those jobs well?

If they Academy looks to the public they despise to defend them, it seems they are not smart enough to hold those positions in the first place.

The chickens are coming home to roost on that tower next to the lake.; 5/27/19, 3:45 PM
rcocean said...: Tenure was originally granted in order to provide professors with "Freedom to think". With Job security "Professor X" could spout his "wild and crazy ideas" without fear of being fired.

We all know this is a crock of shit in the USA. 95% of professors are leftists who don't stray an inch from the party line - or they're too dumb to have an original idea.

I suppose you can use it as a way to keep down salary costs, but I'm skeptical of that.; 5/27/19, 4:34 PM
rcocean said...: I don't really like bashing professors or teachers. I know many of them. And many of them are good, intelligent people, who do good jobs. But there are so many bad apples in academia its stinking up the whole barrel.; 5/27/19, 4:37 PM
Narr said...: At my alma mater and lifelong employer us (professional MLS or MLIS-holding) librarians were honored with "Faculty Rank and Status." This meant that we had to publish or perish, jump through tenure hoops including acquisition of a second graduate degree in something more respectable, and if you're really lucky or desperate (like me) you get a management position.

Think of it. You're already the lowest-paid faculty on the campus (female field and all that), your own discipline and departmental bias is that if you don't have a second masters or better you aren't serious, you may end up supervising others (with the INSANE levels of reporting required for everything), and when you show up to work on the Academic Senate or the Reaccreditation Committee too many of the teaching faculty look at you blankly and say, "Huh, a librarian can be a professor?" Plus, 8-4:30 workdays and no summers off.

But I gay-ron-tee the taxpayers got their money from me. I was used like a public utility.

Narr
Feel free to call me Professor Narr. I earned it.; 5/27/19, 5:06 PM
Fen said...: It's occurring as a way for the highly paid, bloated, largely useless caste of administrators to get even more power, more prestige, and more money.

If I made you Secretary of Education today, what would you do to fix the problem?; 5/27/19, 5:28 PM
Birkel said...: The Democratics created the federal Department of Education (by Jimmy Carter's Administration) so that a bunch of Democratics could be employed with high salaries. Those salaries fund Democratics who are running for office. It's a laundering operation.

More and more people with no discernible skills are employed as Democratics laundering money from the government to the Democratics Party. It's a brilliant scheme.

Governor Walker destroyed a similar configuration with Act 10.

Defund the Department of Education. Stop the federally funded student loan program. Deny the Democratics their make-work jobs. Professors will return to faculty governance, earn higher pay, and have more permanent faculty members.

It's for the children.; 5/27/19, 8:19 PM
Birkel said...: P.S. Accreditation is a racket. Stop that paperwork nonsense. Let the market decide which schools are worth supporting.; 5/27/19, 8:21 PM
Tina Trent said...: Do you want fries with that composition class?; 5/28/19, 5:02 AM
JAORE said...: Professorships for all that teach.

Anyone with a screw driver is an engineer.

All those who post on-line are journalists.

But manicurists need 2,000 hours of training and a license.; 5/28/19, 9:17 AM
MB said...: Rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

Fixing these problems would be easy: allow future students and their parents to discharge loans by bankruptcy, make universities responsible for some percentage of bad loans, a mandatory exit exam like the GRE or stricter, and mandatory reporting of relevant facts and figures, broken down by school and department.

Of course, none of these straightforward reforms has a chance of passing.; 5/28/19, 12:48 PM
MB said...: Also, create national exams that test for relevant skills and knowledge. Encourage poor students to study on their own and take online or in-person courses to pass these exams.
If they studied hard, starting in high school, and omitted the unnecessary stuff, most students could acquire the relevant knowledge in 2 or at most 3 years. This could be its own motivation.
University education in the US is often a scam, catering to upper middle-class people and their children, who are in on it (though they still love complaining). The exorbitant cost is a feature for them. Lower middle-class students go along because they know they'll work as indentured servants for the next two decades, so, they think, they might as well enjoy it.; 5/28/19, 1:01 PM
Timotheus said...: I recently left a tenured associate professorship at a tier 2 university to assume an instructional (full) professorship at a tier 1 institution. Yes, I lost my tenure, but (a) I'm making more money, and (b) I have a long-term contract that will take me to retirement age. I get to do what I want (teach) and only have to publish when I want and serve on the committees that interest me. It was a good choice for me, although certainly wouldn't be for everyone.; 5/28/19, 2:41 PM
Roger Sweeny said...: Most tenured professors consider inequality a problem. Calling all teaching staff professors decreases inequality. So tenured professors are for it? Or is everyone conservative about what they know?; 5/29/19, 11:20 AM