[209] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Northeastern to review tenure?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aimee L Smith)
Thu Apr 26 23:13:06 2001
Message-Id: <200104270311.XAA28115@gold.mit.edu>
To: "Sourav K. Mandal" <Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com>
cc: mit-talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 26 Apr 2001 22:20:03 EDT."
<200104270220.WAA02149@dichotomy.dyn.dhs.org>
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Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 23:11:56 -0400
From: Aimee L Smith <alsmith@MIT.EDU>
The myth that MIT is concerned about teaching
quality is easily debunked when one learns that teaching
ability is not at ALL a factor in tenure decisions.
(At least I am sure of this for my department, course 3.)
I know a professor who had a whole section in his folder
on his teaching strategies and results and was told that this
section was not considered at all. The teaching award is well
known as the "kiss of death" for untenured faculty. (Teaching
was not considered for tenure at my undergrad university either.)
Tenure is decided based on who makes a novel and important
contribution to their field such that they are one of the
leaders of their field. Tenure is already a very political
process. Removing tenure after some point makes the entire
career politicized in a way that may be very detrimental to
research innovation. It would certainly be detrimental to
creative intellectual freedom as Universities will be pressured
to fire those with unpopular ideas from various interest groups
of society, such as the most powerful ones: Multi-national
corporations.
There are very few places in society where one can be their own boss.
Even with tenure, this isn't entirely true since one still needs
to raise research funds. Funding already serves as a means to
corral researchers into working on projects primarily focused
on making profitable products for industry- electronic devices,
software, pharmaceuticals, you name it... now add to that the
pressure of pleasing some administrative body. Sounds like
Stalin would love this idea!
There are many words that I might apply to professors at MIT,
whether pre- or post-tenure, but "lazy" certainly is not one of them...
If you want to improve teaching, why not make it a condition
for tenure before eliminating tenure? As far as the research side
goes, most people enjoy their research and want to be an active
contributer to their field for their own satisfaction, love
of their work and, let's be honest, more often than not, ego. To make
more "slots" for young researchers, we could as a society, decide to
fund more research beyond just the hidden subsidies for industry via
DOD, DOE and NIH. (Which makes me wonder, why is socialism fine
when it is socializing the risks for big business and welfare
for corporations, but NOT when it is for socializing the risks
that human beings face? 70% of DOE funding goes to fossil fuel
and nuclear industries... aren't the fossil fuel industries
"mature" enough to not need hand-outs any more? Only 5% goes to
all renewables, and even that will soon be much less.)
I think it is a disturbing trend that tenure is under attack. Fascism
is definitely on the rise. And remember, only *you* can prevent
corporate hegemony!
Aimee
