Tests & School

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by craigepo

What's the old cliche? Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

An irony of this quote is that H. L. Mencken devoted so much energy trying to teach Americans how to be just like him.

[nmap]

Originally Posted by craigepo

Are there genetic/upbringing differences between conservatives and liberals that would cause different choices when choosing a profession?

Interesting idea. Presumably, it takes a certain amount of mental horsepower to earn a doctorate, which is the ticket to becoming a professor. That's partly genetic (nature) and partly upbringing (nurture) according to my understanding. Maybe both factors are at work. It would be fascinating to study it.

But I suspect that much of the effect is due to the tendency many people have to strive to fit in with others. Going from high school graduate to doctorate takes 10 years or more of schooling. If we suppose that most of the faculty are liberal, then the student faces some choices. They can slowly adjust their thinking to align with their teachers. They can smile, nod, and lie through their teeth about their views while keeping the truth close to their vest. Or, they can stand up for their particular views, which could result in a variety of problems.

I believe it is fair to say that the great majority of students will adopt the predominant view of those around them.

Perhaps a slight rephrasing of the problem is worthwhile.

"How many people can resist the views of those they are surrounded by for a decade or more and keep their own views secret throughout that time?'

[PedOncoDoc]

Originally Posted by nmap

"How many people can resist the views of those they are surrounded by for a decade or more and keep their own views secret throughout that time?'

Or one could ask, "How many people, with tenets and beliefs radically different and, at times, in direct opposition to those of their superiors, can earn a prestigious title/position?"

If you don't think like those who reside higher in the ivory tower they will act to make sure you stay beneath them, because young men and women aren't responsible/smart enough to hear differences of opinion from authority figures and make up their own minds. And, in the opinion of the professors, anyone who does not think like them must be of inferior intellect, because, well, they are professors and those other guys aren't. (Stupid, huh?)

[Richard]

What's the old cliche? Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. --G.B. Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists" in Man and Superman (1903)

Context is important when considering misciting such a quote and its implications.

FWIW - I had some professors who would fit the definition as cited but had many more who would not, who were excellent people, teachers and mentors, and who sought to foster in us the concept of how to think vs what to think.

Richard's $.02

[Penn]

Are there genetic/upbringing differences between conservatives and liberals that would cause different choices when choosing a profession?

This statement leads me to conclude you attended NU in Southern France; the University made famous for its continuous 40,000 year legacy, usage, contribution to art and humnoid development.

[GratefulCitizen]

Plinked away at college off and on for the better part of a decade before getting my degree.
Didn't encounter very many "liberal" instructors.

While at the Colorado School of Mines, "liberals" were rare in the faculty and student body.
The school had entire halls dedicated to subjects such as metullargy and petroleum engineering.
All of the humanities and non-economic social sciences were crammed into one floor of the smallest hall on campus.
The male/female ratio among students was about 5 to 1.
One dept made bumper stickers which read: strip mining prevents forest fires.

Finished my degree at a small college in Grand Junction, Colorado.
The physical sciences/math dept was headed by a guy whose former career was at NASA, and later by a guy who had formerly had a long career as an engineer.
Most of my courses were instructed by guys who previously had careers out in the "real world": several former engineers, former military, the afformentioned NASA guy, and another who worked on the ABM stuff (which we don't have ) at what used to be Army Missle Command.

However, the few "liberals" encountered were, without exception, career academics.
YMMV.

[Sigaba]

Source is here.

OSU's President Gordon Gee challenging faculty tenure at nation's biggest campus
By Associated Press
February 04, 2010, 3:43PM

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The leader of the country's largest university thinks it's time to re-examine how professors are awarded tenure, a type of job-for-life protection virtually unknown outside academia.

Ohio State University President Gordon Gee says the traditional formula that rewards publishing in scholarly journals over excellence in teaching and other contributions is outdated and too often favors the quantity of a professor's output over quality.

"Someone should gain recognition at the university for writing the great American novel or for discovering the cure for cancer," he told The Associated Press. "In a very complex world, you can no longer expect everyone to be great at everything."

Plenty of people have raised the issue over the years, but Gee is one of the few American college presidents with the reputation and political prowess — not to mention the golden touch at fundraising — who might be able to begin the transformation.

Still, some professors are already skeptical.

"The idea of awarding tenure based on teaching makes me anxious," said Jennifer Higginbotham, an English professor at Ohio State who's up for tenure in three years. By then, she will need to publish a book she's writing about conceptions of girlhood in the Middle Ages to have any chance at the promotion.

"There's a feeling, I think, that good teachers are a dime a dozen," said Higginbotham, 32. "I'm not sure what you'd have to do to distinguish yourself enough as a teacher to get tenure."

Tenure, which makes firing and other discipline difficult if not impossible, can seem ridiculously generous to outsiders. But the job protection gives professors the freedom to express ideas and conduct studies without fear of reprisal.

Tenure review, which took its current form in the 1940s, typically emphasizes publications over teaching and sometimes weighs whether a professor brings in research grants. Besides job protection, tenure also figures into salaries. A full professor with tenure at Ohio State earns about $126,000 annually.

The late Ernest Boyer, a former chancellor of New York's state university system, raised some of same issues in his groundbreaking 1990 book, "Reconsidering Scholarship."

A few universities have taken steps towards Boyer's model, including Portland State University and Western Carolina University.

At California State University at Monterey Bay, professors are graded on their teaching, research, service to the community and service to the university. Their teaching must be rated at least "commendable" — the second highest rating.

"We're asking faculty to look at their teaching really as an area of scholarship, just like they would their research," said Marsha Moroh, dean of the school's college of science, media arts and technology.

Gee is not yet giving specific examples of how a reformed tenure system would work. In order to make sweeping changes, he would need cooperation from faculty and administrators across the university system.

Taking on tenure will be the third big academic undertaking for Gee, who was hired away from Vanderbilt University in 2007 for his second stint at Ohio State after a term in the 1990s. Time magazine last year named him the country's best college president.

The 65-year-old is seemingly omnipresent on campus, striding from event to event in his trademark bow tie and horn-rimmed glasses at a pace that exhausts younger aides. He's up daily at 4:30 a.m. to exercise and stays busy into the evenings, popping into student parties or attending athletic events.

Gee earlier reorganized Ohio State's arts-and-sciences division and switched the school from a calendar based on quarters to one arranged by semester. Both changes ruffled plenty of feathers.

He raised a record $1.2 billion at Vanderbilt and is aiming for a record $2.5 billion at Ohio State.

Then there's the little matter of keeping tabs on one of the nation's biggest athletic departments and its outsized football program at a school with a total statewide enrollment of more than 63,000.

Gee said a new approach to tenure is needed to ensure the university stays relevant to students and the outside world. The recession has helped highlight the importance of higher education to the economy, he said, so now is the right time to make big changes.

"The universities of the 21st century are going to be the smokestacks of the century," Gee said, referring to the heavy industry that once dominated the American economy. "The notion of the large, massive public university that can exist in isolated splendor is dead."

One challenge is the complexity of big universities, which have numerous divisions accustomed to doing things their own way. Ohio State has more than 100 academic units capable of granting tenure.

"In effect, there are a hundred different sets of criteria for granting promotion or evaluating an individual faculty member's case," said Tim Weber, a longtime music professor and chairman of the university's faculty council.

The pressure to get tenure is also greater as universities rely more on part-time faculty and non-tenure track professors. While the number of tenure track positions grew by 7 percent between 1975 and 2007, the number of non-tenure track jobs more than tripled, according to the American Association of University Professors.

"There are many ways faculty members spend their time that may have been very important five years ago but may not be as important now," said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education. "Maybe we need to free them up so their time can be directed in ways that have an impact on students."

Gee is the country's highest-paid public university president with an annual income of more than $1.5 million, including salary, retirement and deferred compensation.

His office is crammed with Ohio State memorabilia that includes a Gordon Gee bobblehead toy, but the first thing that grabs a visitor's attention is the framed poster of John Belushi from the 1978 college party film "Animal House."

The next poster to grab the eye is a quotation: "If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."

MOO, professors who take teaching as a primary responsibility should be rewarded if they do that job well.

Even so, I do not foresee "publish or perish" being rebooted to say "teach and/or publish or perish."

FWIW, every time I encounter the word "transformation," I check to make sure my wallet is still in my pocket.

Originally Posted by Sigaba

From the New York Times on line edition. Source is here."Why Are Professors Liberal?" is available here.
“The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope and Reforms” is available here.

Thanks. Now I have a lot of homework to do.

I've added those to my copy of The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America to be read.

[ZonieDiver]

Originally Posted by craigepo

What's the old cliche? Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

No offense to any teachers. But, there is a hell of a lot of difference between teaching a business class and running a business.

Are there genetic/upbringing differences between conservatives and liberals that would cause different choices when choosing a profession?

"I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!"

SF = Those who can and do - and also teach!

[craigepo]

"Context is important when considering misciting such a quote and its implications."
Richard, are you saying that I miscited this, thereby changing the meaning of the original, or misapplied the language to the discussion? Either way I would disagree, but just curious.

"This statement leads me to conclude you attended NU in Southern France; the University made famous for its continuous 40,000 year legacy, usage, contribution to art and humnoid development."
Penn---my use of a question mark was intended to mean imply a question, not a statement. My apologies.

"I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!"
SF = Those who can and do - and also teach! "
ZD---Aw, a little Rooster Cogburn. Indeed, SF is a unit whose members can both do and teach. Which, in my experience, is not a very common trait in academia. I am sure others have had other experience.

Again, my good friends, I do not mean to insult or denigrate. Just lending my personal observations to the discussion.

[ZonieDiver]

Originally Posted by craigepo

"Context is important when considering misciting such a quote and its implications."
Richard, are you saying that I miscited this, thereby changing the meaning of the original, or misapplied the language to the discussion? Either way I would disagree, but just curious.

"This statement leads me to conclude you attended NU in Southern France; the University made famous for its continuous 40,000 year legacy, usage, contribution to art and humnoid development."
Penn---my use of a question mark was intended to mean imply a question, not a statement. My apologies.

"I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!"
SF = Those who can and do - and also teach! "
ZD---Aw, a little Rooster Cogburn. Indeed, SF is a unit whose members can both do and teach. Which, in my experience, is not a very common trait in academia. I am sure others have had other experience.

Again, my good friends, I do not mean to insult or denigrate. Just lending my personal observations to the discussion.

No offense taken in this quarter, Your Honor! I love a lively discussion, opposing opinions, intelligent banter among true professionals. After a high school teaching career that began almost 35 years ago - I know that quote is all too often TOO true.

On a side note, I anxiously await the Cohen Bros. take on "True Grit" - I hope that line remains, as well as the line "The Duke" said in reply. (I hope they can find an actor to fill his "bad guy" shoes.)

[Razor]

My question isn't what should a professor have to do to earn tenure, but rather why should they be granted tenure in the first place?

[nmap]

Originally Posted by Razor

My question isn't what should a professor have to do to earn tenure, but rather why should they be granted tenure in the first place?

In theory - but not necessarily in practice - those who have tenure have the "freedom to teach" and the "freedom to learn". Thus, a tenured professor could take different (or even novel) approaches to teaching and in their research. So a tenured professor of sociology might study the problem of crime, determine that the kind of gun control that involves consistently hitting ones' target tends to reduce crime, and have no fear that the college will fire him for saying the unpopular thing. Likewise, a tenured professor might incorporate such a finding in their teaching.

Unfortunately, there are some who abuse such freedom. They're the ones who give tenure such a bad name.

However - the old-style tenure that implied secure employment for life is dying out. Post-tenure review can result in the termination of an unproductive faculty member. The shrinkage or elimination of a program can produce the same results.

I guess it all depends on how much one thinks that the academic - whether in the role of teacher or researcher - should be protected from the organization.

Rhetorical question: Suppose a QP who had extensive experience in various lands of the Middle East became a college professor. Would he be permitted to state his views and experiences clearly on the typical college campus? Should he be protected from firing in the interest of encouraging diversity of thought? Would the research he performed result in a richer and better body of literature because it incorporated his experiences?

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Razor

My question isn't what should a professor have to do to earn tenure, but rather why should they be granted tenure in the first place?

IMO, this is a good question that academics should address more often. Too often, the phrase "academic freedom" is tossed about as the justification for tenure without an explanation of what that phrase means.

FWIW, the American Association of University Professors has posted its 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure here. The statement is available in PDF format here.

A recent editorial in the on-line edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education sought to distinguish "academic freedom" from the professional and ethical responsibilities that educators/professors have. The editorial, available here, points out that the former is not a blanket excuse for ignoring the latter.

December 9, 2009
The Limits of Academic Freedom

By Gary A. Olson

Last summer I wrote a column attempting to clarify the meaning of shared governance (The Chronicle, July 24, 2009). Since then, some readers have requested that I do the same for academic freedom.

It's a particularly timely request, given that the American Association of University Professors recently announced a campaign to enhance academic freedom at public universities.

Most of us in academe cherish the protections afforded by academic freedom, but too many are unclear as to its limits. I have known colleagues who believed that academic freedom allows them to say anything they want, to anyone, in any venue, or to engage in behavior that most observers would assume to be inappropriate in any other workplace.

In fact, academic freedom has been claimed as an excuse for the most abusive and uncollegial behavior—shouting at colleagues, publicly berating students or staff members, defaming supervisors or other university administrators, shirking professional duties. One colleague even told me that academic freedom would protect her even if she indulged in slander and character assassination. "So long as you believe that what you are saying is the truth," she said, "then you are fully protected by academic freedom." (Needless to say, what a person "believes" is hardly an appropriate defense for violating a law.)

Department heads have told me countless stories of how academic freedom has become the generic excuse for any number of irresponsible acts. One chair described a senior professor who missed a substantial number of her classes. When confronted with evidence of her absenteeism, she told her chair that as an academic she had the freedom to conduct her courses in any way she deemed appropriate.

"I tried to explain that as an employee she has certain contractual obligations and that academic freedom did not free her from those responsibilities," the department head explained. "But it took the dean and, finally, the provost to convince her that not only did she have no such freedom but that she would be jeopardizing her future employment if her absenteeism persisted."

Another department head said one of her professors managed to avoid teaching his course the entire quarter by assigning a graduate research assistant to "facilitate discussions." The professor never showed up in class after the first day. In effect, the graduate student was forced to teach the course in addition to carrying out her research duties. When undergraduates brought the situation to the department head's attention, the professor angrily insisted he was protected by academic freedom and threatened to sue if the chair pursued the issue.

I know of yet another incident in which a fistfight erupted between two colleagues at a faculty meeting, resulting in bruises and a bloody nose. Both later contended during a formal hearing that they were "covered" by academic freedom and that the university had no recourse beyond reprimanding them for disrupting an official departmental meeting.

The practice of citing academic freedom to condone a limitless range of bad behavior has begun to take on the flavor of that hackneyed student excuse: The dog ate my paper (or, nowadays, My computer crashed). The magical incantation—"I'm protected by academic freedom"—is thought to offer instant indemnity. In reality, academic freedom, like tenure itself, is not a blanket protection.

The modern concept of academic freedom has two meanings. First, it refers to the right of an institution to manage its own curriculum and academic affairs without governmental interference. Colleges may determine, for example, what subject matter gets taught and who can teach it; establish their own admission criteria and graduation requirements; and develop their own academic mission and priorities. That is an important feature of American higher education. It establishes a crucial separation of power that discourages government from dictating that universities adopt particular positions or promote specific causes, and it prevents government from using educational institutions as part of a propaganda apparatus.

The second meaning of academic freedom involves the concept that faculty members may engage in research on controversial subjects (and, by extension, discuss those subjects in their classrooms) without fear of reprisal. This refers specifically to academic subjects and is not a blanket protection for any and all speech in any venue. As the AAUP's well-known statement on academic freedom cautions, professors "should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject."

The distinction between speech related to one's discipline, on the one hand, and utterances about extra-disciplinary matters, on the other, is key to understanding academic freedom. Without the protections afforded by academic freedom, some scholars might fear for their jobs were they to challenge treasured assumptions in their fields, oppose well-established intellectual traditions, rewrite commonly accepted historical narratives, create artistic works that offend some sensibilities, or conduct scientific experiments that run counter to some people's ethical codes.

Academic freedom, then, facilitates scholarship and teaching by eliminating that concern over personal safety. Institutions benefit from the system because their faculty members may go on to produce groundbreaking work that brings greater distinction to the institutions. But a college or university has no comparable incentive to protect extra-disciplinary speech because such discourse is peripheral to the normal workings of the campus.

Because academic freedom is specifically intended to foster the free exchange of ideas within a community of scholars, it does not protect us from other types of utterances and behavior, such as slander or libel, bullying co-workers, lying on a curriculum vitae, or conducting one's classes in irresponsible ways.

The AAUP reminds us that as professors we are both private citizens and officers of our institutions. When speaking as citizens (perhaps at a political rally, say) we should be immune from being disciplined by the institution for our speech, but when speaking in our unique capacity as representatives of the institution—as scholars and teachers in our disciplines—we have an obligation to exercise caution in what we say and how we say it. In the latter role, according to the AAUP, our "special position in the community imposes special obligations" because our words are likely to be construed to represent the official position of the institution rather than our own personal views.

Some people confuse the constitutional concept of freedom of speech with the less grandiose notion of academic freedom, but they are two distinct concepts. Academic freedom is limited to the confines of academic discourse while free speech is a broad constitutional right central to our democratic system of government.

But even free speech has its limits. The constitutional right of free speech is not meant to protect each and every utterance regardless of context (yelling "fire" in a crowded theater when no such danger exists, engaging in "hate speech," or threatening a police officer). It is intended to protect you from being incarcerated by the state for expressing your views.

Academic freedom is a right we should all cherish because it ensures an environment of free inquiry. That is precisely why we must guard against attempts to make the concept so limitless, so capacious, that it loses its power to protect the academic enterprise. When academic freedom becomes all things to all people, then it becomes nothing at all.

Gary A. Olson is provost and vice president for academic affairs at Idaho State University and co-editor, with John W. Presley, of the newly published "The Future of Higher Education: Perspectives From America's Academic Leaders" (Paradigm).

[Richard]

Richard, are you saying that I miscited this, thereby changing the meaning of the original, or misapplied the language to the discussion? Either way I would disagree, but just curious.

Shaw was using sarcasm in that bit of dramatic dialogue and the lines actually do not reflect his view of education - I did not think you were using the quote in the same context.

Were you?

Richard