On the value of the PhD and tenure

Posted on by Iansã

I should write an article for Academe on this. People in their effort to be kind to the NTT are ending up speaking ill of their fields. A fundamental point, perhaps, is that people, including alleged progressives and union members, forget that tenure is about INTEGRITY. The AAUP says academic freedom and shared governance but integrity is also a key word. (Example: voting independently.)

So I am still trying to come up with the best and most diplomatic argument for hiring tenure track/tenured research faculty. Realize I am for tenure track/tenure for all and I’m for all faculty engaging in both teaching/research (even if not research *production*), but we’re really low on people with research programs, who can be graduate faculty, who can be fully functional at all levels of university service, who are current on developments re curriculum and pedagogy in field nationally and internationally, who can participate in the undergraduate research initiative, etc. I.E. I want, and believe in the value of having at least some professors at the university, even when other kinds of people may be good at teaching certain courses.

Every time, the response is that there can be non-PhDs who are good at teaching certain advanced courses and who have good ideas on some things. I should hope to get one such, have them teach the instructors’ 4/4 instead of the professors’ 3/3, and acquiesce to a future with almost no research faculty. So people SERIOUSLY would do this to their own programs? I’d like someone with good enough academic and bureaucratic Spanish and English to be able to come in as a full partner on a grant with me, for instance. I’d like someone with a research record the Board of Regents will recognize as valid for a co-PI on such a grant. Everyone is telling me that in theory, I could hire an MA with those interests and capabilities, and the BoR might see them as competitive as, let’s say, a prize-winning PhD biologist.

The reality is the kind of MA people imagine I can hire does not exist here and would be hard to import. The only realistic way to get people who want to and can function as full-on university faculty, do all the things faculty can do, is to run a national search for a research faculty person and offer the possibility of tenure. Otherwise, people just don’t come. And we need to have at least some people with the kinds of skills and commitments I mention. I am amazed so many faculty discount those needs and argue in favor of MA/NTT instead. For my unit, at least, they recommend this situation, although so far I haven’t seen them request it for theirs.

If you achieve for your department what you recommend to me, all advanced teaching and all service will fall to you. You will have to over-function in other ways you do not imagine yet. There are many things you will be unable to do. Do you want that for yourself, your research program, your department, and your field? No? Then stop denigrating the PhD and research. It doesn’t help your contingent faculty for you to do so, either, because by doing it you collude in the devaluation of your discipline and the justification of low pay for all, and especially for contingent faculty in your field.

(And again, I’m not talking about possible solutions for me as an individual. I can hear you: if the grant is valid, it can be done across universities; if you don’t have time to do all the publicity for everything, just don’t do it; and on, and on. But I’m not talking about solutions for me. I’m talking about what it takes to have a program.)

I said to the online chat group:

I’m going to be quiet and write a magazine article, or something, on the outrageous statements of faculty who believe research faculty are not needed in my field. Before I go, I will say the following.

  1. Right now, I’m scheduling. Half of the upper-level courses in the catalogue can’t be taught because we don’t have enough people. Technically, the instructors could teach a lot of them, would be SACS-legal to teach them, but they won’t because these courses are above the level where they feel comfortable. They are here to teach grammar, basic composition, conversation, and sometimes language for the professions, but not literature, linguistics, or cultural studies, they say, and certainly not to direct research projects or create and direct internships and service learning projects, they say. THEY say that. And it’s a fact that they’re not SACS-legal to teach advanced seniors or graduate students. This is part of why we can’t realistically remain so PhD-sparse.
  2. I want to replace the missing PhDs and I want to offer tenure. Not mere security of employment/long contracts, tenure. The reason is not prestige and power. In AAUP terms the reasons are academic freedom and shared governance, but the term that comes to mind is integrity. For example: in some faux-egalitarian way, back when we still voted on things, we had instructors and NTT voting on tenure-track hires and tenure. They always looked at or consulted first with an administrator to see how to vote. That was partly for favor and partly because they didn’t feel fully confident evaluating the portfolio. Some people are always brave and think for themselves, but I’d like tenure for all so everyone can stand on their integrity.
  3. I am still convinced that those who say “oh, you don’t need PhDs” and “oh, they don’t need tenure” want tenure for themselves and research faculty in their own fields.

Axé.

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