This is soooo good. When I talk to people in my community, I give similar analogies.  Yours are perfect!    Thanks.

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Originally posted by: Outward Bound
"So, if Shelby really wants USM to be run as a business, tenure is the first thing he should be fighting to maintain. It offers the univesity a stable work force (faculty) who will turn out the finished product (educated individuals and research that expands the boundaries of knowledge).
Comments? Suggestions?
 "

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Excellent stuff, Outward Bound! Bravo.

Just one comment, regarding that last paragraph. It is arguable that using a non-rank community college model would provide stable work force at a lower price. That's the model Roy Klumb has in mind. Why pay for doctors when all you really need are nurses? Why pay for an engineer when all you really need is a draftsman? Why pay for a master plumber when all you think you need is a gasket?

How do you counter that sort of argument? What is the real benefit of a rank-tenure system?

a recent article by Stanley Fish in the Chronicle of Higher Education makes some interesting points about talking with non-academics.  Some samples:

"First of all, it won't work to explain the academic world to nonacademics while standing on one foot. That is, you can't in a short time teach people to value activities they have never engaged in, or persuade them that if research into the ways and byways of Byzantine art is not supported, the world will be poorer. Remember, it takes four or more years to initiate students into the pleasures of the academic life, and in most cases the effort is not successful. Why should anyone think that the lessons could be taught and accepted in 20 minutes?

If telling our story in the hope that its terms will be adopted by those who have never lived it won't work, neither will the attempt to translate it into their terms by retelling it in the vocabulary of business or venture capitalism.

Colleges and universities surely must observe good business practices in the relevant areas (purchasing, service contracts, construction, maintenance), but colleges are not businesses. They do not drop product lines that have lost market share. They do not dismiss employees who cease to be productive or run into a bad patch. They do not monitor every moment of every working day. They will wait years for a research program to pan out and won't consider it a breach of contract if it doesn't."

"Instead of defending classics or French literature or sociology, ask those who think they need defending what they know about them, and if the answer is "not much" (on the model of "don't know much about the Middle Ages"), suggest, ever so politely, that they might want to go back to school. Instead of trying to justify your values (always a weak position), assume them and assume too your right to define and protect them. And when you are invited to explain, defend, or justify, just say no.

But again, will it work? It just might (I offer no guarantees), and for two reasons. First, it will be surprising, and, because surprising, disconcerting: Legislators, governors, and trustees don't expect academics to hit back or (even better) hit first, and at the least you will have gotten them off balance. Second, they quite possibly will like it, will like being challenged rather than toadied to, will like being taken seriously enough to engage with, will like being party to a conversation of the kind that fills our days, will like, in short, being spoken to as if they were academics.

The attraction that bashing the academy has for politicians and others has a source in the anti-intellectualism that has always been a part of American life. It is our version of the no-nonsense empiricism and distrust of eloquence bequeathed to us by the British and refined into an art in the "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" spirit of Western expansion.

But that same anti-intellectualism has its flip side in an abiding fascination with those who devote themselves to what is called (I despise the phrase, but it is sometimes useful) the life of the mind. Nonacademics either want to beat us up or have dinner with us. If we don't let them do the first -- if we fight back with all we have and all we are -- we'll have more chances to do the second; and a familiarity not rooted in contempt might in time pay off."

Chronicle of Higher Education, March 5, 2004

 
Sorry for the length, but it's an interesting perspective on strategy.

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Originally posted by: Invictus
"

Why pay for doctors when all you really need are nurses? Why pay for an engineer when all you really need is a draftsman? Why pay for a master plumber when all you think you need is a gasket?

"

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I've given this a lot of thought over the last couple of days. Here is how you counter those.

Why pay for a doctor, well a doctor is the only one who can prescribe medication, nurses can't. The doctor is the one trained to perform surgery,nurses assist the surgeon, not perform the actual operation. And the nurse is only as good as the doctor she/he works for.

Why pay an engineer when all you need is a draftsman? Same principle here, the draftsman draws up the plans, the engineer, who has the training then implements those plans.

Why hire a plumber when all you think you need is a gasket?
Well, what if it isn't the gasket, what if there are major unseen problems in your plumbing? Only a master plumber is trained to find those problems. Unless of course you like a flooded house.

These comments really hit home with me. I am by profession a Physical Therapist ASSISTANT. And I am licensed by my state. While I can do Physical Therapy, I cannot do my job without the knowledge and training a Physical Therapist has. Yes, I do my job and I do it well, but without the other, I am useless. Just like the nurse who cannot prescribe medication, but dispenses it. Just like the draftsman who needs the engineer to see his project thru, and just like the master plumber who can detect major problems, hopefully before they happen.

Each needs the other. Where would our students be without qualified tenured professors?

None of your analogies are accurate.  None of the professions you listed have a guarantee of continuing employment.  None are entitled to a hearing before they can be discharged.  None have the freedom to criticize their leadership.

Tenure is indeed unique.

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Originally posted by: Try Me
 In fact tenure here at USM seems to be a gaurantee to slack off."

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This statement is unfair to a great many people.  Real scholars are going to do their work, lazy people are not.  Did you not read the earlier posts about post-tenure review?

Just before I read your post, I was thinking of a dear friend of mine who was a well-known scholar.  He died because he would not take time from his projects to go to the doctor.  The night before his death, I am told, he was lying in the hospital fretting over a big project (and his project was Luxor Temple, so it was a BIG project!)  People like Gary Stringer and Noel Polk and many others work at that level of dedication.  If you take away tenure at USM or in Mississippi you are not going to get a more productive faculty, you are going to drive away your best people (well, assuming there are any best people left.)

Tenure is part of the employment package at the majority of universities. A few bottom feeding university have a contract system without tenure. This argument about tenure is being presented as if the critics of tenure are in the real world and faculty members are in Disney World. The simple fact is that any university that wishes to become even a well-known regional university (which USM is) has to have a competitive tenure package to get even mediocre faculty. To hire and retain faculty who do research that gets USM national attention, tenure is a basic component. Any discussion of not having tenure will scare candidates away. If USM supporters wish to have a WORLD CLASS UNIVERSITY, then tenure will have to be a part of the package. If USM supporters do not care if USM drops to the level of the bottom feeding universities, carry on with the campaign being waged by SFT and the Board. By the way, the sports programs in universities without tenure really suck the big one.

Exactly, Cossack - the locals around here who appear to detest tenure appear to have no idea how important it is to recruit decent faculty. I get the impression that many in the Hattiesburg area have NO CLUE how the university system works. As controversial as tenure may be to some, it is an integral component of any university. The long-reaching effects of USM and Mississippi becoming a guinea pig for the breakdown of tenure as we know it could be disastrous. But then again, some conspiracy theorists might argue that that is what Roy has in mind for USM anyway - I just don't know if that idiot understands it could take down his beloved Starkville College with time as well.

To Ram:

Pick any Division One football school that is publically funded and they have tenure. At least I do not know of any that do not have tenure. Florida Gulf Coast in Fort Meyers FL is the only one I know that does not have a tenure system. Likely there are some small private schools that do not have tenure. To put this in perspective, without tenure in place at USM, SFT's large butt would have hit the road years ago.

 

Originally posted by: USM Sympathizer

" . . . it would be one thing for Harvard to abolish tenure, because faculty would still want to go there.  However, if the state of Mississippi abolishes tenure -- and it is easy to see Roy Klumb favoring this "innovation" -- doing so would only confirm (and indeed worsen) the poor reputation the state has in the rest of academe.  Klumb seems determined, in many ways, to destroy the actual strengths MS currently possesses."

First Ant at the Picnic would like to add a bit of information which might be of historical interest to readers of this thread. Specifically, Mr. Klumb's publicly stated view on tenure dates back to at least June 12, 2003. In a letter-to-the-editor of the Clarion-Ledger on that date, Klumb said, "As a member of the College Board, I cannot help but weigh in on the subject . . . After less than 18 months, thanks to that arcane rule of tenure, Dr. Henry was eased back into the faculty pool . . . . Dr. Thames is now being pushed into opening up a dialogue with the faculty through the same Dr. Myron Henry, and sitting down and working out the alleged differences between the two groups. What a joke! And, I would be laughing if this were not so serious. My advice to Dr. Thames is, to borrow a phrase, "Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead. To those who cannot embrace ideas focused on student-centered ideas that are effective, efficient, and productive, I say: It's time to retire . . . ."  [Roy Klumb, Gulfport]

I referenced part of this on another thread previously, but it seems to be more appropriately included on this thread. A rebuttal letter from a Clarion-Ledger reader appeared on June 19, 2003, but I do not have a copy of that letter immediately available.