A few far leftists? The case whether tenure should stay or go depends precisely on what one considers the state of higher education to be today. While I’m sure you’re not thrilled with the status quo, I don’t think you appreciate anywhere close to how bad the situation is, and that the war on tenure actually has to become far more radical than it is now.
The question isn’t whether there are a few bad teachers in higher ed that tenure protects. The issue is what tenure and the culture associated with it have created, namely:
- a situation where being a well-read, thoughtful college graduate does absolutely nothing for one’s career prospects (cf. Marty Nemko in The Chronicle of Higher Education)
- a situation where – haha – try getting tenure now. Hmm, it almost looks like administrators (keep labor costs low) and tenured faculty (employ adjuncts, they’re no competition within a department) have a common interest in a shared corruption. (of course there’s no empirical evidence backing this; I detail the consequences of this conspiracy theory of mine here: On a Letter of Leo Strauss to Wilmoore Kendall, 5.14.1961)
Exactly what is the import of academia upon the United States of America? If it is the case that colleges only exist to put more of the population into debt, why shouldn’t a tenured faculty be a target? That’s the problem with the case you’re making: if someone can make the case that higher education is a blight, inasmuch as all it churns out are self-satisfied liberals and conservatives who are materialistic at best, then isn’t attacking the state of the faculty justified, esp. as it is a weak link?
