Wasn't the question an "incentive" for "undertaking extended education"? I'm saying that salaries of the majority of academics in the USA -- who are either un-tenured or not even on the tenure track, much less promoted to full professorship -- compare unfavorably to most occupations that demand comparable or much less education. There exists practically *no monetary incentive* to study Art, Dance, Theater, English, History, Philosophy, Classics, Journalism, etc. In fact, there are *many financial & other disincentives* for doing so, especially for Ph.D. programs.
As of now, the nationwide attrition rate in Ph.D. programs (= the rate of grad students abandoning degree programs) is 50%, according to Barbara E. Lovitts and Cary Nelson (at <http://www.aaup.org/ND00Lovi.htm>). If you survive a graduate program, you face the following: "According to a recent nationwide study by the Modern Language Association, only 33 percent of students who earned Ph.D.s in English in 1996-97 found tenure track jobs, while 38 percent of the Ph.D. graduates in foreign languages obtained a tenure track job" ("Humanities Disciplines Leave Ph.D. Recipients with Poor Job Prospects," _The Minnesota Daily_ 25 May 1999 at <http://www.mndaily.com/daily/1999/05/25/news/phd/>). The tenure rates of those who are lucky enough to land tenure-track jobs vary widely from school to school:
***** A few other universities have compiled data on the turnover rate of probationary faculty. Miami University of Ohio (Coalition on the Status of Women Faculty 1997) analyzed faculty hired from 1982 to 1990 and reported an overall successful tenure rate of 56 percent for women and 70 percent for men. At the University of Missouri, tenure-track faculty hired between 1982 and 1986 were analyzed (Eimers 1995). About 45 percent earned tenure by the end of the seventh year (three percent were still in their probationary appointment). No significant difference in tenure rates was found between men and women. Ohio State University examined the attrition rate of untenured faculty hired between 1987-88 and 1992-93 (Harrigan 1998). By June 1997, 32 percent of Arts and Sciences faculty, 41 percent of those in the professional colleges, and 36 percent of health sciences faculty had left.
Two published studies analyzed a subset of probationary faculty at their institutions. At one university, retention of tenured and tenure-track faculty in large social science departments was analyzed (Schwab 1991). Of 58 probationary faculty on the payroll in 1980-81, 56 percent had left the university by 1986-87. A study at the University of Minnesota examined the promotion rate of probationary faculty hired between 1975 and 1985 in 13 hard science departments (Kingsbury Jones et al. 1994). Of the 104 faculty (of whom 20 were women), 72 percent earned tenure. Women were slightly more likely to earn tenure than men (85 percent and 69 percent, respectively), but the difference was not significant.
(Margaret N. Harrigan, "An Analysis of Faculty Turnover at the University of Wisconsin-Madison" (1999), at <http://wiscinfo.doit.wisc.edu/obpa/FacultyTurnover/FacultyTurnover2.html>) *****
***** UCLA statistics regarding tenure rates are similar for men and women, and the annual success rate of those considered varies from 85-93%, with no clear gender pattern. From 1991-93, for example, a total of 44 women and 114 men were considered for tenure. Of that total, 2 women and 6 men were denied tenure. (Judith L. Smith, "Which Data Set Tells the UCLA Story?" at <http://www.wage.org/doc/text/2whattruth.html>) *****
At the most prestigious schools such as Yale, there exists _no tenure track_:
***** Yale hires young teachers as assistant professors under contracts for varying lengths of time, depending on specific departments, with the possibility of extensions. When a professor's contract is about to expire-usually after he has been at the University for five or six years-his department has the choice of promoting the professor to the rank of associate professor without tenure. The term for untenured associate professors varies from four to five years. Since untenured professors can only teach at Yale for a maximum of 10 years, if their departments choose to consider them for tenure at all, the process must occur during their penultimate year at the University-in most cases, during their ninth year. If the University is not going to consider or award tenure, then the associate professor must leave upon completion of his tenth year.
If the end of an associate professor's contract coincides with the departure, death, or retirement of a senior faculty member in his field, he might be considered for tenure. However, receiving tenure at Yale is very difficult because of the severity and the competitiveness of the process. The process starts when Yale sends letters worldwide to all the major scholars in the nominee's field. In turn, these scholars recommend candidates for the position, without regard to whether or not the candidate presently teaches at Yale. Once the University has a list of names, the nominees are invited to interview for the available position. The department subsequently compiles a "short list" of nominees, and its members vote for the prospective tenure recipient.
In essence, Yale's untenured faculty must compete -- sometimes with each other, and every time against an international field of scholars. Consequently, many professors nearing the end of their contract choose to leave Yale for other universities offering tenure, or at the very least, offering tenure track positions. Tenure track professors are associate professors hired with the promise that by the end of their contract, they will be considered for tenure. Usually, most professors in tenure track positions receive tenure.
"A very key issue separates Yale and Harvard from the majority of the universities in the United States. At Yale and Harvard there is no such thing as a tenure track," William Mahout, associate professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, said. "The way the Yale system works is that you are offered a spot if there is a spot. In no way is the University obligated to bring someone up for tenure."
Administrators defend the lack of a tenure track at Yale, contending that its absence encourages the most dedicated teaching, as well as the best research, by increasing competition among professors.
However, this competition exacts a price, as even administrators will concede. Richard Brodhead BR '68, GRD '72, said that a major flaw of tenure track systems is that sometimes they do not encourage professors to exploit their full potential. "The truth is that Yale keeps its professors under constant pressure. Tenure track systems are a much kinder system. This is an enormous paradox," he said.
In fairness, Yale makes this policy explicit. According to Mahout, currently in his seventh year at Yale, "The University and the department chairs make [the lack of tenure consideration] clear to incoming professors. Nobody is fooled, and nobody is left in the dark. People are certainly aware of this-there are no hidden secret clauses." Consequently, the majority of faculty members recognize the bleak prospects of a permanent career at Yale. "Most people know that the chances of getting tenure at Yale range from slim to none," Mahota said.
(Roberto A. Camara, "Revolving Door Syndrome Plagues Yale Tenure," _The Yale Herald_ 1 March 1996, at <http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxi/3.1.96/front.html>) *****
At 4:24 AM +0000 3/19/01, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>Anyway, when I was canned, I was untouchable: too fired, too red,
>too old, too published. I went into lawe because I wasn't going to
>be a nomad working for slave wages. Basically, unless you get lucky
>or get canned from a top 15 school, your career is over if you don't
>get tenure at your first or second job out of grad school. This
>despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, I am better by
>conventional standards than about 85% of the tenured philosophy
>faculty in this country. But I am unemployable in academe.
>Fortunately, law is not so limited.
At present in the Humanities, senior professors who are in a position to award or deny tenure to junior professors are often less published than them.
If the market ruled academy, there would be neither tenure nor higher salaries for tenured professors than cleaning workers, since the pool of educated workers (who are qualified, by conventional standards, for academic jobs) is _huge_. Thus, full-time academics and full-time cleaning workers are _not_ under the same circumstances -- yet; for the former, the tenure system still protects a tiny minority from a huge pool of cheap labor, whereas for the latter the market & availability of cheap labor degrade working conditions & exert downward wage pressures.
Given neoliberalism & tenured professors' myopia, however, tenure may become a thing of the past one of these days; see Robin Wilson, "Contracts Replace the Tenure Track for a Growing Number of Professors" (at <http://chronicle.com/colloquy/98/tenure/background.shtml>) that I posted here yesterday.
Yoshie