As you can see from the data I posted, tenure is already not an option for the majority of faculty and adjuncts.
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And thatās why you get people without PhDs to teach.
Some people seem to forget that the coin has two sides.
Letās make the things a bit more concreteā¦
I have a Ph.D. in CS. Why would I want to teach in a university without a guarantee of tenure?
(Just to make the things clear, I donāt teach in university and therefore I donāt have a tenure)
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Mobility of tenured profs is pretty low unless they are in big grant getting fields or are interested in moving to an admin post. In a department of 10 tenured faculty, you might see one tenured faculty member move over a period of a few years or there might be no mobility depending on the discipline.
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Why would anyone care whether it is you or another Ph.D. (or non-Ph.D.) that is teaching?
Some people value working with kids. If tenure is the primary consideration, it is probably best not to be in a teaching position.
10 years? With most professions, you can barely count on 10 months.
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The same argument is true for many fields-people accept positions in government, non profits, etc, when they could make more money elsewhere. Some like the nature of the work, some like the work life balance. CS professors presumably have their own motivation for academia rather than industry. In any event, I am not sure tenure is a big deal for them since they really donāt need it anyway, and represent a very small part of the faculty.
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CS, at the moment, is an anomaly. With such high demand for CS courses, most colleges arenāt able to fill those positions. No doubt some of them hired some non-PhDs to teach a few basic courses (mostly more programming focused courses). I havenāt seen AI courses taught by non-PhDs myself (that, obviously, doesnāt mean it didnāt happen at some places). Teachng a true AI-related course at a quality intitution definitely requires knowledge from PhD training.
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You donāt know much about academics, do you? 
With most professions you donāt start work when you are 35 years old.
But keep commenting on things you donāt know!
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And one of these motivations is tenure. I know, because I actually work with these people, donāt read about them in the newspaper.
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So you want tenure for hard to get CS professors (who would be in demand regardless, and not likely need it). Care to explain why we need to offer lifetime salaries to the remaining faculty, who may neither be in demand nor be productive?
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Because, at some point in the past those other faculty were in demand and wanted tenure. And because you ask those people to spend their life pursuing something that might not be popular now, but may bring greater knowledge and understanding later.
I am always amazed how many people comment on things that they have no any knowledge of. I am done with this thread, if I want to educate somebody, Iād teach in a university and educate the children, not the parentsā¦
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Are you speaking of the desire to publish into a vacuum that no one ever reads? Or the unapologetic elitism that believes they deserve lifetime employment?
Then, with no expectation of tenure, students can plan accordingly, which probably means making professional contributions before age 35.
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We do need some of the brightest to teach our kids in college, donāt we? Besides, most fundamental discoveries occured on university campuses (and affiliated labs), not in industries. Nearly all industries donāt have the incentive to look further out on the time horizon to fund fundamental researches.
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Canāt disagree with that.
But clearly the colleges are moving in a different direction based on the current proportion of faculty that have tenure or are on TT (and this is true at some top public and private institutions as well), which has caused the value of PhDs to decline dramatically. I donāt have any answers, and would be open to hearing suggestions.
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I agree with you that having lots of adjunts teaching courses isnāt a good thing. Iād like to see some reform in that regard. Iād encourage (perhaps financially?) or require tenured faculty to teach more courses.
Tenure is a corner stone of academic freedom.
Itās also a perk that encourages people put in years of graduate school, accept a relatively low salary, and dedicate their lives to teaching english literature, history, etcā¦ to college students.
The push to eliminate tenure is evergreen and shows how little education and educators are appreciated. I say this, not just about the general public, but also about higher education, itself.
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Unfortunately that costs more money, which many universities donāt have. Hence the reliance on adjuncts. Canāt force the tenured to do much.
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There is a lot of misunderstanding here. Iāll comment, but I fear that it wonāt change peopleās minds.
(1) Tenure is not a lifetime appointment. Tenure means the university needs to show cause and follow its procedures. These procedures vary by quite a bit. Georgiaās change is negative, to be sure, but not beyond the pale. (And yes, poor teaching can and often is a reason for dismissal)
(2) University instruction costs are a small and decreasing fraction of their budgets. Under 25% is not uncommon.
(2B) The rule of thumb for a STEM professor at a tippy-top R1 is that the universityās cut of your research budget covers your academic year salary (9/11 of your salary). University cuts (āindirectsā) are around 60%
(3) The choices are not Georgia or Yale. They may be Georgia and Mizzou. It is not uncommon for faculty candidates at Georgia to have multiple offers.
(4) There are more PhDs than academic positions, to be sure. But not 100x as many. A professor graduates N students in her career, only one of which is needed to replace her. N is not 100. It might be 10. One of the most prolific in my field has around 40.
(5) Getting tenure in my field takes a PhD (6 year average) + postdoctoral positions (3-6 years) + 6 years as an assistant professor. There is a pretty good track record for people to examine. I got tenure 13 years after I started grad school and this was considered lightning fast.
(5A) Is there abuse of the system? Sure is. But most of the abuse is coming from people hired directly into tenured positions, and not those who climbed the academic ladder.
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I lay the blame for high cost, not on the tenure system, but on the other things we did relatively more recently. We canāt keeping adding costly things that are secondary/tertiary to higher education and hope itās sustainable.
Not really. Rather, it shows a willingness to accept that in the 21st century, lifetime employment guarantees are vanishing rare. At one time, industry had those too- a job with GM or IBM was for life. That changed for the rest of us, and I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why not for academia too. With applicants at a 100 to 1 ratio to jobs, it would appear we could still get plenty qualified professors.
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