Has the college academic job market always been highly competitive and elitist?

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@ProfSD I agree with the flexibility of being a professor, you pretty much manage your own time, which i think, to some people, more important than the high paying job.
But overall, do you work more than 40 hours per week or less? I know many professors and even though they do have the flexibility that you described, overall they work between 50-70 hours per week. College instructors do have much less hours but professors with a team of graduate students doing research, it’s normal to spend more than 60 hours per week.

Regarding academic job being highly competitive, I think it has always been this way. And there is a very simple explanation - supply vs. demand. I believe most don’t go into academia for money, but for passion or/and prestige. College professor is one of the very few professions where the person doesn’t want to retire, they seem to keep working until they aren’t physically unable to. How many other type of other jobs out there that you often hear “I can’t wait to retire?”, most of them. Plus the tenure thing where you can’t fire someone for under performance like other industries.

My husband’s college advisor and his wife have no plans to retire from Cal and they are close to 60’s. The professor that he TAed for twenty something years ago now still teaching the same class that our daughter is taking (and she still remembers DH!). The guy that wrote the book when we took the class twenty something years ago is still teaching and D is also taking the same class/book from this guy. Our friend is a professor at Columbia who invented a computer language is still teaching there and he is mid 80’s. I can go on and on. If people are not planning to retire, then how many spots left for the younger generations?

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Well, with the decline in tenure track jobs tenure, as it is known today, will largely vanish sooner rather than later.

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I hope they do away with tenure all together. I never thought it’s a good idea nor fair.

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The 3 tenured profs(at Ivy’s and similar institutions) in my extended family are all minorities, and one is a women…just thought I’d throw that out there for those who think it’s nothing but a bunch of old , white dudes.

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Well, women aren’t minorities. They’re the MAJORITY of the population. Just an observation.

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I think the protection of ideas and intellectual freedom that tenure offers is a very valid ideal. But as is often the case with ideals, it can be hard to translate them into policies.

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That is because you really have no idea why tenure exists. It protects academic freedom - a faculty member cannot be fired because of something they said or published. That not only preserves the integrity and quality of research, it also allow universities to compete with industry.

The attraction of being able to do your own research, rather than focus on what your corporation wants, is huge. Universities cannot compete with industry in salaries and bonuses, so the only thing that they can offer is something like tenure. Without tenure, only people who industry is not willing to pay much will become faculty.

So, if you get rid of tenure, your kids, your doctors, your nurses, your IT people, the people who develop computers, cars, the electric grid, your house, roads, your medicines, etc, will all be trained by the rejects of industry. Would you think THAT was a good idea?

Tenure protects the quality of teaching and of research, as well as the quality of the teachers and the researchers. Do you want to know what it looks like when you get rid of tenure? Take a long hard look at the for-profit “universities” - their abysmal quality of teaching, their lack of standards, their minuscule graduation rates, their predatory practices, etc. Is this what you would like to see as the sort of place you would send your kid? the sort of place where your doctor would train?

As for “fair” - how is tenure less fair than the hiring and firing processes anywhere else? It is, in fact, the typical hiring practices in the USA that are egregiously unfair.

FYI - “tenure” does not mean “now they can’t be fired”. A tenured faculty member can be fired if they do not perform their job, if they violate the rules and laws in the faculty handbook, if the university declares financial exigency, or if their unit is dissolved. They are protected from being fired because of their politics, their publications, or because they called the provost and idiot in public. Their contract is also open ended, meaning that they do not need to be rehired every year - it’s automatic.

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@Nhatrang Good point. I’m at a small LAC. We don’t have graduate students. So no, I don’t work more than 40 hrs/week. And I don’t teach any summer courses so I’m not even close to 40 hrs/week for 3 months in the summer. I should also point out that I’m in a Humanities field, so I don’t have to deal with lab research.

^^^This. I’m one of the youngest professors in my department. I have been teaching there for 15 years. I won’t give my age, but I have two children in high school. I’m not young at all. My department has several professors that are in their 60s, and none plan to retire anytime soon. We had one professor retire last year at 79, but that was only due to health issues. He was absent from class so often that he was politely asked to consider retirement. We’re conducting a search for his position now, and it’s the first TT opening we’ve had in over 5 years.

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However, today, only about a fifth of college instructors have tenure and perhaps another tenth are tenure-track but have not gotten tenure. Would that mean that most college instructors are “people who industry is not willing to pay much”?

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However, today, only about a fifth of college instructors have tenure and perhaps another tenth are tenure-track but have not gotten tenure. Would that mean that most college instructors are “people who industry is not willing to pay much”?

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@ucbalumnus No that would mean most college instructors were born too late :wink:

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@MWolf I do know the arguments for tenure, heard it all the time from professors and novel prize winners. I have no problem telling them I don’t believe in it, and teased that they are not gods and they need expiration date just like everyone else to leave rooms for the younger generations.

But, I think @katliamom said it best : “I think the protection of ideas and intellectual freedom that tenure offers is a very valid ideal. But as is often the case with ideals, it can be hard to translate them into policies.”

I’ll leave it at that. I don’t have any beef with tenure. Just my opinion.

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I’m perfectly serious. I’ve been on plenty search committees at the world-top-30 university level. If we get say 75-100 applicants, maybe 10% would be ‘interviewable’. If we can’t hire one of the top few, we wouldn’t hire at all.

If the candidate, for example, doesn’t already have excellent publications they will be automatically excluded.

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Exactly…most students today at universities/colleges all over the country take some classes taught by non-TT profs and/or adjuncts.

That’s why I don’t understand equating a school that uses non-TT profs and/or adjuncts to a for-profit university, as in this post:

Most of us have no choice but to send our kids to unis/colleges that use non TT profs and/or adjuncts…because that’s the model at many schools (non-profits), including some that are highly ‘ranked’.

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Oops wrong thread