<p>For what reasons shouldn’t gypsie scholars love themselves? Other than lower salary and the fact you’d have to move around a lot, obviously. If they can still teach, do research, publish, and make a living out of it, why so obsessed with earning tenure?</p>
<p>… because most people do want to earn a decent salary and settle down eventually?</p>
<p>The biggest disadvantage is that without tenure (or a tenure-track position), you don’t have the time or resources to do the research and publication. You also get less choice in terms of teaching if you’re not on the tenure track since those who are generally get priority in scheduling and course planning, and many fewer benefits (health care, pension, etc.). All in all, it is not a good way to live in the long run if you can help it.</p>
<p>I would like to distinguish non tenure track from specialist track. There is a non tenure track that is not geared towards independence and being a PI. This is the research specialist track. It pays well and holds the same job titles (asst prof, assoc prof, full prof) without ever having the expectation of having your own lab. You work as a leader in somebody else’s lab. This is what my current supervisor is doing.</p>
<p>I think that Porkypig is referring to non tenure track profs in non science disciplines. A non tt professor as well as a post doc would definitely be given the same health insurance and 403b as other university employees. It is only if you’re a contract employee that universities don’t give you the appropriate benefits. It is not pursuant to your rank or position.</p>
<p>Depends on the school, depends on the field whether you get health insurance etc as a non-tenure track. People at one institution where I have spent time, in my (non-science) field, do not get the same benefits as the tenure track faculty.</p>
<p>Research specialists in the sciences, as belevitt describes, is a very different situation than the non-tenure track world outside the sciences.</p>
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<p>Well, everybody should love themselves. Nobody is saying that just because you don’t get tenure, then you shouldn’t love yourself. </p>
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<p>The issue is that you have no job security. You can lose your job at any time, and if you do, then you may not be able to get another one anytime soon. For example, it’s pretty darn hard to get an academic job nowadays, as lots of schools are cutting back due to the losses on their endowments and, if public, also lowered state support. Obviously it’s also quite difficult to get a private job these days also.</p>
<p>Now, one might argue that as a non-tenured academic, you’re no worse than everybody else, as they can also lose their job at any time with no assurance that they will get another one anytime soon. That’s true, but I think that’s the point: that the whole point of being an academic is that you don’t want to end up like everybody else. You want to have something better than everybody else, i.e. complete job security through tenure. That’s the one major plum that practically no other career can offer. </p>
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<p>Certainly, I agree that if you can do all that and be happy, then you don’t need to worry so much about tenure. I also agree that there are many positions in academia that are not formally ‘tenured’, but still offer excellent opportunities. For example, there are cases of people who failed to win tenure yet still being named director or even Assistant/Vice Dean in charge of various programs/labs. {Surprisingly, you often times don’t actually need tenure to be named to these positions.} Then, as long as your program/lab continues to exist, you will almost certainly keep your job. </p>
<p>As a case in point, take Don Rosenfield. He failed to win tenure at MIT. Yet he was then named the Director of the MIT LFM program, which is the dual-degree MBA/MS program. He’s been with LFM ever since it started, and I’m sure that as long as it continues to exist, then Don will always have a job. LFM has existed for nearly 20 years now, with no signs of slowing. </p>
<p>[ESD</a> Faculty Bio](<a href=“http://esd.mit.edu/Faculty_Pages/rosenfield/rosenfield.htm]ESD”>http://esd.mit.edu/Faculty_Pages/rosenfield/rosenfield.htm)</p>
<p>What that means is that Rosenfield basically has tenure. Ok, sure, it’s not real tenure, because he could be laid off at anytime. But that’s highly unlikely as long as the LFM program exists. Just think of it this way: it’s 20 years after LFM started, and he’s still there at MIT. So basically, that’s tenure.</p>
<p>Even tenured profs are on “soft tenure”. If they don’t get grants to keep their labs open, the labs shut down. I don’t foresee tenure as playing a big role in academia in the next few decades. It will probably always be around in name, but the realities are inconsistent with the nature of funding and grants and the research enterprise as a whole. I would expect to see more team based approaches with clusters of faculty working in cooperation in place of the ‘one faculty, one lab’ mentality that is common today. Univ of Colorado and Wash U have a labs that have adopted this style. It accommodates the large amount of talent at the post doc level and above without the administrative difficulties falling on a single individual.</p>
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<p>That doesn’t matter in those fields where you don’t really need a big lab: i.e. humanities, mathematics, business, most of computer science, social sciences (except for laboratory psychology). In these fields, you usually need little more than some computer crunching power, which is dirt cheap and getting cheaper every day. That’s why there are some tenured professors in these fields that, frankly, aren’t really doing anything academic. They’re writing popular-press books, they’re doing side-consulting, some of them are even starting their own companies, but they’re not pursuing active academic research. </p>
<p>But granted, even in those fields that do need constant grants, if you don’t get grants, your lab will indeed shut down. True. But so what? They still have tenure. Meaning that they still have a job for life. </p>
<p>As an example, take Sheila Widnall, Professor of Aeronautics at MIT. No doubt, in the past, she had an illustrious career, both academically and administratively, including becoming the President of the AAAS and culminating in becoming the first female US Secretary of the Air Force (and first woman to lead a DoD branch of the military). </p>
<p>But the fact is, she hasn’t published a single academic paper single reassuming her professorship at MIT. Not one. Now, to be fair, she is doing a lot of things. She is running MIT’s Lean Aerospace Initiative. She has written practitioner’s books. She does engage in lots of public relations projects for MIT and for the US government. Furthermore, when she was an active researcher, she was arguably the most brilliant scholar of fluid mechanics of her time, discovering the eponymous ‘Widnall instability’. Tenure may be a fair way for MIT to pay her back for all of the top-notch research that she had published before. </p>
<p>But none of that takes away from the basic fact that she is not an active academic researcher anymore, and hasn’t been for years. She no longer has her own lab. She no longer pulls in her own grants. She doesn’t publish academic articles anymore. Yet I highly doubt that she is going to lose her job. </p>
<p>[ESD</a> Faculty Bio](<a href=“http://esd.mit.edu/Faculty_Pages/widnall/widnall.htm]ESD”>http://esd.mit.edu/Faculty_Pages/widnall/widnall.htm)</p>
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<p>Here I agree: tenure is probably an anachronism. Too many people nowadays see tenure as a game: just publish enough academic works to get tenure, and then once you get it, you stop publishing academic works.</p>
<p>Tenure allows one the academic freedom to take unpopular viewpoints (in scholarship or in practical administration). This is separate from money support.</p>
<p>For example,
One can be on “soft money” but tenured. This means that one’s salary is provided by grants not by the academic institution. Thus if one fails to get or keep grant support, one still keeps one’s position (without salary). Why is this important? In the competitive world of funding, it is likely that all serious researchers may have small gaps in funding. However, if you have a position, you are still eligible to keep sending out applications. Without a position, you cannot send in applications to most grant agencies (public and private).</p>
<p>Most academic universities that provide tenure to their professors, do not provide full salary support. Common levels of financial support for the prof’s salary range from 25%-75%. </p>
<p>The disadvantage of being a non-tenure track research series professor? The university and department colleagues (and you) cannot know how permanent you are and thus may not invest in you (collaborations or real financial investment in infrastructure required to perform research).</p>
<p>The disadvantage of being a specialist series? If the PI (professor) running the lab loses support for the project funding your position, your position (and you) are eliminated. Same happens if the professor running and funding the lab decides to move or retire.</p>