Georgia weakens tenure

[Miss Tick]

I thought this article from AP news was interesting. Georgia has passed legislature adding a new 5 year review of tenured faculty. As with most legislation of this kind I'm sure no specifics have been defined - like how one demonstrates "sufficiently rigorous"

'The new policy says regents will take back decisions from any university “not carrying out its faculty review process in a sufficiently rigorous manner.”'

It does sound like there will be faculty input in coming up with institution specific policies, "All 25 institutions are required to develop their own policies in consultation with faculty and include due process procedures." But getting all the players to agree will be tricky.

The reason I became aware of this, not living in Georgia myself, is because all the faculty have already been receiving calls trying to lure them away to other universities. Even if nothing at all changes, or it is even repealed, the Georgia universities may lose faculty in the meantime.

[Lilaclady]

10 hours ago, SusanC said:

 

The reason I became aware of this, not living in Georgia myself, is because all the faculty have already been receiving calls trying to lure them away to other universities. Even if nothing at all changes, or it is even repealed, the Georgia universities may lose faculty in the meantime.

that will be so sad if it happens. The universities have been doing so well by retaining the bright students in state with the hope and zell Scholarships. This is not a good turn of events. 

Edited October 30, 2021 by Lilaclady

[Miss Tick]

21 minutes ago, Lilaclady said:

that will be so sad if it happens. The universities have been doing so well by retaining the bright students in state with the hope and zell Scholarships. This is not a good turn of events. 

I agree, for any state having their University system gutted would be a hard blow. It seems likely that the universities will set their own review procedures in such a way that there won't be substantive change, but it does send a message about the perception of higher education in Georgia.

This is also just another example of legislatures trying to shape a complicated industry that they have incomplete knowledge of, unintended consequences and all.

[Dmmetler]

What percentage of faculty at GA state U's, and in particular, what percentage of faculty hired in the last decade have tenure or are in tenure track positions? My guess is that yes, this is trying to push those folks who have tenure and are near retirement out the door, but that the "gutting" has already happened in that basically every faculty member who has come in since about 2000 doesn't have even the possibility for a 5 year contract. 

[kokotg]

1 hour ago, Dmmetler said:

What percentage of faculty at GA state U's, and in particular, what percentage of faculty hired in the last decade have tenure or are in tenure track positions? My guess is that yes, this is trying to push those folks who have tenure and are near retirement out the door, but that the "gutting" has already happened in that basically every faculty member who has come in since about 2000 doesn't have even the possibility for a 5 year contract. 

According to this, UGA is way below the national average at relying on adjuncts: https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-georgia/academic-life/faculty-composition/  At the non-flagships it might not make much difference in practice, but I do think it will make it much harder for UGA and Tech in particular to hire and retain highly regarded profs. 

Georgia has made so much progress with its university system since I graduated from UGA in the 90s...both UGA and Tech are top 50 national universities now (according to the USNWR rankings). It's a shame to see them go backwards. 

[Bootsie]

How big of an impact will this really have?  The article says that all but one state university in Georgia already has reviews of tenured faculty.  I know the three universities I have taught at recently (not in Georgia) have these types of reviews.  I am not necessarily in favor of them and have found them to be more paperwork that has to be filled out and not a very meaningful and helpful review.   It usualy boils down to legistors doing things for political motivation and trying to micromanage something they know nothing about.  

[Miss Tick]

1 minute ago, Bootsie said:

How big of an impact will this really have?  The article says that all but one state university in Georgia already has reviews of tenured faculty.  I know the three universities I have taught at recently (not in Georgia) have these types of reviews.  I am not necessarily in favor of them and have found them to be more paperwork that has to be filled out and not a very meaningful and helpful review.   It usualy boils down to legistors doing things for political motivation and trying to micromanage something they know nothing about.  

I totally agree with you. It also sounds like the universities can establish their own guidelines which can help. Hopefully they can set them up not to have vague, hard to demonstrate goals.

[Bootsie]

3 hours ago, SusanC said:

I totally agree with you. It also sounds like the universities can establish their own guidelines which can help. Hopefully they can set them up not to have vague, hard to demonstrate goals.

I doubt the guidelines will be anything but vague.  I was in a meeting where a committee was presenting their plan for new faculty evaluations.  After they went through all types of lists of what faculty would report, how many words should be provided in the report, etc. I asked the question of what was their plan for evaluation because I was only see a plan for reporting (most of what the deans and provosts should already know like what classes I taught, how many students, the class GPA, etc.) They had NOTHING about how a faculty memeber would actually be evaluated, simply about what the faculty member would report.  They said it would be up to the department chair to decide what to do with any of the info being reported.   I think some on the committee didn't get it but I think others knew exactly what they were doing--providing a process that looked so official but really came down to a subjective evaluation best on no criteria.  It is also really hard to have meaningful guidelines across departments, because of such differences in research activity and teaching expectations in various disciplines.

[regentrude]

First, post-tenure reviews are nothing new. We have them in my state.

Second, it will be completely impossible to create hard quantitative measures across departments because different fields are completely incomparable. University administrators usually have no clue about that. And don't understand that even inside the same department cannot there be hard criteria. No, specifying "x number publications in peer reviewed physics journals" is not a sensible measure; one researcher may be part of a big international collaboration that churns out paper after paper with one hundred authors each, while another publishes a small number of papers where he is the sole author. How much more weight does one paper in the most prestigious journal get over one in the next tier? How do you compare teaching evaluations when one prof is teaching a 500-student intro class for non-majors while another teaches a 10-student class for seniors in the major?

Evaluations are important, but there cannot ever be standardized criteria because each person's work looks completely different from everybody else's.