For the last few years Grand Rapids has been plastered with billboards trying to get you to take Cornerstone University seriously. Apparently the reasoning is that those billboards were cheaper than actually having tenured professors.
Next logical step: outsource all teaching jobs to call centers in India!
Well, they are a university, so I know their science department must be pretty good…much better than, say, Calvin or Hope, both of which are only colleges with several different departments in the sciences.
You mean they gotta worry about their job JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE? I weep.
Everyone else except their seminary professors, and the professors at all the self-respecting colleges and universities in the nation.
Funny I learned about this from you. :)
Tenure does not mean that a professor cannot be fired…it simply means that a professor cannot be fired (immediately) due to saying something that irritates the college president. It means that research can be conducted to be evaluated by ones peers, not simply based on the whims of the college administration.
Contrary to what Moab (and many like him or her) thinks, it also makes the job that much more stressful. How many other jobs start out as one year contracts after someone already has 5-10 years of post-college training? There are evaluations throughout, and at tenure the school has to decide if it wants to commit. A faculty member has ~6 years to convince the school that he or she is worth having around. Yeah, it’s cake alright.
Eric,
I submit to your schooling. I always thought it meant “one could not be fired.”
That said, I also think its pretty silly to give teaching jobs to people who have a primary focus of research as well as forcing teachers to publish.
Moab, I appreciate your comments.
You make good points about the teaching/research dilemma, especially for places that end up farming out the teaching to grad students and term appointments. However, the reason that far away from the state of Michigan a degree from U. of Michigan is worth more than a degree from Hope or Calvin has nothing to do with teaching and only somewhat to do with big time athletics. They have an internal reputation for state of the art research, and some of that may work its way into the classroom. Research also brings in more money from the donors (but perhaps not as much as sports, once again).
I must admit my bias (I teach at Calvin), but I think the balance at the smaller schools is a healthy one. We do research here with the idea that we’re bringing it into the classroom, both by getting the students directly involved and by using the results as illustrations.