Tenure Blues ... of, Life of a Prof Part III: "Students are the losers"

This is part three of a series of blogs I'm writing that were animated by Richard Gwyn's critique of tenure and research-oriented profs. The argument I think he is making is that students are suffering because faculty are more interested in research than  teaching. Hence, students are accumulating significant debts in the form of student loans without deriving any benefit from their education. In my previous blogs, I tried to ask what I took to be a simple question about assertions such as this: is this true? Is the education of students suffering at the hands of recalcitrant profs who are not interested in teaching?

This is a good question that needs to be addressed because if it were true, there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. The problem with Gwyn's assertion is that he does not, in fact, demonstrate that it is true. Instead, he uses what we might call a "fake" argument. How is it fake? His argument is that post-secondary education is failing students because students have a large debt. Yet, if we look at this equation, we can see that the one has nothing to do with the other. Most faculty I know, in fact, think that tuition is too high, but faculty do not set tuition rates. At our budget meeting at Mount Allison this past Winter, faculty complained again and again about tuition rates and various fees charged to students. Thus, the idea that faculty are somehow to blame for high tuition is at the very least so simplistic as to be meaningless in the sense that it does not tell us why tuition is high. The key reason that tuition is high is cut backs in state funding for universities. What does this have to do with research? I honestly don't know. There might be a connection but that connection is not self evident. Someone can draw it out for me if they want. Hence, Gwyn's argument runs into a problem: his proof that post-secondary education is failing because faculty do too much research and not enough teaching fails because he has not demonstrated that this is actually the case. Everyone agrees that there is an accessibility problem, but that problem seems to be related to state policy; not research. Or, to make my point in a different and hopefully clearer way: if faculty did less research ... would tuition drop? The logic of Gwyn's argument is that it will. Do we believe him?

Before we reach a final determination on that question, however, let's address two other issues. First, what is the connection between research and teaching? Second, do we have any evidence that teaching is declining in quality as more research is being done?  I'll address these questions in this order.

First, there is a connection between teaching and research. Ask your students or students ask yourselves or parents ask yourselves. Do you want higher level education conducted by individuals who are not active in their research? Does anyone want to history courses from a professor who never goes the archives? Does anyone want to take Chemistry from a scientist who is not in the lab? Does anyone want to painting from an individual who never creates art? We could go on down the line but I assume my point is made. One of the things that differentiates higher level education from lower level education is that it is conducted by practitioners in their fields. Their experiences in practicing their disciplines enriches education; it does not hamper it. The scientist who is in the lab and conducting research knows more about how to teach students who to conduct research and practice, say, chemistry than the one who does not. I asked my students precisely this question: did they want to take courses in, say, literature from a person who does not read novels? They thought the question was odd but when I pressed them, they conceded that it was, in fact, important to them that their faculty were active, were doing their job, we up on the latest developments (we call this research!), and contributed to their fields. The anthropologist who conducts fieldwork knows more about the "other" culture than one who does not, as another example. Far from seeing research and teaching as in opposition, my students tended to see them as connected.

And, I will confess, I do.  Consider my discipline: history. After we get past the introductory narratives, one of the things that students learn in history is how to assess completing narratives about the past on the basis of primary documents. They learn about the biases that infuse primary documents, the necessity of empirical evidence, how different historians produce different narratives by asking different questions of the past. In other words, they don't just watch a video; they learn how to conduct research and how this conduct affects how we view the past. I am a bit surprised the Gwyn completely neglects this element of post-secondary education since he, in fact, claims history is important and has written history himself. Does he believe that students can be properly educated in history without knowing how history is actually done? Does he believe he can write history without research? Does he believe students should be instructed to write history without research?

Second, do we have any evidence that post-secondary education is failing students? This is a tough question because it involves  consideration of a range of variables. What do we mean by failing? Are students learning less than they used to? Are they not learning what they need to learn? And, how do we determine what students need to learn?

I am not being rhetorical here, but rather trying to get us asking the right questions. I've been teaching full time for fifteen years. I'd like to believe that I am a better teacher now than when I first started and I think that is a pretty normal belief. One gets better over time. But, the important point is that Gwyn is contended precisely the opposite: I've gotten worse over time because I am devoting too much time (not *me* per se but faculty in general) to my research. That might be a fair enough assessment, but what evidence does Gwyn have for this?

I keep asking this question -- what evidence does he have? -- because I don't see the evidence? We can't use things like post-graduation unemployment rates because that a product of factors external to teaching (think of the US financial crisis, which caused serious economic problems. It was caused by serious problems with US capital markets and their regulation; not by teaching). Moreover, those rates don't tell us a great deal because they are variations on a theme (unemployment is, in fact, lower than when I was a student ... does that mean that I am a better teaching than my profs?).

The truth of the matter is that Gwyn is asking an important question. The fact that he goes about answering it the wrong way, should not stop us from asking it. I'd argue -- and this will be a theme of a future blog -- that research and teaching (among other things, including service and engaging national issues) is a matter of finding the right balance and finding ways to improve teaching. Neither of which, I will argue, can be done by attacking tenure. Instead, we need to seriously address these issues by establishing a baseline that allows us to think about whether or not our teaching and research are meeting our goals, for students, for faculty, universities, and society. Without evidence, we are left with conjecture and conjecture that claims to be a public statement ... isn't. It is propaganda.

Life of a Prof, or Tenured Blues ... Part II

In a previous blog, I began what will be a series that addresses issues relating to tenure an academics working on post-secondary institutions. The impetus to this discussion is a column by Richard Gwyn that decries tenure as part of a more general critique of academics. In my last blog, I tried to suggest that Gwyn's critique is important not because everyone believes it but because it might be a growing position: tenure is a problem that stands at the root of a broader series of problems with post-secondary education. His argument is that academics are no longer participating in national debates, focused too much on their research, are paid too much, and are devoting too much time to arcane research as opposed to teaching (and participating in national debates). In my last blog, I tried to suggest that part of Gwyn's problem is that he simply does not understand that work day of the average prof. Most of us, I argued using myself as an example, are pretty ordinary people doing an ordinary job to the best of our abilities. I have a middle-class lifestyle and spend most of my time on matters that are directly related to my job. Most of these -- to hammer a point likely into the ground -- are shockingly ordinary but that is what we are paid to do. Most of what we do doesn't show up on a cost/benefit analysis conducted on a macro level of universities. It involves things like providing feedback on student work, preparing for class, and meeting with students.  But, I also think Gwyn's comments are valuable (even while I disagree with them) because they allow us to have a more open discussion of the merits of tenure and what profs do for a living. This blog, the last one, and others in this series are intended as offerings in that discussion. What I'd like to do is go through Gwyn's argument and look at different parts of it to suggest where he "got things wrong" but also open an avenue of discussion for how things might be improved.

This is easier said that done because there are some conflicting claims in Gwyn's piece. For instance, he faults professors for being too involved in their research but then chides the same profs for not participating in national debates to which their research might be applicable. How can, one might ask, someone participate seriously and effectively in the public forum is one does not do good research? Do we want people participating in public debates who are uninformed, particular if they are profs? In other words, good research, I'd argue, is a prerequisite for participating in public debates yet it seems to be one of the things Gwyn does not like.

I will leave this level of analysis for another day. In this blog, my objective is not address the issue of participating in national debates. Gwyn's argument, as he present it, runs as follows: "In the fields of history and politics, where I can claim some knowledge, academics willing and able to take part in national debates have just about dwindled down to two retired historians, Michael Bliss and Jack Granatstein, and to political scientists such as Tom Flanagan and Donald Savoie. Most of the rest act like medieval monks secure in their cells."

Its a pithy argument, replete with colourful imagery. But, is it accurate? There is no doubt that Bliss and Granatstein, Flanagan and Savoir are "out there." It is would be difficult to watch CBC TV and not see them. But, are they it? Is there no one else? And, more importantly, I am not at all sure what "willing and able to take part in national debates" means. I'm not trying to play semantic games here. I am honestly confused because participating in "national debates" is actually not part of my job and, as I pause to think about it, I am not sure how I might actually go about doing it. In seriousness, what am I supposed to do: call up CBC and "put my on the air," and say  "I'm a prof and I want to comment on X." How would you, if you were a journalist, respond to that kind of invocation? The odd thing is that as a regular columnist Gwyn has more control over whether I become involved in that kind of national venue than I do. He could interview me, for instance, or convince the folks at the Toronto Star to run my blog as a regular column. 

I don't want to use myself as an example for everything and so I'll refer to the work some of my colleagues do below but I will use some of the things I've done over the years as examples. It seems to me that Gwyn's contention can be subjected to several levels of argument. First, do only four profs in Canada actually participate in national debates? Second, what does "able" mean? Third, what role should profs play in national public policy issues? I'll suggest that on each of these levels, Gwyn's argument is inaccurate. Moreover, this inaccuracy is odd because it highlights not the problems of profs but the failure of Gwyn's own research. More on this below because I don't want to make this a just a critique of Gwyn. Instead, I want to use it to illustrate a broader issue I have with the "profs are bad" argument he is making. 

First, do only four profs (an exaggeration to prove a point, to be sure so we obviously would not hold Gwyn to precisely that number) participate in national debates? Well, I'm not one of those people that CBC calls for an interview on a regular basis. I will be honest. I don't like being on the news. I don't think I'm good at it and the type of slow moving, "perhaps we should think about issue X, here are some other ways to look at this matter, we live in a democratic society and so the finale result debates on what Canadians might actually want," responses I give make for good media. I participate but my participation is often to correct (in a professor-like way) misconceptions or misreporting, raise other avenues for people to consider in a democratic society, suggest (as I am doing here) that we subject statements to  analysis to see if they hold water. Is that participation? 

I have been "on the news" a number of times. I've done a few interviews for radio and print journalism (in areas about which I can speak with some knowledge), spoken to a provincial Green Party AGM, I've tried to keep up this blog over the years and now send out tweets on what strike me as important public issues. I've written a few pieces over the years for non-academic audiences. But, I've also done a few other things. For instance, myself and my colleagues organized a conference (supported by Enterprise NB and ACOA) on regional development in Atlantic Canada; Gwyn actually spoke at a conference I helped organize a fair number of years ago now (and, he did a great job) on citizenship and national identity. This past year, my colleagues and I organized a conference on place and culture and, again, a number of years ago, I was part of a multi-university team that organized a conference on rural economic development. I've also done some work for the Treaty and Aboriginal Rights Research Centre in Nova Scotia, organized a workshop on Specific Land Claims, and participated in an Atlantic Policy Congress focus group session on treaty education. Over the years, at Mount A, we've brought in a range of speakers to talk to our students (usually to a packed auditorium) including a former Canadian ambassador to the UN, a Commission of Official Languages, and high ups in the PCO, former minister, among others. 

In short, when I sat down to look at this list, it did not seem to me to be so bad. Sure, I was not on TV regularly, but since I'm not good at that ... why would I do it? It would be a waste of time for the audience, and for journalists, and detract from national debates. Instead, I've done what I could and worked to engage national issues of importance. I've just not done so in a very public way. Instead, I've tried to bring different communities together (civil servants, business people, labour activists, and academics, in the case of regional development). Is this a failure on my part? When I looked at it, I ended up deciding that it wasn't. 

OK, someone might say, Nurse, you're not Bliss or Foucault but I can concede that you've done some things. They might not be high profile but they are time consuming and publicly oriented, addressing a range of issues from treaty rights to the character of democracy to economic development. Fair enough. You, our rhetorical "someone" might continue to say, are not usual. In fact, a university administrator said precisely this to me two weeks ago as he was articulating concerns similar to those offered by Gwyn. The fact that you do things, he said, does not let those people who are not doing them "off the hook."

And, that is a fair statement but the question of its accuracy is still not demonstrated. Indeed, the way in which Gwyn -- and this administrator (whose a good guy) -- put this issue assumed that faculty were not participating in the public sphere. Why should we make that assumption? In fact, making that assumption might say more about those who make it than it does about professors. One of my colleagues spoke on the radio once per week over the last year, usually on historical issues (I might note an area where Gwyn thinks profs could make a contribution). He had, as it were, a regular gig with a regional radio station. Another colleague who works in the economics department has written a fair amount in local media on tax issues. He's also been invited -- and accepted -- to conduct work for a provincial royal commission and a federation of municipalities. I can concede -- and I think my colleague would -- that tax policy might not be the most exciting issue, but that is beside the point here. He is engaging the public forum in the ways he can. A former colleagues of mine -- who unfortunately moved on to another institution for reasons that I won't get into here -- has produced a number of acclaimed and internationally screened documentary films on climate change, among other things. Does his work count? A final example, a good friend with whom I work regularly here at Mount A has been extensively involved in public education curricular reform and the use of technology in the classroom.

This is not intended to be a definitive list but it is designed to illustrate my point. None of these people (I've left their names off because I did not want to draw attention to them) showed up on Gwyn's list and all are intensely involved in public issues and trying to make a difference by using their expertise. In short, on the basis of my sample, I'd say Gwyn's argument -- that faculty are not willing or able -- to participate in public policy issues is not correct. They might not be on The National every night but they are doing things on a regular basis. If we were to conduct a more extensive search -- say for professors who have been on CBC radio in the last year -- my bet is that we'd get a very long list. 

The question, then, actually much different from how it was phrased by Gwyn and my friend in administration. The issue is not "why are faculty not involved?" But, why do people assume that faculty are not involved? Why does someone like Gwyn -- an intelligent, respected and generally good journalist -- assume that faculty are holed away in monastic cells? 

I honestly don't have an answer to this question. It is, to be sure, a failure of research. After all, I am not all that difficult to find, nor are my colleagues. If someone wants to know what I do in the way of public engagement, all they need to do is ask. So, why didn't Gwyn ask (I obviously don't mean precisely me here since there is no particular reason he would ask me)? I'd actually like to hear what other people think on this question. Why assume that faculty are behaving a more than a bit like a-social recluses who ignore the "real world" when it does not appear to be true? 

Part of the problem, and likely only part, is that most people don't know what profs do. They make assumptions and those assumptions are there confirmed by the people in their circles. We all do this. I complain about the Jays management all the time to my friends who share my views; hence we end up confirming our own views. But my complaining about the Jays is not a public issue or debate or even in the least important. Making a public statement about the failure of post-secondary education if one has a platform and is a respected public commentator is. Some level of accuracy and some level of research might be expected. It seems to me that this is, partly, the real problem. Those complaining about what profs do -- or, don't do -- are so certain they are right that they don't bother to check their facts. 

Which ... brings me back to research, its importance, and why we should not castigate research too quickly. If we actually do the research ... we might find out that our views need to be modified. We might find that profs are making contributions all the time in different but often little-seen ways as befit their skills and abilities. And, if we did the research, we might find a way to avoid a fruitless debate (that is, one that begins from an error in assumption) and have a more productive one. I think Gwyn wants to have a productive debate. In future blogs ... I'll try to intuit what that is.  

Tenure ... or, why don't people like it? Part I: The Life of a Prof

Some people, it appears, don't like tenure. This op ed from respected journalist Richard Gwyn captures the basics: 

University Teaching

I will be frank: this is not a particularly good piece of journalism or even a particularly good op-ed.  If I were using it in class, it is a model of how to *not* make arguments. For instance: it assumes that tuition increases are driven by faculty salary increases (but does not actually look at the ratio of university spending on faculty salaries versus other elements of university budgets), its evidence provides links to links (for example: "As is little known, Canadian professors are the highest-paid in the world, even, astoundingly, 28 per cent better paid than those at public universities in the U.S., no matter all the Nobel Laureates there" ... if you thought that link would take you to table to demonstrate the point ... you would be wrong, it takes to another link that takes you to another link that requires you to buy a book to get the information), and its makes use of sweeping generalization on the basis of a single case study. In other words, one thing we might learn about the jobs faculty do is that journalists might fail our intro courses if they submitted some of the things they write as term papers because they don't meet the minimum levels of documentation or argumentation. 

But, that is snide and catty of me. The critique of tenure is not widespread, but it might be growing. It used to be confined a few voices on the lunatic fringe and faculty could count on their administrators to defend it as a fundamental aspect of the occupations to which they had devoted their lives. The U of S case suggests that tenure and its importance is still recognized but that some administrators (including the outgoing president of U of A) are interested in finding ways to disregard its basic provisions. Their objectives in so doing sound crass when I state them clearly: they were looking to silence or remove potential critics. The crassness, however, is not my restatement but the fact that their objectives were crass and don't have a place in institutions of higher learning. 

This said, I do think we should avoid being snide or catty about this issue. Tenure is important and its importance requires that those of us who support it explain what it is and its importance. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with talking about this issue. Questions (even if misinformed) and discussion are a natural part of a democratic society. So, lets talk a bit about tenure, what people think is wrong with it, and what might be done to address their concerns. I'd like to do this in several parts. First, I'd like to talk a bit about who profs are -- I'll use myself as an example and explain why I think this is important to a consideration of tenure below. In future blogs I'll look at the demands of research and its relationship to teaching at the post-secondary level. Finally, I'll look at what tenure is supposed to do and what it actually does do. My overall conclusion is that a bit of education on this issue transforms concerns about tenure into a non-issue. Reading Gwyn's piece one might get the impression that there is much "sound and fury" here. Their should not be. Tenure is not the problem with post-secondary education in Canada and taking its "off the table" will allow us to focus on what is the problem. 

Before I get to these, however, let me begin by saying that I am a university prof (if you did not know) and I've been one for about 15 years. I don't know what other people think professors do but you might be surprised by its banality. I go to work like everyone else. My office might look a bit different than others. I have more books, for instance, but these are the tools of my trade. Other than that, however, my office is shockingly ordinary. I pride myself on being at work. I leave for work when my daughter leaves for high school. I get in around 8:15 and say until 4:30, when I stroll home (I live in Sackville) to make supper. I spend my evenings doing other shockingly normal things: I watch my kids play minor sports, take them to music lessons, do the laundry, pay the bills, watch the Jays game. From what I can tell, my day is not unusual. 

I get the feeling from reading Gwyn's piece that his image of a professor is that I spend my days trying to avoid teaching so I can do my research. My research is important to me and to my employer (Mount Allison University). They pay me to do it. I like it (most of my research is on different aspects of Canadian cultural history) but it is also my job. If I don't do it, I would not be doing what I am paid to do and my employer would (rightly) have problems with that.

But, during the school year, it is pretty far from all I do. Gwyn does not like lecturing and sees videos as a useful substitute. Perhaps, but lecturing is not all I do. In fact, it is only a small part. I lecture to the large intro class once a week, but most of my colleagues work to make their teaching interactive. I do too. I run small discussion groups for the intro, seminars, meet one-on-one with independent topic or directed reading or thesis students. Moreover, lecturing, or another other form of effective post-secondary teaching, is not just going in to a room and talking off the top of your head. A good lecture communicates important information, it is interactive, logical and responds to student questions. All of this takes time. I teach Canadian Studies and teaching students about Canada requires that I am informed about the things I am teaching. In other words, making up a course takes a long time and requires a lot of work. I like that work, but it takes time because I want to be more than a video. 

Outside of teaching, I do other things. My university requires something called "community service" from me. Again, I am paid to do this. It is not a choice, but an obligation. Generally, again, I like it but it also takes time. It can involve university  governance but it also involve programme advising, reading materials on which students have appealed grades, meeting with students to work through their problems (whatever these might be). Just one example to illustrate my point: one day this past semester I met with a student for three straight hours. She had problems that needed to be addressed. They were and it took that length of time to address them. She was happy when we were done and so was I but I then had the next student meeting, which last almost two hours. So, five hours of my day were taken up addressing the concerns of two students. I don't want anyone to say "what a great guy" but just notice the pattern. These are extreme cases and I should not be congratulated for doing my job but that is my point. I was doing my job. I also have a range of other routine paperwork that needs to be done. I did not make this paper; it is a university rule that I have to "sign off" on pay forms for interns and student TAs. I don't mind doing it but if I don't ... someone is not paid. 

You put this all together and what do you get? Well, you get a pretty ordinary job that takes a lot of time. When we talk about hours teaching, we don't talk about how long it takes to prepare to teach, to meet with students afterward, doing the routine paperwork that needs to be done. And ... you will notice that I have not even gotten to marking. Marking is an amazingly time consuming thing if you want to do it right. Ask yourself this: how would you want your work to be evaluated? Bubble sheets and fill-in-the-blank? That would save a tonne of time, but would it provide a meaningful post-secondary education in the humanities? Would you want commentary? Would you want to know how to improve your work? 

What about the sciences? Well, in addition to everything I do, my colleagues in the sciences run their labs, which is fundamental to both their research and the education of their students. That, too, takes time. My colleagues in music spend evening after evening going to recitals and working with their students. My colleagues in drama devote countless evenings to working with student actors and stage managers. 

My point is this: none of this stuff shows up on the "time cards". The meetings I had with the five students who took directed readings classes from me last semester never showed up as work I did because they are not officially counted toward my contact hours. Thus, someone might say "Nurse was only in class 200 hours last academic year" (I don't know, I have not counted) but that would not touch the surface of how much time I spent with students or preparing to spend with students (for instance, if you are taking a directed readings course ... do you think the prof should have done the readings you are discussing? If you said "not needed" ... how meaningful would you think his or her commentary on your work might be?) or marking student work. In the summers, I work forty hours per week, give or take. During the school year, this figure naturally goes up because there is more work to do. 

Am I well paid? Well ... come look at how I live. I am wary of generalized stats because they don't account for variations and are prone to be thrown off by outliers. For instance, imagine a situation where we have four salaries: #1 is paid $1000.00; #2, #3, and #4 are paid $100. What is the average salary? $325, but 3/4ths of our same made considerably less than the average making the average meaningless from a statistical perspective. (There is also an ethical problem with the "X is paid too much" argument that I will get into another blog.) The better test, for those who want one, is to look at how I live. I have a nice house, a car that is almost paid off, my son has a car but he's 21 and works in the next town. I have a flat screen TV that I bought at Walmart for $325; an iMac in my basement, and a two dogs. I have a nice yard on which my wife has worked tireless for the last 12 years because gardening is one of her passions. But, like others I have a mortgage and my house is pretty ordinary, even if I like it. I'd describe my lifestyle as comfortable and middle class. I don't want for anything but, like a great many other people, I have to think before I make a purchase or go on vacation (this summer we are thinking about whether or not we can afford a brief trip and pay for some needed repairs on the house). There is nothing wrong with that  and that is my point. My lifestyle is roughly the same as my brothers (neither of whom is a prof) or my parents (who were not profs). 

I'll end this Part I here and reiterate my point. Before we demonize profs ... we might want to think about who they are and what they do. The ordinariness of our lives, the regularity of our work, the way in which we try to respond to others needs might strike people as ... well ... ordinary. Knowing this helps up, I think, to proceed to an assessment of the merits of tenure with a clear head. Perhaps I have too stereotyped a view of what others think of profs. The vast majority of us are just trying to do the job for which we are paid and live -- however banal -- a middle class life.