What will the post-tenure university look like? Scott Walker and the post-tenure university: An apocalyptic scenario.
Is not much about tenure but having job security and a respectable salary. :/ The adjunct situation is worrying.
Professors do three things, primarily. They teach, they research, and they administrate. Tenure protects the first two by providing some assurances against institutional retaliation for researching, publishing, and talking about unpopular ideas. What the general public doesn't realize is that tenure is NOT a a guaranteed job for life, or that tenure prevents the removal of a mal-performing or -behaving professor. The 'McTeaching' thing is a real threat to the long-term viability of the university's ability to advance scholarship and human learning. 'McTeaching' is fine for what Chris Argyris called 'single-loop learning,' where we continue to apply the same solutions to the same problems. These are what Marty Linsky and Ron Heifitz call 'technical problems.' But it is 'double-loop learning (Argyris, or 'adaptive challenges'--Linsky and Heifitz) that moves us forward. That cannot happen in a factory-like approach. It requires we wade into the unknown for new solutions to problems that often have not yet been fully identified. Does that sound like 'McTeaching'? I would think not.
