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Good news for Oregon as Wisconsin Republicans gut UW-Madison

25 years ago UW-Madison gave me a full-ride PhD fellowship, funded by an endowment from the professor who figured out how to put vitamin-D in milk, and then gave the patent to the state. Now the Republican Governor and state legislature are trying to destroy the place:

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They’ve left in the perks for the coaches, of course. With UW-Madison soon to be waste in the dustbin of academic history, it’s a great time for UO to pick up the new faculty and grad students we’ll need to stay in the AAU. Thanks to a reader for the link, and there’s more in this InsideHigherEd.com story.

15 Comments

  1. honest Uncle Bernie 06/01/2015

    Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans obviously have it in for academia and academics, and I consider that very unfortunate for Wisconsin (the U. and the State).

    However, I must say that in many ways, academia has been taunting them in way that eventually was bound to have a predictable effect.

    My own awakening to this came at UO when I learned that Republican U.S. Senator Gordon Smith would no longer appear here publicly, because of experience of being shouted down on campus.

    Oh, and then there was the time when Republican U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield was nicely heckled at the opening of the then-new UO science complex ca. 1990.

    Fortunately for UO, Oregon is a state dominated by Democrats, albeit ones who don’t support higher education.

    So we have Republicans who if anything have been more supportive, we have an independent board dominated by liberal corporate types.

    As the hapless Michael G used to say:

    Go Ducks!

  2. honest Uncle Bernie 06/01/2015

    Actually, from the excellent link provided by UOM, the attack is far less than meets the eye (see excerpts below). Wisconsin seems to have a very unusual state enshrinement of tenure (probably a legacy from Wisconsin progressivism when it was a big P). The legislators even put in some protection for STEM faculty representation. Good, except they probably don’t need it.

    They have retreated from the idea of U. independence championed by Gov. Walker, i.e. retaining more of a “public” university — unlike a certain U. closer to home — where independence was championed, it should be noted, by a lifelong Republican — Dave F.

    It looks much more like bluster, at most a mild warning.

    The UW faculty would do well, in my opinion, to reaffirm their belief in earned tenure, in shared governance, in public education, in academic standards — and against administrative bloat and poor use of public funds.

    The proposed changes would also remove tenure protections from state law. Darling and Harsdorf both said that Wisconsin is the only state that enshrines tenure in its statutes.

    The GOP proposal puts the decision of whether to have tenure and how to define it in the hands of the Board of Regents.

    “We believe in empowering the Board of Regents and the chancellors throughout the state of Wisconsin to be able to manage the System,” Nygren said. “I think this is a tool to enable them to do that.”

    Cross and Board of Regents vice president Regina Miller pledged to uphold the tenets of shared governance and tenure in their policies.

    “We appreciate that the action proposed today by the Joint Finance Committee keeps shared governance language in state statute, and we are reviewing other proposed changes related to shared governance,” Cross and Miller said in a joint statement. “As tenure was not retained in statute, we will move to incorporate it into Board policies immediately. The Board meets next week. A UW System tenure task force, previously charged with reviewing the tenure issue, will continue its work.”

  3. Bob Dobalina 06/01/2015

    ….the real problem at UO and elsewhere is that post tenure review is a laughable process that drives mediocrity after 6-10 yrs in the academy. Faculty have failed time and again to reform this system and now legislatures are taking action for them. It will be a painful and needed bloodletting in the coming years.

  4. Gina Psaki 06/03/2015

    Good God. In what way is it a farce? I’ve been taking it seriously all these years, both in writing my own statements and in evaluating my colleagues. Wish I’d known I could have phoned it in–would have saved dozens of hours I’ll never get back!

    I’m also not aware that there have been faculty attempts to reform it at UO. I remember when the Senate voted it in, in the mid-90’s, reportedly because the Legislature was going to devise a process for us, otherwise. Or do you mean nationwide?

  5. Bob Dobalina 06/03/2015

    Just because you check the boxes and fill out the forms does not mean you or or your peers have been evaluated critically. The bar is lowered post-tenure and you can keep your job so long as you can look yourself in the mirror.

    Nationally, and the debate follows the logic of writing statements and the such count as scholarly activity and eventually just showing up for work is all it takes…..never mind all the students that are collateral damage.

  6. dog 06/03/2015

    Actually there is a lot more to the PTR process, in principle, than box checking, While I agree that we do, in fact, check boxes and move on and do not take this issue seriously, there are some objective methods that could be employed but we are too afraid to do it, most likely because we ourselves probably fall below many of these thresholds.

    So what are these objective measures for Post Tenure Review:

    1. Has the person received a “major” grant in their field within the 6 year review period (yes this is highly variable by field)

    1a. Has the person even applied for any grant in their filed in the last 6 years?

    2. Has the person supervised at least one graduate student PHD in the last 6 years?

    3. Has the person published on average, 1 peer reviewed paper per year in their field.

    4. Has the person demonstrated any teaching versatility over the review period or have they always taught the same thing.

    Just a small list.

    The other thing as that all our peer evaluations of teaching return that the person is an excellent teacher and none of us are trained in how to properly do peer evaluation of teaching and its just one observation usually made by one person in one random class.

    So yes, departments don’t devote much time of structure to this exercise.

    • Jack Straw Man 06/04/2015

      Dog, this is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go far enough. I’m not senior faculty, but even I know that a lot of people who get to that level find all their time taken up with departmental and university service. For somebody like Bob Dobalina to start bloviating about mediocrity without taking this into account is just wrong.

      This is of course a universal problem at this university. Faculty service is taken for granted at every level. That is, a faculty member can be loaded down with service obligations but be given no allowance of time to complete them, and then have the resultant drop in research productivity held against her at promotion or contract renewal time. I’ve seen this happen. We lose really good faculty because of this. We chew ’em up and spit ’em out. You can get away with that if you’re Harvard. We ain’t Harvard.

      But sure, Bob Dobalina. Keep whinging about post-tenure mediocrity, with no evidence and no perspective. That’ll really help things.

      • that effing Canis again 06/04/2015

        Some remarks on service from my experience and I believe I have had more than my fair chair of departmental, university and national service.

        1. At the department level I find that service is valued and understood.

        2. For me, service is often annoying but never onerous in terms of a significant time commitment that compromises teaching and research productivity (not that I have very much). I think its often used as a convenient excuse.

        3. I used to work at Harvard.

        4. The College doesn’t seem to value National Service very well, in my view. When I once was involved in a 3 year long review service for the National Science Board, I tried to get teaching release for that service. My department was fairly willing but the CAS deans (none of the present deans were involved) put up various obstacles to make that difficult.

        5. I do think that certain onerous and time consuming service areas (DACC, FPC, FAC – things like that) ought to grant the inmate on term of teach release.

        6. While i have only anecdotal evidence based on people I know and have worked with that have actually left the UO – the number one reason is for better research support and better research infrastructure

        • Jack Straw Man 06/04/2015

          I can say from my experience (and observations) that often departmental service is not appreciated, or at best appreciated in only a good-vibes way (which counts for nothing in a promotion or tenure review). I’ve also known of tenure denials that were in large part due to onerous service loads – i.e., a heavier-than-it-should-have-been service load directly impeded the person’s research program, but tenure was denied anyway. And I have certainly experienced service commitments that have been “onerous in terms of a significant time commitment that compromises teaching and research productivity.” Finally (and this is why I responded to the thread to begin with), I’ve personally seen cases where senior faculty, upon achieving tenure, do in fact get immersed in service, truly time-consuming service, and let that second book project slide, and their reward for this is to be told by deans (and people like Bob Dobalina) that they’re “mediocre” and need to work harder, and that they’re why we need to reform tenure.

          It looks like my experience of UO is considerably different from yours. I won’t ask your field or department, nor tell you mine. But I’m glad my experiences aren’t universal. I wish yours were.

          My reference to Harvard (I did my PhD there) was to what is (in my field) a well-known propensity to hire junior faculty, squeeze them dry for service, teaching, and research, and then deny them tenure. Junior faculty in my field *never* get tenure there, no matter the publication record. But Harvard can get away with this because everybody knows that with 8 years at Harvard on your CV you can write your ticket someplace else. There’s no stigma to not getting tenure there. And so they can always attract the best applicants, and expect them to come if an offer’s made and stay until they’re not wanted anymore. We can’t. I’ve known lots of people depart UO early (voluntarily), and while I didn’t mean to claim that service was the primary reason, I do think that an overall climate that demands ever more work for ever less reward is a problem for us in a way that it’s not for more prestigious schools.

          • dog 06/04/2015

            Short response

            I agree that the UO at university, college and departmental levels
            does a pretty excellent job of de-valueing its collective faculty.

          • Old Grey Mare 06/04/2015

            I think that we also need to keep raising the fact that there are simply not enough tenured faculty to do the work that needs to be done. The student body has grown tremendously in the last twenty years, the tenure-line faculty not nearly as much.

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