“Get tenure as fast as you can, and never give it up for anything.”
That was the advice given to me by Yale Law Professor Geoffrey Hazard, for whom I was a teaching assistant in law school, after I took the job at Tennessee. And it was good advice at the time. Especially the part that followed, where he expanded by noting that he’d seen a lot of people leave tenured jobs for opportunities outside academia that seemed promising, only to see those opportunities fade away, and the tenured jobs gone for good.
But this is a different era, with some schools doing away with tenure entirely, at least for new hires. The state of Oklahoma, for example, is in the process of getting rid of tenure for most of its state supported schools:
Declaring that Oklahoma has a duty to ensure tax dollars are used appropriately and wisely, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has signed an executive order that ends tenure rights for college professors at most of the state’s universities.
“University and college faculty play a central and irreplaceable role in educating students, advancing knowledge, mentoring future leaders, and shaping the civic and economic future of Oklahoma,” states the executive order signed Feb. 5 by Stitt.
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