Does Texas Higher Education Have a Morale Problem?
When Chancellor Bruce Leslie implemented a new progressive discipline procedure for tenured faculty at San Antonio’s Alamo Colleges in August, it was not well received.
Among the unacceptable behavior listed: “loitering and loafing during work hours” and “disrespectful attitude towards a supervisor such as back-talk or ‘grumbling.’”
“I hate to say this,” said Dawn Elmore-McCrary, an English professor at San Antonio College and chairwoman of the faculty senate, “but there was some grumbling about the language.”
Faculty did not disagree with the sentiment that they should be held accountable, Elmore-McCrary insisted. Department chairs had been asking for a discipline ...
Comments (13)
BayouCrier Comment
Abolish tenure and systematically get rid of of the teachers who do not want to improve. We are an education/information based society, anyone who stands in the way of progress on this segment of our economy need to get out of the way.
T D
"Abolish" and "get out of the way" would sound appropriate from a Bolshevik.
I would suggest that the anger people have against teachers comes from larger economic insecurity. Turning colleges into job training facilities isn't a good way to address that in the long term.
Dan Formanowicz
Faculty are not afraid of being held accountable. What we don't want are people with little or no experience in higher education, who also insist on spending less and less on education in general, imposing rules and standards. Education at any level is not and should not be an assembly line where the goal is to produce as many 'units' as possible.
Jacqueline Lousier via Texas Tribune on Facebook
"Dean said many professors enter the academic field knowing they could make more in the private sector. “They’re doing this because they like doing it. They like being with students. And now they’re being trashed for it,” she said." Welcome to the world of public school teachers.....
Bill Eaves via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Yes too many illegal immigrants enrolled!
Rhonda Taylor Bird via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Now they're starting to treat colleges like corporations. "more production , less humanity"
Valerie Merriam DeBill via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Not hardly, Bill.
Karen Spivey-Cummings via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Bill you are FOS.
A B
We can't afford to pay for deadwood faculty anymore. Let's get rid of tenure and clean our universities!
A B
Liberal Academics vs. Tea Party
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/the-five/transcript/liberal-academics-vs-tea-party
"Without tenure, they'd be living under overpasses."
Rachel Dvoretzky via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Beatings will continue until morale improves?
Henry Schnauzer
The morale of faculty is not the major problem. The major problem is the qualitative inadequacy of the chain of command leading upward from the faculty. Fake Navy Seals with fake credentials, knife-wielding assistant chancellors, regents who glory in their own lack of knowledge--these results of current management policies are the threats to Texans who need their state to move wisely forward into a complex future. Professors do and will continue to teach their students, pursue their advanced research, and perform extensive academic and public service, even if, like the rest of us, their hearts are bleeding, which isn't all that important.
Leon Drozd
This problem will go away when students get tired of prostrating themselves in total submission and adoration of the rich, religious and right and are hungry for an education. It might also help if the sports and military culture was not allowed to dominate.