Tenure / Pay raises

[JPD]

My bf and I had an interesting argument last night about both tenure and pay-raises, and would like to hear other people opinion on the issue.

He things that things like tenure should be abolished, since it allows those that are ineffective in their job to stay there. (although he does believe no one should be fired without cause)

As an education major, I like the idea of tenure, since it does allow for job security, but do personally thing that it could use some reform, since there are cases where teachers should be fired, but aren't due to tenure.


Pay issue - He thinks if two people are doing the same job, they should get the same pay, regardless of how long that they have worked for the company, or how much more education they have.

In his example, a first year teacher with a bachelors degree, and a teacher with 35+ years experience and a doctorate degree, if both teaching the same classes in the same school, should get the same pay.

Looking at a pay schedule for a school near where I live, the first would get 37,000; and the second would get 70,000

[gremcint]

no they shouldn't get the same pay because that means no raises then. I've been working my retail job for over 4 years and I've earned my raises and I'd be kinda pissed if someone were hired at the same wage I am making now.

[HYHYBT]

Tenure helps good teachers ride out bad administrators.

Pay differences encourage behavior that helps the workplace. Separating three types mentioned:

*Someone with many years of experience is likely to do the same job better (and/or more efficiently, depending on what it is) especially when something unusual or especially difficult comes along. It makes sense to pay more for that, even if it's not obvious that it's being used on a daily basis. This also encourages people to choose a career path and stick with it, without which it's hard to justify the expense of the necessary education and training.

*Keeping a stable workforce, rather than the revolving door model, benefits the employer, and this is at least as true in education as elsewhere. How do you encourage people to stay, rather than moving on to a different district? Other than by there being no open jobs, you do it by paying new hires a bit less to start with and increasing that the longer they remain. Saying they all should be paid the same almost certainly means they all should be paid as if it were their first year, but one reason the early years are cheaper is that people take that with the expectation of making more later. In a way, it's similar to offering pensions. If you do away with it for existing hires, you're cheating them out of delayed, but already agreed upon, compensation for work they've already done, and if you do it for new hires they ought to get more right off the bat to make up for it.

Education works much the same way. That they're doing the same job doesn't mean they're not doing it better for knowing more; not in this field. Or, at the very least, they *can* do more as needed. And that education is expensive, difficult, and time-consuming to obtain. How do you get people to go for it? By paying them less if they don't/more if they do.

[Greenday]

Tenure is a ridiculous notion. Where else can you, after 3 years, only get fired if you committed crimes against humanity, but can keep your job even if you do a crappy rate of work? I'd love to have a safety net after one more year of work saying I can't get fired.

As for paying teachers the same amount for doing the same job, yes, I think someone with 20+ years of experience and a doctorate should get paid more than a new teacher with a bachelors. I also think a person with a doctorate and a ton of experience shouldn't be doing the same job as a new teacher with a bachelors. You get paid for the work you do, not because you've been there forever.

[s_stabeler]

I think the idea behind tenure is to avoid situations where a teacher is fired not because of being a crappy teacher, but because of what is taught. ( to use an example, a flat earth administrator firing a geography ( or science) teacher for saying the world is round.)

It's also the case that tenure normally appears at colleges and universities, with the idea being that a tenured professor can do long-term research without the university administration breathing down their neck because "not enough" is being discovered in any particular year. or, to give another example, a climate researcher being fired by an administrator because the climate researcher produced research proving global warming.

[TheHuckster]

The problem is, that same administrator could appoint a few really bad professors and researchers to tenure, and we'd have 20 years of a flat-earther publishing bogus papers about geography if the administrator were a flat-earther.

[s_stabeler]

actually, no. you CAN fire a tenured professor for a couple of reasons. one is if they have fallen foul of an objective rule. ( so, for example, you can require that they have published a paper in a reputable journal within the last X years) The other is if their behaviour is incompatible with their duties. ( which is why tenure was no protection during the McCarthy era)