Take the opportunity to look at all of Undine’s April posts, which are excellent.

That is why I have this radical “modest” proposal – to counterbalance all those who want more time to tenure, or to abolish the tenure system. Meanwhile check out this video on No Child Left Behind – I think a version of it could be made for the tenure track: http://servetus.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/for-the-purpose-of-figuring-out-how-to-imbed-a-video-a-bitter-snort/

So did we, but (a) we knew we were taking a major risk when we hired this person and we should have been more careful, and (b) the problems became evident here in the first year, so Historiann’s plan (2 year probationary period) would have actually shortened all of our suffering.

“…it was necessary for the college to protect us from an out-of-control set of full professors for years.”

It is my contention that they’d have been bullies whether they were tenured / full or not … and since I know where you are, I deduce who they are, and I know they were publishing, so they don’t fall into the ‘dead wood’ category so many people seem to assume tenured faculty do. As you say, it’s not a tenure problem but “whether or not a particular institutional process and accountability systems do what they are supposed to do (if they even exist at all) to protect both the rights of the ‘probationary’ faculty member and the needs of the department.”

“tenure is vitally necessary to ensure academic freedom and all that good stuff”

I think so too, and I keep coming back to the question of governance (which includes ’service’).
If professors are untenured, those who run the joint won’t be professors, won’t have that kind of training, etc. … and these institutions are supposed to be universities!!! I say the people in charge need to be professors. It is why I always say administrators should have a research degree and successful experience as professors. That way they know what it is they are managing.

Six years as a limit, not for the candidate to keep working but for the institution to hold them back, got it.

These results shouldn’t come as any surprise to administrators. I’m sure there are well know studies on the behavior of rats in mazes given electrical shocks versus versus food rewards that exactly mirror the responses of faculty members to strife and praise.

That’s my concern, too. I’ll go over to your blog / IHE and then get to grading !!! I think we should *at least* put a manifesto in IHE. Here, everyone, is the IHE link, a very informative article which bears study I cannot undertake at this very moment because I need to make grades!!! http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/31/tenure … and here is a live link to Historiann’s post, which has useful links in it. http://www.historiann.com/2008/03/31/tenure-again-oh-noes/

Historiann – we’re hiring now and several of the candidates have credentials for tenure, others for advanced asst. prof. A couple we like really are traditional finishing grad students but they have more and better teaching experience than such students used to have, and I have no reason at all to believe they won’t hit the ground running with publications as long as we don’t torture/depress them. The reason I want tenurable / tenured candidates is that there is so much program building and such to do. Our longtime nontenurables just don’t have the kind of commitment to the profession and the institution to undertake that kind of service … we need some collegial cooperation and for that we need empowered colleagues, not just employees who ultimately think more in terms of hourly wage than anything else, even though they are nice people, dedicated, good teachers, and so on – and in some cases, also good publishers.