Why I'm not panicking about Dan Patrick's push to end tenure in Texas.
Bills to end tenure at public universities show up in state legislatures with great regularity. They appear in my own state's legislature annually. Only once did it get out of its first committee hurdle, and it didn't go very far beyond that, in spite of having a governor and legislature far enough to the right that they clearly want us to be an exclave of Texas or Florida. And the current lieutenant governor of Texas appears determined to end public higher education tenure in his state.
Such bills allow right-wing legislators to appeal to a lot of people, many of whom aren't necessarily aligned with such legislators in other ways. Why should professors get lifetime guarantees of employment when ordinary blokes don't? Especially when these arrogant, elitist professors are wasting their time and taxpayer dollars on worthless "research" and sticking their noses in the lives of everyone with their liberal indoctrination?
It's actually comparatively easy to debunk such statements. Applied research gets nowhere without basic research that, at first, may seem to have no practical benefit. Our lifetime appointments are similar to those of judges, and the reason is the same - we don't want to see massive faculty turnover whenever the governor's office switches parties. And yes, tenured professors can be fired.
But these points, however valid, don't always seem to take hold.
And yet very few anti-tenure bills even make it to the floor for a vote, much less pass.
There are a couple of reasons for this. So, yes - as a tenured faculty member at a public university, and as an alum of the Texas public university system (MS and PhD from the University of Texas), I am concerned about these bills, but not really panicking.
1. Businesses, by and large, like the tenure system. They want universities to promote innovation. Anything that might drive the best and brightest from the higher education system - which tenure will do (see below) - will be opposed by businesses that rely on what higher education provides.
The reason anti-tenure bills never go far in my own blood-red state is because, as soon as they start picking up any sort of traction, business lobbying groups go apeshit. This is especially true of the tech sector, which is even more important in Texas than in my current digs. It's also true of the oil and gas industry, which relies on research at public universities to improve exploration and extraction technology. (I know this for a fact, because my department at UT-Austin was one of the premier departments for such research. Many of my office-mates were headed for jobs in the oil industry. It's also why tenure is most likely safe in Oklahoma and Louisiana.)
A lot of these businesses are also aware that those they recruit from out of state will want to see a robust public university system for their own kids when they're old enough.
I'm serious about this. Businesses will mobilize to prevent Patrick's social science windmill-tilting from hurting their bottom line.
2. The closest we've come to actually eliminating tenure was in Wisconsin, which didn't end tenure per se, but which weakened it substantially. The result was the loss of several prominent faculty members and massive expenditures to retain faculty who were about to bolt. It's still having an impact on hiring at Wisconsin's public universities. It's a good bet the Texas legislature, no matter how far up the ass of the Orange-Skinned Eater of Other Peoples' Boogers* who occupied the White House until mid-January 2021, won't want to repeat that mistake.
Yes, we've got to be vigilant. This could, indeed, go badly if we aren't. But it's not yet time to panic.
*I've got a very creative 6-year-old daughter. She comes up with the best insults.