Tenure Process @ UAH ( coming under scrutiny )

[DvlsAdvc8]

I've lived in 3 places in the last 10 years and don't regret it. I've spent this time with the same company on different contracts doing 3 different job functions (albeit all computer/technical). I enjoy the travel/change. You don't know a place from visiting the way you do from living there.

I have a home, I have retirement - so I'm not sure what the drawback is. But besides that, I have made contacts in three different cities and rounded out my experience because of it. Now I'm very flexible and easily employable.

I imagine as I get older I will move less and less - but I don't regret the experiences for even one second.

[hindsight2020]

Originally Posted by DvlsAdvc8

I've lived in 3 places in the last 10 years and don't regret it. I've spent this time with the same company on different contracts doing 3 different job functions (albeit all computer/technical). I enjoy the travel/change. You don't know a place from visiting the way you do from living there.

I have a home, I have retirement - so I'm not sure what the drawback is. But besides that, I have made contacts in three different cities and rounded out my experience because of it. Now I'm very flexible and easily employable.

I imagine as I get older I will move less and less - but I don't regret the experiences for even one second.

^^^Thank you for essentially making my point for me right there. Nobody is arguing for regretting life experiences, so long as there is a recognition of the true opportunity cost, which you did.

There's nothing wrong with pursuing employment at your discretion, to each their own. My point and argument is that labor nomadism is collectively erosive to our social balance, which is what we basically have come to take for granted in this country. Steady state, a nomadic labor force is inherently incompatible with the very social stability we aspire for ourselves in the first place. In essence, the "where do I wanna wake up today?" vocational lifestyles are great for "the experience" and sounds cute, but nobody argues with a straight face it is what they aspire or wish to rely on for a livelihood. Job nomadism is the same way. Works great when you're under 30 and no kids/wife, but then you pepper in a little dose of life and all of a sudden the 'pack up and go' mantra gets a little cumbersome. Suggesting everybody gets with the program and shed the homesteading pressures is disingenuous; you'd have nobody settling down and raising the replacements with any degree of stability or predictability. And to suggest these are the demographics that should populate your population centers, gobs of transplants where no one is from nowhere and nobody knows who actually watches the local news channel in the whole cotton-pickin' ticky tacky subdivision? Well, we agree to disagree on that one.

To tie in with the thread topic...Why do you think tenure is a big sticking point here in the first place? Because all these people value labor nomadism? Nope, quite the opposite. They value the homesteading 'luxury' and income stability (however perceived) these positions proclaim to provide. Whether we're turning into a country of portable commodities, expected to pack up and move for the sake of the shareholders, is for another thread. But the point remains, these tenure positions are not highly sought after for arbitrary reasons, it has to do with the very labor dynamics that people like you and me have juxtaposed here. Let's not suggest people do not value these traits, that's just unsupported by the reality of these incidents. Most people outside of the aforementioned demographic merely rationalize their nomadism, they don't genuinely embrace it. That's been my experience anyways.

This reminds me of an econ class I took as part of the college degree racket. They were discussing elasticities of demand and as part of that discussion they made certain assumptions. One of those was what I call the "obedience of the losers". Essentially when people can't afford something that demand disappears. I got in trouble in class for essentially proclaiming to the professor in open class that people didn't behave that way, though in more colorful ways (think Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School). My point was that in the absence of options people don't just simply tuck quietly in a corner and die, they steal, pillage and yes, murder. You'll never find any such concession on any mainstream economics books, but we all know the reality. Which is why closed-system microeconomics college classes are BS to begin with. Now, I recognize this incident is the outcome of the radicalization of one sample, whereas the majority do not resort to lethal force as retribution for their dispossession. But to think stoicism is the prescribed medication to the deconstruction of our labor landscape, and that such medication will be passively-accepted, is to gamble with your own safety and security. Our country would be very ill-served to pursue the "until it hits me personally I don't know what you're talking about" approach to our day to day. This shooting is perfect illustration of it.

As to the solution, it is more comprehensive than just jacking with the tenure system. We need to jack with the administrators and support structure of this system. But this is unpopular because it uncovers the top portion of the pyramid, which is the most unproductive. You do that by deconstructing the college financing racket. You pinch the feeding tube and there's no need to go in with a scalpel (which is what focusing on tenures does). As to avoiding these incidents in the future, one can find many answers in the physical world. Just like one needs to mitigate stress concentration points in a structure design, one needs to diffuse labor stress concentration points. Look at Haiti. You drop all the food on one spot people flock and bump into each other, chaos ensues. You diffuse distribution points and density then largely becomes a non-issue. Same thing with tenure. Broaden the base at the expense of the nodal positions, and you get less points of conflict. This is a lowering of compensation at the top for a benefit at the bottom. Nobody is tenured, but nobody is going to go shooting peers for it either.

[Maximum Entropy]

Tenure is not really the issue for me. I think it is an archaic system that needs reform but…

What amazed me was how long it took the University to warn the students. UAH seems to have dropped the ball and gotten really lucky that the shooter was not on a rampage. To me the discussion should focus more on the University’s emergency preparedness policies.

It seem disgruntled employees would be part of the risk assessment. Maybe this is where the discussion about how UAH handles tenure should start.

[the_huntsville]

Maximum Entropy,

Did you know that the "emergency texting" system that does SMS alerts wasn't even utilized in the moments after it happened. The "official" "emails" started to come out about an hour or two after it happened. Great emergency texting system eh?