
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 10, 1995                   TAG: 9503140094
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SAM G. RILEY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TENURE IS NOT THE PTOMAINE POISON OF HIGHER EDUCATION

READERS of this newspaper are being treated to a fairly steady diet of guest columns and letters to the editor that picture tenured college and university professors as lazy, do-nothing, know-nothing rascals. Most recently, you have been told that these professors and the schools that employ them aren't only ``brain-dead'' but ``doomed.'' (Feb. 15 letter to the editor by Wencil Stanek, ``Brain-dead colleges are doomed.'')

The concept of tenure - a measure of job security for those faculty members who can earn it - carries with it some risk of abuse, I admit. A professor could be granted tenure, then forevermore do the minimum amount of work consistent with keeping from being fired for failure to perform. I knew one such professor when I was a student. The man was as lazy as a 15-year-old basset hound, and his courses weren't worth much.

Cases like that are rarities, however. Most tenured faculty members really like what they do, take a good deal of pride in it, and put in long, effort-filled workweeks. Tenure isn't like a spigot that turns off the flow of effort when a person is granted it.

What amazes me is how ready some people are to assume the worst of those who teach. This attitude, I think, shows a considerable distrust of the teaching function in general, and of anyone who would do it for a living instead of ``some kind of real work.''

Some people whose own livelihoods depend on hard, physical labor are, and possibly always will be, unwilling to view teaching (soft, indoor, sissy stuff) as constituting work at all. Higher up the occupational ladder, business executives too often tend to see teaching as something done only by those who are unfit for better duty - as low-level kid stuff. Teachers and professors, then, catch it from both directions, and are quickly cast as the enemy when disputes arise.

Consider the recent troubles at James Madison University: a dispute between that school's president and his faculty. I'm in no position to judge the relative merits of either side, of course, but note how automatically the faculty became cast in news reports as the enemy - a gaggle of self-serving obstructionists opposed to all change or progress. The president was automatically pictured as a strong leader, and the professors as a bunch of silly sheep. All I can say about this thinking is ``baah, baah, baah.''

Now consider how automatically tenure is pictured as nothing more than a shelter for aging scoundrels. Never mind reality: that professors, unlike sprinters or prizefighters, actually get better and learn more as the years go by. This should be obvious to anyone who is willing to think about it even a wee bit.

But no. You were informed recently that tenured faculty are merely taking up space that would be far better filled with young, vigorous, newly minted professors. Lovely. Never mind that good professors aren't hatched out whole. They don't magically appear at the height of their powers the moment their graduate-school diplomas are handed to them. Like everyone else, they have to work and learn for quite a while before reaching the peak of their potential.

Also, tenured faculty are always pictured by their critics as aged dotards, shuffling uselessly around the campus, getting in the way of their younger colleagues. Never mind that some tenured faculty are only six or seven years older than their newest, youngest co-workers. Also never mind that professors, like wines, often actually benefit from a little age.

Tenure isn't an absolute protection. If a tenured professor can't or won't perform, he or she can be released for cause. In really bad financial times, tenure and 50 cents will get a professor a 25 cent cup of coffee, meaning that even tenured faculty can be let go in times of true financial crisis.

What case can be made for tenure? The answer would require a column of its own, but briefly: Tenure helps protect professors who have devoted time and effort to their school, and to their field of study. It allows them to disagree with authority, to speak out if their honest opinion isn't in style at the moment. It allows professors, who individually are pretty much powerless, some protection from the arbitrary or overzealous use of power by others. (Does anyone remember the McCarthy era of the '50s?)

As to the claim that professors and their schools are all doomed, I`m reminded of an old pun about a movie, an Old Testament Western: ``Armageddon for the Last Roundup.'' And of the late, great Henny Penny, who, upon being conked on the noggin by an acorn, wanted to run and tell the king that the sky was falling.

Sam G. Riley is a professor of communication studies at Virginia Tech.

by CNB