Tenure, RIP

infoneer-pulse:

Over just three decades, the proportion of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track plummeted: from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007. The new report is expected to show that that proportion fell even further in 2009, dropping below one-third. If you add graduate teaching assistants to the mix, those with some kind of tenure status represent a mere quarter of all instructors.

The idea that tenure, a defining feature of U.S. higher education throughout the 20th century, has shrunk so drastically is shocking. But, says Stanley N. Katz, director of Princeton University’s Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, “we may be approaching a situation in which there will not be good, tenure-track jobs for the great majority of good people.”

» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)

Methinks the only ones shocked by this news are those who are beneficiaries of the system.

Source: infoneer-pulse