…Texas State University historian James McWilliams’ in-the-trenches example of how information technology has increased the productivity of social scientists? He was looking for insights into how 19th-century Americans viewed the concept of weeds, and was able to cull all the relevant documents from a database of several hundred thousand in a matter of hours. McWilliams suggests that the dramatic gains in efficiency of research ought to raise the bar for academic tenure.
An interesting point. One has to wonder, though, whether tenure itself is an outdated institution in the rapidly changing market for educational services. Present company excluded, of course…
Twice in the past decade I took a train to the ASSA Conference, once to New Orleans
and once to Chicago. This meant long hours in which I could not
be distracted by other things, so I used the time to read.
McGraw-Hill, I believe it is, issues or has issued a paperback covering
all the economic departments and faculty in the US in a particular year.
It was a free item at their booth at these conventions. I went through
the book from cover to cover on these two occasions. The most fascinating
thing was how an economic caste system emerged before my eyes. For example
none of the big-name schools (Ivy, Stanford, Wisconsin, Berkley, etc.) had
any faculty members listed with PhD’s from lower ranked schools that are
not considered to be part of the elite. There was a definite pecking order.
Since ASSA is only a few weeks before the Superbowl matchup is known,
I checked the player rosters for the teams appearing in the Superbowl.
Of course, the college football powerhouses dominated the NFL rosters, as one
would expect. But on every Superbowl team lineup there were a few players
from schools that are not even in Division I, and some schools were even so obscure
most people would not know about them.
Tentative conclusion: one profession is about as close to a
meritocracy as you might find. One is not. Tenure is not the only thing that
should be ended in academia.