Education has been on a lets get as top heavy as we can kick for years. Go to any educational institution, anywhere in the US. Check out the oak paneling in the administrative offices. Check out the explosion of administrative positions.
Check out the rise of administrator salaries. That is where the money goes while class sizes increase, teacher salaries nosedive, and essential core subjects get trivialized or cut.
The percentage decline in tenure track faculty might be fine. Straight-up instruction (non-tenure faculty) is also important; it provides employment for those who don't make tenure.<p>Tenure level academia is demanding:<p>a) Once you've made it, you have a solid reward: a sustainable lifestyle salary, freedom to work on what you wish, and, notoriety.<p>b) To make it, you have to work insane hours for about a decade or more (PhD, post-doc, 5-years) -- where the first few years (5-8) pay very little, if anything.<p>c) The odds of making it are against you -- many drop out in their PhD ("ABD"), fail to get post-doctorate work, fail to get a tenure track slot, or, fail to get tenure.<p>The promise of tenure is the carrot that feeds expectations that can only be met by talent and hard work.
I think this is old news. Tenure as a whole likely costs the system more than it brings in intellectual freedom benefits. It's a fallacy to think that more experienced tenured teachers are better educators, when it's research success that got them tenure.<p>Jeff Selingo (<a href="http://www.jeffselingo.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.jeffselingo.com/</a>) writes extensively about how colleges are reacting to changes in demographics and technology. He doesn't think Yale or Harvard will need to change, but the public and private schools a tier below will need to. His book (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/College-Un-bound-Education-Students/dp/0544027078" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/College-Un-bound-Education-Students/dp...</a>) is a good read for parents.
What is the trend for the overall number rather than percentage of tenured college professors? Surely a large part of this is explained by the explosive growth of higher education as a consumer commodity. We should not expect the percentage of professors to increase if the demand for academics is being driven by an increasing number of lower quality colleges.
Meh.<p>There are two roles for Tenured College Professors:<p><pre><code> * Making intellectual bets that might not pay off for decades
* Making Graduate students work hard
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Everything else is gravy. The university and country that puts most effort into these two will over the long term get the most out. The important thing here is <i>tenure</i>. The next most important thing is you get to be a professor because all the other professors think you might make a good one.<p>Just pay up the money, and make the empirical sciences better paid. Its like a magic machine is edication. Put in money get out more.<p>If you want to see my poster-child for College Professors (#) go <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sddb0Khx0yA" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sddb0Khx0yA</a>.<p>(#) No, not <i>that</i> Playboy spread. Different poster.