Tenure At A Crossroads, Again?

Subtitle
An Examination of the Devolution of Higher Education in the Age of Corporatization

While many books have been written about the American higher education system and its K-12 public school counterpart, this edited volume is the first of its kind to draw a nexus between the quality of the latter and its direct impact on the former. More importantly, given like decisions in education systems around the world and amid a general devolution in higher education, the book explores how the increasing presence of what is dubbed as the corporatization of education threatens the fundamental existence and thus the continued rationale for tenure.

Tenure at a Crossroads, Again? goes beyond the explication of tenure to explore the contemporary challenges facing academia at the K–12 and higher education levels. This edited volume is unique in the sense that it grapples issues from multiple viewpoints—that of the university/college administrator and professor, to the K–12 educator.

The book examines increased expectations and how existing policies have spilled over into institutions of higher learning once high school graduates enter this domain. Students’ educational expectations resonate with college administrators and policy makers forcing institutions to adapt to these needs. This moves professors to “dumb down” the curricula and teaching to avoid negative evaluations and protect themselves from unwarranted retaliation.

This confluence of factors reverberates throughout the educational system, producing unintended effects that have collectively led to an alliance between the administration and students in higher education, much like those experienced by our K-12 colleagues yet now questions the rationale for tenure to re-examine dilemmas that have long dogged higher education. The most recent solution - the corporatization of institutions but to the detriment of a quality education. We offer practical strategies to mitigate this unilateral approach while incorporating innovative mechanisms for the system’s survival.

Bios

Dr. G.L.A. Harris, an accomplished scholar and consummate pracademic, came to the Thunderbird School of Global Management following a successful 17-year career at Portland State University (PSU). She is renowned for her research on the U.S. military and forces within the international community and twice served as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair––first, as Research Chair in North American Integration to Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and more recently as NATO Chair in Security Studies, a tripartite funded endeavor by the Fulbright Commission-Belgium and Luxembourg, NATO and the American University-Brussels. In the latter position, Harris was dually posted at NATO in Brussels and the American University-Brussels. It was Harris’s seminal research on student veterans that not only resulted in both state (Oregon) and federal (G.I. Bill) legislations and the establishment of the first Veterans Resource Center (VRC) in the United States but her work became the impetus and prototype for today’s movement for VRCs and like entities on university and college campuses around the country. Harris has won a number of awards for her research, among them, the first of its kind book Living Legends and Full Agency: Implications of Repealing the Combat Exclusion Policy (2015) for Outstanding Book of the Year in Public Sector Human Resource Management from the American Society for Public Administration (2017), Researcher of the Year from the College of Urban and Public Affairs (2019–2020), and Provost Leadership Fellow (2019–2020), the latter two from Portland State University.

Harris’s research has been widely published in some of public administration and public policy premier journals such as Public Administration Review and Administration and Society, serves on multiple journal editorial boards and has held several leadership roles in professional organizations for the disciplines of public administration and public policy. Her research and leadership in the academy has also led to appointments by two Oregon governors to statewide task forces and most recently she was appointed to now national accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities’ (NWCCU) Data Council owing to her work on institutional accreditation. A former senior commissioned officer, Harris is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force’s junior, intermediate and senior service schools, including Air War College.

Dwight Vick earned his PhD in public administration and public policy from Arizona State University. He currently teaches at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas, and Excelsior University in Albany, New York. A licensed high school teacher, Vick teaches economics, government, and high school English.

Vick is the author of two books––Drugs & Alcohol in the 21st Century: Theory, Behavior, and Policy and The Woodbury County, Iowa Community Drug Court, 1999–2008. He is a regular contributor to the PA Times.

Praise for this book

Dr. Harris and Dr. Vick have delivered a comprehensive must-read for those
interested in the challenges facing higher education today. Each chapter gives voice to
the often known, but unsaid, challenges impacting institutions today. This publication
evokes contemplation on each of our contributions to the overall learning environment, which not only includes teaching, research, and service, but the type of community we build as collective bodies of learners, educators, and practitioners (…).

Malcolm K. Oliver Dean, John S. Watson School of Public Service, Thomas Edison State University

The invalidating and marginalizing experiences of faculty of color, the political minefields of the K-12 experience, and the many microaggressions experienced by untenured university faculty are each deeply disturbing and multifaceted issues yet this book manages to bring them together and finds the disturbing truths underlying them all (…)This book will not make you comfortable, but I advise that any aspiring faculty member read it, particularly those who differ from the fully tenured professorial norm by gender, race, religion, class background, beliefs, etc. (…).

Elizabeth Kelley Rhoades Elizabeth Kelley Rhoades, Professor of Psychology, Southern Connecticut State University