Ron DeSantis signs bill to limit tenure at public universities

[ilikeverin]

Academic tenure is one of the most important foundations of a research university. Effectively getting rid of tenure would be a death sentence for the University of Florida. No serious academic would want to work there if they had options anywhere else. If anything, dragging them in front of a board every 5 years will only increase "ideological orthodoxy" or whatever he wants to call it.

Yeah but the loss of prestige of UF and FSU won't happen overnight, so it's a problem for (and that can be blamed on) DeSantis's successors.

Scott Walker did the same thing :


https://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/scott-walker-college-professor-tenure-120009?_amp=true

Yes, and this certainly led folks to leave UW-Madison for less hostile climes and has done lasting damage to its prestige and consequently its research productivity.

[ilikeverin]

Then we should privatize research grants more then if that’s the issue cause government subsidized things never can truly be “free” as the government has to actively choose which grants to approve and which not too .

That decision is usually made by people who do have political agendas as well so the this will mainly just provide more oversight over  unelected  bureaucrats which I generally support.

Major grant decisions (at places like NIH and NSF) are made by scientific peers, not by "unelected bureaucrats". It depends on the agency, but a few faculty send our scores in to someone working at the agency. The scores are based on rubrics that are available to anyone and tend to prioritize (1) general academic merit and (2) something specific to the agency (for the NIH, health outcomes; for NSF, "broader impacts", which is generally some sort of community impact or public science education). Critically, the "someone" (usually called a program officer) is someone who has also had academic training and probably has received several grants themselves at some point; it's seen as prestigious, if tedious, to become a program officer. The highest scoring proposals are then discussed as a bunch of peers, and the grants are ranked. Depending on the agency, the program officer may have a bit of discretion for grants that fall right on the boundary of being funded, but again it's based on the same criteria I outlined above.

Only about 10-15% of major grants are funded. I'd say the main issues with funding these days is that (1) one-in-ten isn't a great level of success, so you're incentivized to chase the funding obsessively rather than following the science, and (2) it's often the case that the rich get richer (e.g., you generally need pilot data to get a grant funded these days, but how do you get pilot data if you don't have money in the first place?). The amount of interference from "unelected bureaucrats" is small unless you consider faculty members to be "unelected bureaucrats". (But I think we'd all agree it would be bonkers for elected officials to evaluate scientific grants, right?!) Even then, the folks working at the funding agency aren't just random people with political agendas, they're usually scooped up from tenure-track positions by the NSF or NIH.

[ilikeverin]

Then we should privatize research grants more then if that’s the issue cause government subsidized things never can truly be “free” as the government has to actively choose which grants to approve and which not too .

That decision is usually made by people who do have political agendas as well so the this will mainly just provide more oversight over  unelected  bureaucrats which I generally support.

Major grant decisions (at places like NIH and NSF) are made by scientific peers, not by "unelected bureaucrats". It depends on the agency, but a few faculty send our scores in to someone working at the agency. The scores are based on rubrics that are available to anyone and tend to prioritize (1) general academic merit and (2) something specific to the agency (for the NIH, health outcomes; for NSF, "broader impacts", which is generally some sort of community impact or public science education). Critically, the "someone" (usually called a program officer) is someone who has also had academic training and probably has received several grants themselves at some point; it's seen as prestigious, if tedious, to become a program officer. The highest scoring proposals are then discussed as a bunch of peers, and the grants are ranked. Depending on the agency, the program officer may have a bit of discretion for grants that fall right on the boundary of being funded, but again it's based on the same criteria I outlined above.

Only about 10-15% of major grants are funded. I'd say the main issues with funding these days is that (1) one-in-ten isn't a great level of success, so you're incentivized to chase the funding obsessively rather than following the science, and (2) it's often the case that the rich get richer (e.g., you generally need pilot data to get a grant funded these days, but how do you get pilot data if you don't have money in the first place?). The amount of interference from "unelected bureaucrats" is small unless you consider faculty members to be "unelected bureaucrats". (But I think we'd all agree it would be bonkers for elected officials to evaluate scientific grants, right?!) Even then, the folks working at the funding agency aren't just random people with political agendas, they're usually scooped up from tenure-track positions by the NSF or NIH.

 I don’t have any problems with grants for hard science research

NIH and NSF don't just give money to "hard science research"; Republican senators have been targeting the social science directorate of the NSF for budget cuts for years. The grant that funded some of my training was singled out by Rand Paul one year as an example of "flagrant government waste" (except whoops I now do the things that he said the grant didn't accomplish). I also described how grant programs work for funders in education and other fields that you probably call "soft science". (I don't know how funding works in the humanities but it probably follows along similar lines. Grants are less important in those fields, though.)

[ilikeverin]

Btw you guys think I’m super right wing on this issue , but whenever these types of issues get discussed with my parents and other family members I usually am the most liberal member in the group on these types of issues .

 That is an absolutely idiotic comparison. No one here save yourself gives a rat's ass whether you are more  Or less liberal than your parents. If it's a far right and above all stupid policy, then The In fact some of your family may be even more right wing and/or stupid proves nothing.

I'm not sure that he's far wrong, actually. I think most people oppose tenure in higher education. Similarly, most people think that all universities "exist to give people degrees that give people jobs" and that my job is primarily "teaching classes". People are shocked when I tell them I don't "get summers off" (even though I have a 10-month contract, yes it's confusing) and that I don't "get holidays off" even though I'm a state employee. Most people have no idea what universities are for or why tenure exists - they think that, like, everyone gets tenure immediately as if we're a high school or something.