{"id":7287,"date":"2023-05-07T18:39:34","date_gmt":"2023-05-07T23:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=7287"},"modified":"2023-05-09T09:43:46","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T14:43:46","slug":"brief-update-on-texan-tenure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=7287","title":{"rendered":"Brief Update on Texan Tenure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Update (May 8):<\/mark><\/strong> Some tentative good news<\/a>! It looks like there’s now a compromise bill in the House that would preserve tenure, insisting only on the sort of post-tenure review that UT (like most universities) already has.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update (May 9):<\/mark><\/strong> Alas, it looks like the revised bill is not much better. See this thread<\/a> from Keith Whittington of the Academic Freedom Alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I blogged<\/a> a few weeks ago about SB 18, a bill that would end tenure at Texas public universities, including UT Austin and Texas A&M. The bad news is that SB 18 passed the Texas Senate. The good news is that I’m told—I don’t know how reliably—that it has little chance of passing the House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it’s going to be discussed in the House tomorrow. Any Texas residents reading this can, and are strongly urged, to submit brief comments here<\/a>. Please note that the deadline is tomorrow (Monday) morning.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just submitted the comment below. Obviously, among the arguments that I genuinely believe, I made only those that I expect might have some purchase on a Texas Republican.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019m a professor of computer science at UT Austin, specializing in quantum computing.  I am however writing this statement strictly in my capacity as a private citizen and Texas resident, not in my professional capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the supporters of SB 18, I too see leftist ideological indoctrination on college campuses as a serious problem.  It\u2019s something that I and many other moderates and classical liberals in academia have been pushing back on for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But my purpose in this comment is to explain why eliminating tenure at UT Austin and Texas A&M is NOT the solution \u2014 indeed, it would be the equivalent of treating a tumor by murdering the patient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve seen firsthand how already, just the *threat* that SB 18 might pass has seriously hampered our ability to recruit the best scientists and engineers to become faculty at UT Austin.  If this bill were actually to pass, I expect that the impact on our recruiting would be total and catastrophic.  It would effectively mean the end of UT Austin as one of the top public universities in the country.  Hundreds of scientists who were lured to Texas by UT\u2019s excellence, including me and my wife, would start looking for jobs elsewhere \u2014 even those whose own tenure was \u201cgrandfathered in.\u201d  They\u2019d leave en masse for California and Massachusetts and anywhere else they could continue the lives they\u2019d planned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reality is this: the sorts of scientists and engineers we\u2019re talking about could typically make vastly higher incomes, in the high six figures or even seven figures, by working in private industry or forming their own startups.  Yet they choose to accept much lower salaries to spend their careers in academia.  Why?  Because of the promise of a certain way of life: one where they can speak freely as scholars and individuals without worrying about how it will affect their employment.  Tenure is a central part of that promise.  Remove it, and the value proposition collapses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some sense, the state of Texas (like nearly every other state) actually gets a bargain through tenure.  It couldn\u2019t possibly afford to retain top-caliber scientists and engineers \u2014 working on medical breakthroughs, revolutionary advances in AI, and all the other stuff \u2014 if it DIDN\u2019T offer tenure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this reason, I hope that even conservatives in the Texas House will see that we have a common interest here, in ensuring SB 18 never even makes it out of committee \u2014 for the sake of the future of innovation in Texas.  I\u2019m open to other possible responses to the problem of political indoctrination on campus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update (May 8): Some tentative good news! It looks like there’s now a compromise bill in the House that would preserve tenure, insisting only on the sort of post-tenure review that UT (like most universities) already has. Update (May 9): Alas, it looks like the revised bill is not much better. See this thread from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rage-against-doofosity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7287"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7294,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7287\/revisions\/7294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}