Higher education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Higher education - Essay Example Unfortunately, within the confines of a probationary period at colleges or universities, the institutions can choose not to renew faculty contracts and terminate faculty without any reason or cause because they are classed as at will employees. Throughout the probationary period, senior professors and administrators evaluate the work of new faculty-teaching, research and service before deciding whether or not to recommend tenure. This would be managed by having the students fill out a questionnaire at the end of the year to let the administrators and senior professors know how a particular instructor taught that year what are the strengths and weaknesses in a particular area. The administrators do not only focus on what the students say about the instructor they base how to become tenure not only on the questionnaire that the students fill out but how the instructor does as a whole. The instructors have a portfolio that they assemble in mid year probably around April and they turn it in to the Department Head of that particular department. The most recent survey of American faculty shows that, in a typical year, about one in five probationary faculty members was denied tenure and lost his or her job. According to the NEA and a paper titled The Truth About Tenure in Higher Education the faculty members of any institution are accountable even after the achievement of tenure. Evaluations of tenured faculty occur periodically for promotion, salary increases and even for merit increases. There is routine review of articles for publication and for grant applications based on merit by faculty peers. "If basic academic tenets and due process rights are observed, this kind of accountability is wholly appropriate. A finding of incompetence or unprofessional conduct can still result in firing". (1.http://www2.nea.org/he/truth.html) Universities manage to force diversity into a much broader societal discovery process. The meaning derived from this would be that faculty tenure would be based on the principles of intellectual autonomy and free inquiry. Together, these very principles would also manage describing a much less favorable track considered as accountability lacking. A tenured faculty member simply is not very accountable to deans and department chairs.Lack of accountability comes under heavy criticism, and yet tenure itself remains part of the virtue of the university.It is the mission of a university to work utilizing novel and independent principles whereby generating and evaluating ideas accordingly relative to the remainder of society. There would be direct commercial considerations which would drive most idea sources including research and development in corporate circles, commercial culture, celebrity culture and advertising. The university functions as both an alternative and complementary mechan ism for the production and evaluation of social ideas.Direct commercial pressures insulate professors in the university environment; at least this is true in theory.For the most part, academic rewards would be determined by a peer evaluation. In a process that depends on intellectual or creative superstars, tenure and non-accountability work especially well within