I remember how it was -- JR
Is Tenure Really Dying?
Throughout the United States, several stories have emerged about politicians and organizations interested in ending the institution of tenure in higher education. In Florida, steps have been taken to review the work of tenured faculty. In Texas, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has articulated a desire to do the same.
But it’s not just politicians. Emporia State University recently submitted a plan to restructure which would allow the firing of all employees, including tenured professors, with 30 days notice.
Even states with no direct legislative opposition to tenure, like California, have seen a decline in the density of tenured professors.
Data by the American Association of University professors indicates a decline in tenure track professors in percentage terms over the last few decades, though it is important to note that part of the decline is caused by the rise of community and for-profit colleges.
Nonetheless, it appears that tenure as an institution is, to say the least, under scrutiny. The question is, why? But in order to understand a possible deterioration of tenure, it’s necessary to understand why tenure exists in the first place.
No Profit, More Problems
Tenure has always been a controversial system, and it’s easy to understand why. The trope of the lazy professor who can’t be fired is by no means unbelievable. This is the central argument that critics launch against the system of tenure. If professors have more job security, they’ll be less accountable to expectations.
On the other hand proponents often argue that tenure is necessary because it protects academic freedom. Without tenure, some claim that those with unpopular research agendas and findings will be fired.
While this argument for tenure may sound like a good argument for why there should be tenure, it’s an unconvincing argument for explaining why there is tenure.
Instead, economist Armen Alchian in a piece titled “Private Property and the Relative Cost of Tenure” (1977) offered a convincing argument for why tenure evolved for purely economic reasons.
Alchian starts with the observation that universities are almost always non-profit organizations. This is true of both public and private universities.
In for-profit business, when managers choose to punish or fire a productive employee for arbitrary reasons unrelated to productivity (such as discrimination, political disagreements, or personal antipathy), the company will take a hit to their bottom line. Firing a great worker due to personal disagreements means you’ll have to spend money to replace that worker, if you can find a replacement at all.
Managers who exercise their firing power arbitrarily like this won’t be around for long. Either owners will recognize this particular manager is costing them money, or competitors who don’t fire employees arbitrarily will be able to drive them out of business due to lower costs.
In a for-profit business, losses caused by such behavior will be unacceptable, because owners have the ability to take their money out of the business and redirect it to other uses. Business assets will be liquidated and money will go elsewhere. Thus, in a for-profit context, there is an incentive to avoid arbitrary firings.
The same is not true in the non-profit sector. As Alchian points out:
“[i]n a non-profit-seeking enterprise, the administrator must spend all the income in the business for salaries, materials, building, etc.”
The nature of a non-profit is there is no owner who is able to take their money out and redirect it to better uses.
Without an owner with this ability, there is less incentive to push an organization to be as efficient as possible from a pecuniary perspective. Instead, those within the organization will have more discretion to use resources in unproductive ways.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2022/09/22/tenure-dying/?omhide=true
**************************************************Biden’s $420B student loan boondoggle is blatantly illegal — but progressives don’t care
The Congressional Budget Office says the price tag for President Biden’s constitutionally illiterate, fiscally reckless, socially divisive student debt cancelation will exceed $420 billion. It’s staggering, it’s infuriating — and it’s illegal.
So how is Biden getting away with it?
The administration is hoping that by running out the clock and exploiting legal loopholes, it can spend this money — and likely much more — in a move that makes a mockery of the separation-of-powers principles on which our Constitution was established 245 years ago.
Not only that — it flouts Supreme Court precedent from just last term. Simply stated, the executive branch, including such components as the Department of Education, lack the authority to exercise powers of “vast economic and political significance” absent a clear delegation from Congress, as the Court put it on June 30 in West Virginia v. EPA.
Congress has granted no such authority. Nor would it. Biden’s gambit is a naked appeal to the Democrats’ woke-progressive base, who are happy to ignore Constitutional norms and turn him into a president-king.
To function properly, our system needs government officials who are committed to the Constitution’s division of authorities. A member of Congress must defend the legislative branch’s powers from usurpation by the executive — and that includes the power of the purse. Progressives, however, see the constitutional framework as a sclerotic inhibition on the achievement of leftist policy goals. Hence the dramatic expansion of the administrative state, which shifts power from politically accountable officeholders to insulated bureaucrats at an alphabet’s soup of federal agencies.
More to the point, the Framers would have expected that a president who dared usurp legislative power would find Congress responding by slashing the executive’s budget and, in egregious cases, filing articles of impeachment. Progressives, however, prioritize policy outcomes, not constitutional niceties.
When Democrats control the White House, congressional Democrats are a rubber-stamp for aggressive “pen and phone” executive governance. Only when there is a Republican president do Democrats rediscover congressional powers to check executive action — while they then rely on progressive judges to implement policy preferences of the radical left, distorting the Constitution as necessary.
For now, Democrats control both houses of Congress, so the courts are the only promising avenue for blocking Biden’s lawless plan. Here, though, the president is banking on the so-called standing doctrine. This requires a litigant challenging executive action to show more than that it is illegal or unfair.
An individual does not have standing to file a lawsuit unless a personal injury can be shown — harm that is concrete, unique (i.e., hurts the person in a way that is different from the hurt it causes society as a whole), and quantifiable in the sense that it can be redressed by judicial action.
Ironically, even as he ignores the Constitution, Biden expects the federal courts to be sticklers for standing rules. These would bar a lawsuit based on, say, the claim that as a taxpayers, we are harmed by an illegal decree that forces us to underwrite the costs of extinguished student debt.
Still, there are some legal challenges that should surmount standing hurdles. The Pacific Legal Foundation may have found a way around the usual bar to taxpayer standing. Several states tax loan forgiveness. On Tuesday, PLF challenged Biden’s edict on behalf of an Indiana man, Frank Garrison, who can show individual harm: Under a federal program rewarding public service, he would not have been taxed; under Biden’s order, though, he’ll be penalized.
Others with obvious claims include student-loan servicing companies, whose income is generated by collecting loan payments. As commentators have pointed out, they could be fearful of the Biden administration, the Education Department, and congressional Democrats, who have may ways of undermining their business. Still, it is unlikely that all of them will be unwilling to sue.
George Mason University’s Ilya Somin notes that academic institutions such as Hillsdale College, which refuse to accept federally funded student loans (due to the various strings attached to them), could sue based on the doctrine of “competitor standing” — i.e., Biden’s program puts them at a disadvantage in competing for students because loans at their schools will not be eligible for forgiveness.
Then there’s another constitutional anomaly to factor in: legislative standing. It would no doubt surprise the Framers, who made Congress the most powerful branch of government, that lawmakers would need the judiciary to do their heavy lifting.
But as traditional separation-of-powers has broken down, the courts have been more open to allowing Congress to sue the president for usurping its power. Such suits must be brought by Congress as an institution, not by individual lawmakers. That means there will be no such suit until Republicans gain control of either or both chambers.
As with many things, then, President Biden will not get his comeuppance on the student loan travesty until the voters have spoken in November. How much money will be out the door by then?
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Apparent Victory Rings Hollow for Group Opposing School Choice
The effort to block a massive expansion of education choice in Arizona appears to be running out of steam.
Beth Lewis, executive director of the anti-school choice group Save Our Schools Arizona put on her best game face Friday afternoon as she announced that her group has gathered enough signatures to put the recent expansion of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program on the ballot for voters to decide.
But it wasn’t hard to detect Lewis’ disappointment.
Earlier this summer, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed a bill sponsored by Arizona House Majority Leader Ben Toma, R-Peoria, to expand eligibility for the state’s ESA policy to all 1.1 million of the state’s K-12 students.
That would mean all families could receive about $7,000 to use for educational expenses such as private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, homeschool curricula, online courses, special-needs therapy, and more.
The program is widely hailed as the gold standard of education choice, cementing Arizona’s first-place ranking for education choice in The Heritage Foundation’s new Education Freedom Report Card. Arizona placed second nationwide for education freedom overall (including rankings of education choice, academic transparency, regulatory freedom, and return), behind only Florida.
Lewis’ group acted quickly to contest the ESA expansion. Under Arizona state law, voters may refer recently enacted legislation to the ballot for voter approval if they gather the signatures of registered Arizona voters equal to at least 5% of all votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.
In 2018, Save Our Schools Arizona ran a similar referendum campaign, in which it gathered about 111,000 signatures—comfortably exceeding the threshold of about 75,000 valid voter signatures. This year, sending the issue to referendum required about 119,000 valid signatures.
“Valid” is the key word. Signatures may be invalid for a variety of reasons—for example, if the signer isn’t registered to vote in Arizona, the signature or address doesn’t match what’s on file, and so on.
According to Ballotpedia, the average signature validity rate of ballot initiative petitions such as this one is 75.3%. Even with an 80% validity rate, Save Our Schools would need about 150,000 signatures to meet the threshold.
But Save Our Schools turned in only about 142,000 signatures Friday afternoon. Unless the group achieved an unusually high validity rate—84%—it is likely that it has failed to obtain enough valid signatures.
It appears that Save Our Schools Arizona already sees the writing on the wall. Earlier this week, Lewis offered a litany of excuses to the left-wing media outlet Salon, complaining about the higher signature threshold relative to 2018, the 80-day window to collect signatures, and likely scrutiny from the legal system.
But Lewis reserved her greatest ire for the efforts of school choice groups such as the Goldwater Institute and the American Federation for Children, to protect the expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Salon reported:
‘They’re already signaling massive legal battles,’ said SOS Arizona director Beth Lewis, who said that petitions are frequently challenged over not just issues like duplicate signatures but also incomplete addresses for signees and smudged notary markings.
Lewis appeared especially aggravated by the pro-ESA grassroots activists who urged voters to decline to sign her group’s petitions. According to Salon, she accused these activists (without evidence) of being backed by the Goldwater Institute and American Federation for Children:
In the meantime, the final weeks of petition gathering have turned hostile, as groups backed by the Goldwater Institute and AFC have launched a massive ‘Decline to Sign’ campaign, holding protests at petition gathering spots, urging supporters to call businesses near petition sites to complain that ‘this is hurting our children’s education’ and videotaping both petition circulators and voters who sign, posting clips of those interactions online. In this atmosphere, petition volunteers say they’ve been surrounded, harassed and followed for blocks on end, while pro-ESA protesters say they’ve been insulted or sworn at by referendum supporters.
While Lewis said there wasn’t ‘any organized opposition’ to the [2018] petition process … this year, ‘It’s like a war zone at some of these events.’
The “Decline to Sign” protesters, who want to protect the ESA program, see it differently.
“Hundreds of volunteer parents from all different backgrounds have come together to peacefully hold signs and talk to voters about the ESA program,” said Taylor Hoffman, a mother of two from Gilbert, Arizona, including one child with special needs.
Hoffman described how she and fellow protesters have had great success in persuading voters not to sign the Save Our Schools petitions. In one case, they approached a father who was considering signing.
“We brought up the fact that Save Our Schools has a history of fighting against multiple school choice laws in Arizona, including the original ESA program that helps special-needs students,” Hoffman said. “The dad decided not to sign and walked away.”
One of the greatest hurdles for Save Our Schools Arizona is voter support for education choice, which has reached all-time highs in the wake of prolonged school shutdowns, Zoom school, and concerns over-politicized classrooms.
A Morning Consult poll released in August found that 66% of Arizonans and 75% of parents of school-age children said they support Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Meanwhile, only a third of voters said they believe that their local district schools are on the “right track.”
Save Our Schools’ assault on education choice at a time when parents need it most may have awakened a sleeping giant and filled it with a terrible resolve.
“The grassroots movement of Decline to Sign not only slowed down SOS signature gatherers, but it created a community of like-minded folks that genuinely care about what is best for kids,” said Grant Botma, a father of three from Gilbert, Arizona. “No politics. No hidden agenda. Just parents fighting for what is best for their kids and kids in the community.”
The coming weeks certainly will see signature challenges and likely will see litigation. One thing is for certain: Arizona parents will be watching.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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