Over at The Chronicle Review, Laurie Fendrich (professor emerita of art and art history at Hofstra University) has some harsh words here for aging faculty members:
The inconvenient truth is that faculty who delay retirement harm students, who in most cases would benefit from being taught by someone younger than 70, even younger than 65. The salient point is not that younger professors are better pedagogues (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t), but that they are more likely to be current in their fields and to bring that currency into their teaching.
Septuagenarian faculty members also cost colleges more than younger faculty—in the form of higher salaries, higher health-care costs, and higher employer-matched retirement contributions. Even if these costs pale in comparison to paying for bloated administrations, it’s wrong to pretend they don’t matter.
Worst of all, their presence stifles change. I’m not talking about mindless change for change’s sake, but the kind of change necessary to keep an institution thriving. A healthy university consists of departments with a balanced mix of new hires (full of energy, ambition, and fresh ideas), middle-aged faculty members at the height of their productivity, and older faculty with wisdom and a deep understanding of the evolving mission of their departments and universities. Disrupt that balance, and the foundation of an institution’s strength is undermined.
Read the full piece here. It's an interesting read, full of internal contradictions and provocative statements. Professor Fendrich is writing about arts and science faculties generally, but it seems that many of her critiques would apply equally to law schools.
Added 8:53 p.m. Just because I link to Professor Fendrich's piece or see the way she would apply her critique to law schools does not mean that I endorse her analysis wholeheartedly, somewhat, or at all. I think she raises some interesting points about how the elimination of mandatory retirement has changed higher education. The title to my post uses Professor Fendrich's language in order to invite conversation about law schools. The views expressed in Professor Fendrich's article are hers.
Can there be anything more ageist than the stereotypes repeated above? "Many of her critiques would apply equally to law schools"? Really?
How about this? Instead of endorsing a canard that is basically by definition age discriminatory, like this:
"new hires (full of energy, ambition, and fresh ideas) [read: "young"], middle-aged faculty members at the height of their productivity, and older [read: "over sixty?"] faculty with wisdom and a deep understanding of the evolving mission of their departments and universities."
let's impose productivity and work standards APPLICABLE TO ALL. That would be a fair approach that would induce retirements where appropriate. If the "young" are so full of energy, let them work as hard as their energy allows. If the "older" faculty can't keep up, so be it.
"Aren't "old" professors just a "continuing disaster for U.S. law schools?" I'm just asking a question here …" Does that sound even remotely right?
Most law schools are desperate to get rid of many (not all) of their old profs for many of the reasons stated starting with their high salaries and other perks. Certainly there are some very senior faculty who are still highly productive scholars, relate well to today's students in terms of using technology to teach and communicate, keep their teaching materials current and contribute in other ways to the law school. They are few and far between.
Can the same be said about faculty in other age groups? Sure, but not in the same percentages. But too many of the law schools that are desperate to deal with declining and low quality applications have cut where they can and still cannot get very senior faculty to depart. Too many of these profs are not worth what the school is paying them.
I was recently at a law school with many seniors on the faculty. Many were eager to leave if the package was attractive enough but the university refused to sweeten the pie. A mistake.
Just saying
The circumstance you describe: lazy old professors whose deals are just too lucrative and cushy to leave, is precisely the argument that so many profs have characterized as "scamblogging" (sans the reference to age).
This is pure hypocrisy. If faculties are overloaded with lazy old professors – who don't teach much, don't write much, and don't keep up with the times – then were the scambloggers right? Are you sure that you can divide between productive and lazy profs based on age? (You seem to concede not; so, what do you propose to do about the "younger" unproductive and lazy faculty members?)
Let's go back and review the score here, especially the response to Campos when he suggested that too many faculty have a deal too good to be true.
What is amazing is that, just by adding the label "old," the whole dynamic changes.
The two best and most selfless profs I had would be out the door if Bridget had her way. And what would I have had more of? Insecure young folk more interested in themselves, trying to impress, conferencing, missing class, on the make, and basically boring us to death because all they know about is what is happening how. Wow, plug any group in this post other than age and the PC police would be out with their hammers.
People should read the article more carefully. The problem she addresses is real, the job of a Professor is one that people can do well into their 70s because it is not that demanding (compare most other jobs), and law teaching even less so since the course loads tend to be lower than in other disciplines. It is also true that most faculty beyond 65 years old are not as productive as they once were, but it is very hard for schools to force productivity (on young or older professors), if they could, I suspect many older Professors would choose retirement over writing. It is also quite likely that older Professors are less likely to keep up on current cases/scholarship (this will be especially true for those who do not rely on electronic services, or those who do not use email, as she notes happens and as is true on my own faculty). This is not true for all older faculty but it is, on average true, and the point she makes in the original article is those who stay on past 65 (normal retirement age generally)do so not for the good of the institution but for their own well-being. That seems hard to refute, and their salaries are almost certainly much higher than would be true if new Professor were hired. Mandatory retirement has its benefits, again not for all faculty, but on average, and I think it is foolish to pretend otherwise.
A good start on this might be to define productivity. And a second good starting point might be to dispense with statements like the older ones who stay around "do so not for the good of the institution but for their own well-being." Huh? Is is this opposed to the younger ones who are there out of a sense of loyalty and altruism?
Most of the older profs I have seen hang around did it because they liked the job and found it enriching. More than once I have heard the statement "I cannot retire yet because I have some more ideas I want to write about." The ones who retired, on average, were those not finding joy in the job anymore. That is why they count the days until retirement. I am sure that is not always the case but getting tenure and cutting back is hardly limited to the older folks. I've seen people write to get tenure and then never write again. They also tend to be the ones who cannot wait to give up teaching as well. Truth is, they probably were in the wrong job to start with.
I've had colleagues who have taught into their late 70s and who brought to the table a wealth of knowledge unmatched by the younger people. They had 20 years of education the 40 year olds did not have. They could review a manuscript for you and draw on information, experience, scholarship, and a broader education than most others on the faculty. In generally the ones who stayed around were far less superficial as an intellectual matter and far less distracted by self-promotion..
The problem is the ease with which law schools grant tenure in the first place and their inability or unwillingness send all slackers packing.
Anon at 5:54pm says: "Let's impose productivity and work standards APPLICABLE TO ALL. That would be a fair approach that would induce retirements where appropriate. If the 'young' are so full of energy, let them work as hard as their energy allows. If the 'older' faculty can't keep up, so be it."
Can you say more about how/if you would do that in a way consistent with tenure protections? Would you say that failure to reach a minimum productivity level is "good cause" to fire a tenured professor, and if so, what kind of standard would you propose? Or would you end tenure protections first?
It seems like the burden should be on those supporting age profiling rather than those favoring it.
In a world without mandatory retirement, we can't justify paying senior professors more than their younger counterparts. Certainly no one here is arguing that the most senior professors as a group are far more productive, however you want to define that term. If we need to reduce the cost structure of law schools, the logical place to start is to end the seniority based premium that exists in most departments.
That's an interesting suggestion: just have a flat rate that all professors of a particular rank are paid (with small jumps for associate profs with tenure, full professors, and chairs). You could add on annual "bonuses" for good teaching, scholarship, service, etc., but you'd start each year with a clean slate. I wonder if any schools have something like that model.
The last two retirements at the University of Illinois defy the assumptions in the Chronicle article: Peter Maggs and Tom Ulen. If I were starting a law school today from scratch, they would be my first two choices for hiring. They retired because the Illinois pension system that they served under for decades is changing. That's one way to incentivize retirements, but it targets the amazing and the not.
It's easy to pick apart the straw man version of this article because of course age is an imperfect proxy for productivity.
The part of the Fendrich piece that resonated with me is how this aging professoriate from mostly the Baby Boomer generation is blocking the ability of institutions to hire new people.
This distorts the demographics of who is on the faculty, so that it does not match the study body in terms of race, gender, or socioeconomic background.
This also places people on the faculty who have practiced law in a way that does not remotely resemble how it is practiced now, who may have trained in another discipline (sociology, economics, etc.) using methods that are no longer the norms of that academic discipline, who may not have ever encountered entire legal theories and schools of thought that are commonly being used to understand to frame and examine critical aspects of law, and whose understanding of the areas of law that they do not teach and write in are likely to be severely diminished.
All of these aspects are not specifically about age or generation. These critiques can rightfully be leveled at new hires as well. Also, some older professors are much better situated to see what "current" trends are fads or where they fit in the normal cycle of ideas that keep reemerging with new brands and then losing popularity yet again. However, on the whole, a faculty member above the age of 65 or 70 is far more likely to have the shortcoming listed above than one who is younger. The question in each individual case is whether the benefits of what that person brings to the table outweighs the challenges. What Fendrich says that I appreciate is that the person themselves and their other friends and colleagues are unlikely to be able to be honest with this calculus.
It is true that a new hire at 130K a year can probably do most of the same things a veteran can do after being there for 30 years. Now let's see how easy it is to hire new people if the policy is no raises or as soon as we find someone cheaper we will replace you. How about thinking these idea out at least one more step?
If the starting salary is 130k a year (or even two thirds of that) with no prospect of annual raises except as cost-of-living adjustments or when promoted to the next faculty rank, then I would still expect there to be a line of applicants out the door and around the block if the position is tenure-track.
As for "as soon as we find someone cheaper we will replace you," that would be more problematic. Of course, I don't see anyone actually arguing for that.
Former Editor: You could right about the line but how many in the line would be "qualified" to teach law under current standards? Thirty years from now that would be real income of about 70K and by that point there is a mortgage, kids wanting to also go to an elite school, etc. I think it would be a tougher choice but it would be interesting to ask grads in the top 5% at elite schools if they would take 130 now for life.
If the are not talking about people not earning their income being replaced, what are they talking about? Surely it is not age per se but age as a means of identifying those who do not earn their salaries. And if that is the case, why not replace people when someone comes along who would do it for less?
Name Changing High BMI Commenter,
A few things: (1) I don't think we have the same definition of qualified. I, for one, do not think that to be qualified to be a law professor you need to be in the top 5% and have gone to an elite school. There are plenty of qualified professors already out there who do not fit that mold. So, yes, I think the line around the block will have more than enough able candidates. (2) You'll notice I supplemented my "no raises" salary with a cost of living adjustment that is the same for everyone across a particular academic rank, which seems to go along with Matt Bodie's general idea, so your point about income deprecation is something of a non-sequitor. (3) I don't think anyone is suggesting a race to the bottom in terms of salary or firing qualified, productive faculty members just because they could hire someone slightly cheaper. There is a difference, of which I'm sure you are aware, between the propositions "we should pay as little as possible for an employee who will do x tasks" and "we should require the employee hired to perform x tasks to actually do so."
"It is true that a new hire at 130K a year can probably do most of the same things a veteran can do after being there for 30 years. Now let's see how easy it is to hire new people if the policy is no raises or as soon as we find someone cheaper we will replace you. How about thinking these idea out at least one more step?"
Posted by: A Moderately Pudgy Person
Go outside of law school, and that would get a zillion qualified applicants.
And no, law professors are not giving up partnerships. Most of them have 0-2 years in practice, and were a looooong way from making partner. In addition, making partner requires very different skills.
The Nov 18th online version of The Chronicle of Higher Education published a response by Howard Good to the Fendrich article referred to in this post. Here is the link: http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/11/18/ageism-in-academe/?cid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en
Former Editor & Barry, I am sure if we "lowered" the standard the line would be long. And I completely agree that what we now regard as qualified is indefensible. I am curious, sincerely so, about how one defends keeping someone around when someone else can do the job at a lower cost. Isn't that inconsistent with lowering tuition, the cost of legal education, student debt, and, ultimately, the fees consumers of legal services pay. I realize, as Orin points out above, this is all theoretical since people are locked it but if we "protect" the youngsters from the market, why not protect the oldsters as well? I realize this has strayed very far from the age profiling pitch made by some but I do think that issue cannot be delinked from the entire question of why any law professor should be protected from the market. OK, I will hang up now and listen for your answer over the air.
Oreo Addict,
There are institutional benefits not to having high-turnover and cheaper is not always better. That is an aspect of "the market" just as much as demanded salary and just as true in legal education as in retail (see, e.g. Costco). That said, I would agree that "protecting" faculty from the market to the tune of 130k starting salaries is antithetical to lowering tuition and to all of the benefits that would flow from a more reasonable cost of legal education. As I have said a number of times in various threads on this site, I think law schools would do better moving forward to offer salaries to new faculty consistent with public sector salaries in their local markets than salaries competitive with the private sector in large cities.
"Would you say that failure to reach a minimum productivity level is "good cause" to fire a tenured professor"
Yes. Unequivocally.
"would you end tenure protections?"
No. Of course not. Simply restore the original concept: academic freedom supported by freedom from discharge based on intellectual diversity (of which, now in the perverted system, there is basically none along political bent). Using tenure as an excuse to do as little as possible and get away with it with impunity was never the intent.
"what kind of standard would you propose?"
That question is far away from the point of this thread: age is not the only reason profs slack off, to say so is offensive. Moreover, the hypocrisy of those who so vociferously attack "scambloggers" for calling out lazy profs but then attack "old" professors for being unproductive and overvalued is so telling.
However, to start jotting down some thoughts on standards, without much thought, frankly:
1. On campus at least 30 hours per week during the Fall and Spring semesters, in the classroom or in one's office;
2. Demonstrated public service for at least 20 hours per month, during the Fall and Spring semesters: pro bono legal work, service on legislative committees, in the clinics, consulting with law firms, picking up litter on the freeways, whatever, doing SOMETHING for others other than claiming that your scholarship and "knowledge generation" (what a laugh that memorable phrase) benefits anyone much(mostly, current "scholarship" benefits no one, ever, as most of it is never read, never cited, and never discussed);
3. Teach at least 12 credit hours per academic year;
4. Summer work: engage in demonstrable law related activity for the entire summer, with a standard three or four week vacation after a standard number of years of service ("law related activity" can include, e.g., writing a piece to be published in a law review or other journal of scholarly work, engaging in a demonstrable ongoing multi-year project, working in a clinic, etc., teaching);
5. For tenured profs, failure to publish in a law review or other scholarly publication (wish we had peer reviewed journals!) for 3 consecutive years grounds for dismissal, except for good cause (e.g., other activities of benefit to the legal community);
6. Maintain student evaluations that, on average, are at least as positive as the median for similar courses, measured over a rolling period of two or three years;
7. Peer review of teaching at least every three years;
8. Serve on at least two faculty committees, maintain regular attendance and contributions acceptable to the Chair, who will evaluate each member annually;
9. Prepare and teach continuing legal education courses in one's field, or attend same, for at least 36 hours per year.
This is just a start.
For the one who said "I'm not looking for those who want to retire and teach" this would be a start to separating those who want to work from those who don't.
Just needs a quick rewrite:
The inconvenient truth is that faculty who do not delay entry into academia harm students, who in most cases would benefit from being taught by someone older than 25. The salient point is not that older professors are better pedagogues (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t), but that they are more likely to have experience in their fields and to bring that experience into their teaching.
Younger faculty members also cost colleges more than younger faculty—in the form of higher salaries, greater demands for travel and lighter course loads. Even if these costs pale in comparison to paying for bloated administrations, it’s wrong to pretend they don’t matter………
Those or some combination may be good causes but I do not think they would overcome the tenure barrier which I think is the gist of Orin's question. In fact, I am wondering if law teaching (or maybe all teaching in higher ed) is the only job in which the main thing you cannot be fired for is screwing up what you are paid to do.
Jeff
The question wasn't about what standards to revoke tenure in the present system. My comment was:
"let's impose productivity and work standards APPLICABLE TO ALL. That would be a fair approach that would induce retirements where appropriate. If the "young" are so full of energy, let them work as hard as their energy allows. If the "older" faculty can't keep up, so be it."
Someone (whom you apparently feel compelled to represent here in the FL) asked: "What standard would you propose?" Answer: above.
These are some thoughts about standards that I would propose to apply to ALL, in place of the age-based, stereotypical juvenile attack on "the old" suggested by the post above.
I think this question is somewhat easy to answer. There's no question that Stanford University has one of the world's leading faculties across all disciplines. There's also no question that Stanford is not short of money.
Yet, they offer generous retirement incentives for professors once they hit 63 that phase out entirely once the professor is 71. See: https://facultyaffairs.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/files/FRIP%20FAQs.pdf. Why does Stanford want its faculty of Nobel laureates to retire? Why does Berkeley offer a pension system that makes a faculty member indifferent between working and retiring after 30 years of service (give or take some thing)?
It's because the schools that care about being the "best" would ossify if they allowed their faculty to get too old. There are some law schools that this is already true of and it will hurt them in the next generation.
Who says those who retire will be replaced at all in a world of declining applications and enrollments. Is it possible that the old guys who hang on are doing the students a favor by making sure the faculty lines stay in the law school as opposed to not existing at all?
At my school the oldies are the most productive and the young ones other than non-tenured do nothing except talk the talk.
Communist Symphathizer: "Who says those who retire will be replaced at all in a world of declining applications and enrollments. Is it possible that the old guys who hang on are doing the students a favor by making sure the faculty lines stay in the law school as opposed to not existing at all?"
For three-quarters of schools, they'd never hire a tenured lateral, and will probably never grant tenure if they hire a tenure track professor. Their revenues are dropping, and will not recover.
Posted by:
When I was an untenured professor, not so long ago, I asked about changing some aspect of our policy. I remember the response (from someone who had been there way back when): "we decided that question int he 1970s". This was in the late 2000s. And that was the end of the matter. Whether that kind of attitude is a good or bad thing obviously depends on whether one likes the policy matter decided 40 years ago, or whether one would prefer change. Change by itself is not necessarily good. On the other hand, it can be dispiriting to newer faculty, who often do have lots of ideas–not all good, but not all bad — to be given the sense that change is never possible, because all of the important decisions have been made years before and won't be revisited.
I am not sure this kind of phenomenon is entirely a function of faculty age; I think a lot of it is driven by personality. Some senior faculty might take the attitude that "the future belongs to the younger faculty" and disengage from policy fights and battles towards the end of their careers; others might take the attitude that they need to protect their policy legacies and institutional priorities from the threats that different-minded youngsters pose. I tell my future self that I will be the former kind of senior prof, and not the latter, but who knows what crazy ideas the youngsters of the future might have.
While the source article reeks with age discrimination, I think there are issues besides age discrimination relevant to this.
The biggest factor is that new law professors today are, on average, much more highly qualified than law professors were a generation back. Put differently, people got hired, got tenured, and got promoted back in the day that wouldn't get any interviews at the AALS FAR conference today. It has to be galling for young people to look at those folks clogging up the system while being told there is no room in the inn for spectacular candidates on today's market. You don't have to demean all of us who have a few miles on the odometer to reach what I think is an obvious conclusion – almost any law faculty could be way stronger within three years if they could let everyone, young and old, go and hire who they wanted on today's new prof and lateral markets. Yes, there has been some shift in what law schools look for, and that may or may not be a good thing, but I think there are also just more really good people wanting to be law professors, in part because being a practicing lawyer isn't near as much fun as it used to be.
I think that same dynamic is true in a lot of academic markets, albeit for different reasons. As it bad as it is for superbly qualified people who want to be law professors, I get a sense it is even worse for superbly qualified people who want to teach ancient history or French literature. I imagine some of them look at folks who got hired when universities were expanding and talent pools were small, and feel a little burning sensation.
"The biggest factor is that new law professors today are, on average, much more highly qualified than law professors were a generation back. Put differently, people got hired, got tenured, and got promoted back in the day that wouldn't get any interviews at the AALS FAR conference today."
Many of the older professors were recruited because of what they had achieved as lawyers rather than "scholarship" – and for a lot of them as well as a lot of lawyers it is galling to watch the current generation of legal academics who have achieved nothing beyond a few articles no one has read (or if they have, only to laugh and wonder) denigrate practice experience over theory – and worse the uniform quality and views of so many young faculty, emerging from the same 2-3 law schools.
Law schools need a spectrum of faculty – older faculty serve as the institutional memory, younger faculty (provided they are not looking always to move up) as the future of the school. But if someone of the younger cohort want to have a debate about older faculty and what they contribute they are starting a rock-fight in a greenhouse. To many younger faculty also would not have been ires in earlier, more enlightened days when practice experience was regarded as an essential and not a "Scarlet Letter."
Anon writes:
"what kind of standard would you propose?"
My comments follow Anon's enumerated suggestions.
1. On campus at least 30 hours per week during the Fall and Spring semesters, in the classroom or in one's office;
This reminds me of New England School of Law's "threat" to faculty who don't accept buyouts. It also has come up in various forms here and elsewhere.
I don't really understand this concern from the student point of view. Students don't come to office hours much anymore, and they have plenty of ways of getting feedback from professors if they need it. I wish students came more often – my own students have consistently reported in evaluations how helpful our conferences are for them. I think the barrier here is student embarrassment, rather than professor accessibility. And if you want to blame the professor for not creating a welcoming environment – well, that's not going to change by requiring him to be in his office more.
I also don't understand this solution from the perspective of those concerned about lazy professors. It isn't very hard to waste five hours a day online or reading a novel indoor office. I think this requirement is a very poor proxy for largely-unobservable work inputs. And I do my scholarly work much more efficiently outside the office, which I don't think is unusual (though everyone is different). So, if this idea appeals to you, you may want to specify exactly what kind of work you are hoping to motivate.
BTW, I do think having profs in their offices enlivens the place, and there are a lot of reasons law facilities should be concerned with "face time". I'm just not sure any of these concerns map onto to those of law school critics.
2. Demonstrated public service for at least 20 hours per month, during the Fall and Spring semesters: pro bono legal work, service on legislative committees, in the clinics, consulting with law firms, picking up litter on the freeways, whatever, doing SOMETHING for others other than claiming that your scholarship and "knowledge generation" (what a laugh that memorable phrase) benefits anyone much(mostly, current "scholarship" benefits no one, ever, as most of it is never read, never cited, and never discussed);
I don't believe in mandatory pro bono for anybody, period.
3. Teach at least 12 credit hours per academic year;
This is reasonable, and is probably going to be a reality over the next 5-10 years.
4. Summer work: engage in demonstrable law related activity for the entire summer, with a standard three or four week vacation after a standard number of years of service ("law related activity" can include, e.g., writing a piece to be published in a law review or other journal of scholarly work, engaging in a demonstrable ongoing multi-year project, working in a clinic, etc., teaching);
This is already widely expected of law faculty. However, it is also quite often unobservable. Big law review projects just don't sort themselves very neatly. It's probably better to capture this with #5, below.
5. For tenured profs, failure to publish in a law review or other scholarly publication (wish we had peer reviewed journals!) for 3 consecutive years grounds for dismissal, except for good cause (e.g., other activities of benefit to the legal community);
I might make this 3+1 (one year to shape up, after a 3-year dry spell), but the basic concept is sound. And yet – and this is perhaps more relevant to the substance of the OP – I really don't know that I would enforce this for older profs who have stepped back from publishing after an active scholarly career. If someone is teaching well, and doing appropriate service, I am inclined to give a pass on discontinued scholarship. In my view, the problem arises when 2 out of 3 -or all 3! -of these responsibilities fall by the wayside. Most people only have so many interesting and original scholarly ideas, and I'm not sure what the value is in incentivizing "box-checking" mediocrity, which almost any prof will be able to do. I think the complicating issue is measuring quality, which no one has a great way of doing, even though we know it when we see it. Surely, someone who writes a a decent book every five years is doing her job as a scholar.
6. Maintain student evaluations that, on average, are at least as positive as the median for similar courses, measured over a rolling period of two or three years;
I think this is unworkable as stated. Some perfectly adequate teachers are below average (or the median) within their peer group. However, consistently poor teaching performance should be a basis for dismissal. And it's a shame that it usually isn't.
7. Peer review of teaching at least every three years;
A good idea – but less so for disciplining mediocre teachers (though that's fine with me), than ensuring exposure of the faculty to new and different teaching techniques.
8. Serve on at least two faculty committees, maintain regular attendance and contributions acceptable to the Chair, who will evaluate each member annually;
This sounds like a parochial concern of the author. Most people are on 1-2 committees. Sure, let the Chair report back to the Dean, but this is probably not a serious issue.
9. Prepare and teach continuing legal education courses in one's field, or attend same, for at least 36 hours per
I think it's hard to defend any expansion of CLEs. They have proven to be the worst kind of credentialing in practice, though the idea is certainly a worthy one. I'd be happy to get rid of this obligation for practicing lawyers – and as far as I can tell from the comments of critics, this obligation seems to be the principal source of concern that law professors are not more involved in/subject to this process.
I am not sure law professors are the best candidates for presenting CLEs that would be worthwhile. If the idea was to expose someone to an area of law they currently knew little about, we can do that. But the better CLEs are about walking people through the practical traps or opportunities that significant practice experience reveals. That is not the metier of the law professoriate.
Would law profs be better at their jobs after sitting through 36 hours of CLEs a year? I note first that this is significantly more than is required for practicing attorneys – 300% of the NJ and NY requirement. So, I'm wondering if this is primarily about education or more about de-cushyifying the lives of law profs. In any event, I think profs could definitely learn something from CLEs every now and then. It's a great way to spot emerging legal problems you can then write about. I'm just not sure this would translate into things that law school critics care about. Would CLE-informed profs present more "grounded" lectures, or scholarship? Maybe. But there's every reason to think that half the time they'd be reading the newspaper instead, which is pretty easy to do with online CLEs, or if you sit in the back of the room.
For the one who said "I'm not looking for those who want to retire and teach" this would be a start to separating those who want to work from those who don't.
The last line of my post above was inadvertently copied from the original: "For the one who said "I'm not looking for those who want to retire and teach" this would be a start to separating those who want to work from those who don't." Sorry for any confusion.
"The biggest factor is that new law professors today are, on average, much more highly qualified than law professors were a generation back. Put differently, people got hired, got tenured, and got promoted back in the day that wouldn't get any interviews at the AALS FAR conference today."
Ray, it is entirely common for someone to be a 3L in one year, then teaching 3Ls two years later, with minimal professional or academic skills development between those times. No other profession or academic discipline would allow that; could you imagine a medical school professor in that situation? It's absurd. No other academic department has such a narrow gap between the knowledge of the instructor and the instructed than law.
There's a reason graduate school in legitimate research disciplines takes longer; in addition to the coursework and the dissertation/thesis, there's also pedagogical skill development.
I have an idea for a quick empirical study on the age issue. If most of the people commenting on this thread are below 50, then clearly the issue in terms of law school productivity is not associated with more senior folks. OK, I am number 1.
twbb writes: "Ray, it is entirely common for someone to be a 3L in one year, then teaching 3Ls two years later, with minimal professional or academic skills development between those times."
Really? I can think of cases of this happening, but it's very uncommon in my experience.
I hardly agree that "younger" faculty members are " much more highly qualified than law professors were a generation back."
I would agree that "younger" faculty members have generally spent sheltered, cloistered existences in a pampered form of elite education, and some have lingered longer in order to obtain Ph.D.s which in the big picture have little or no value in producing a more "highly qualified" law professor.
What this crop lacks is life experience and common sense. They will object to being on campus, for example, because many have such poor social skills and regard for others that they thrive in isolation. They have no understanding of the law, and, if they did, they would understand the old adage: "Get a young doctor and an old lawyer."
The disdain that this crop feels for the more experienced persons around them is palpable in the post above, and many of the comments that follow. It is the arrogance of this crop of "highly qualified" book smart but foolish persons that has ruined the reputation of legal academia: from top to bottom.
And what is worse? The rampant age discrimination in legal academia is unlawful. Hiring and other employment policies of law schools are chock full of violations of law, again, shaming a bunch that has no shame.
While I agree that law faculty ought to have practical experience before going into teaching, I find that there is more than a bit of irony in older professors criticizing the lack of work experience and common sense of the younger crop. Isn't the older set of professors exactly the group that hired the younger set, presumably valuing academic credentials over the practice credentials of other applicants? Or is it only the younger set at other people's schools that are a problem?
Isn't the older set of professors exactly the group that hired the younger set, presumably valuing academic credentials over the practice credentials of other applicants?
Answer: Yes.
Although I would note the disturbing tendency of law schools to place junior faculty on hiring committees long before they are ready (if they ever will be) to render mature, seasoned judgments. Mainly, they just look for people like themselves, but now, those mirroring tendencies are skewed by factors having nothing to do whatsoever with contribution to a law faculty in particular.
The overgeneralizing and stereotyping occurring in this comment thread are impressive. Kudos all around.
Not so cool when the shoe is on the other foot?
Anon @2:32: "What this crop lacks is life experience and common sense. They will object to being on campus, for example, because many have such poor social skills and regard for others that they thrive in isolation. "
You forgot to end with "get off my lawn!"
I think the main takeaway from all of this should be that older faculty should think hard about the implications of staying on beyond normal retirement age (which is the issue as stated in the article). This is particularly true for faculty at schools facing serious budget issues, which is just about all schools, and faculty with any institutional devotion should be cognizant of the fact that the best, and in many cases, the only way to resolve those budget issues is to reduce labor costs. Tenure is a wonderful thing but it should not be treated as a lifetime entitlement that includes the right to perform less than one's colleagues. This is not to say that all older faculty underperform, many remain productive, stay up on scholarship and practice, teach new material, but others don't and I think that group might consider pursuing other options, which might include a part-time appt or doing adjunct work if one really wants to stay engaged. Ageing is a real process, not fictional, and though it affects people differently, it does seem worth considering, especially in these times.
You forgot to end with "get off my lawn!"
That's the way, OK! Sure showed that anon! (And the irony of the comment is so deep no one will see it.)
I suppose you interact with law professors more than I do, Orin, but are you really saying it's uncommon for someone to do a year at a Federal clerkship, a year at biglaw, and then enter academia either through a VAP or TT?