Florida College Wants to Make Professors Underbid Each Other on Salary
The higher education community is aghast today at news that no one expected to hear: a dumb idiot in an unlikely position of power has proposed a stupid regressive anti-intellectual idea—in Florida.
Yes: in Florida. I was as shocked as the rest of you.
Inside Higher Ed reports that the State College of Florida at Manatee-Sarasota, which last year became “the only one of 28 Florida public colleges” to do away with a tenure system for professors, now has an even brighter idea for academic excellence:
Leading the charge against continuing contracts is Carlos Beruff, a trustee since 2008 who owns a local home construction business. Beruff argued that any competitive disadvantage could be countered by offering merit pay or bonuses to high performers, and said that the U.S. was “based on the freedom of work.”
That was in September. Between then and now, Beruff was reportedly working on a second proposal that would ask potential college employees, including faculty members, to quote their fee for services on job applications. That information would then be used in the hiring decision.
As the noted philosopher of education John Dewey famously said, “Every great advance in higher learning has issued from the imagination of a right-wing Florida home developer.”
No one will benefit more from this new scheme of hiring the lowest-bidding college professors than the already well educated students of the state of Florida.
