As we enter the third year of the pandemic and everyone seems inclined to believe that it's becoming endemic -- though the optimisitic read is that Omicron burns through the population, raises herd immunity and transitions the virus to a much less lethal state -- it seems likely to have major impacts on the shape of the US professoriate going forward. In short, it could well hasten the retirement of a lot of older tenured professors, clearing a path for at least two things:
- A rejuvenation of the faculty -- probably pulling it even further left and in the direction of interdisciplinarity -- with real risk to the integrity of the disciplines themselves. Though as relatively recent historical phenomena, maybe the disciplines were themselves kind of bullshit all the while.
- A continued rebalancing of the higher-ed employment model away from the tenure model and towards "clinical faculty," which will enable greater institutional nimbleness but also make it easier for conservative Boards and alumni associations to influence curricula. But listen to Grandpa Grouse up there. Maybe I'm hankering for it.
In any case, things will change. Some feet will walk, some heads will roll. Hopefully few will die.
Then again, whether the retreat amongst faculty proves statistically significant vs. the shaving of ~2% off of the US overall workforce participation rate that we've seen since the onset of the pandemic is another question. Could be that it's roughly the same. I think that the fact that the tenured population skews old relative to the workforce in general will be meaningful.
POSTSCRIPT: A small unscientific survey on Facebook says that, based on anecdotal evidence, my prediction above is wrong. I'll still leave it up there because that's how I roll! It's a blog, dammit.
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