Colleges and universities are in the line of fire big-time these days. The charges run the gamut: dubious degrees, unaffordable tuitions, over-emphasis on racial & lifestyle diversity, under-emphasis on political diversity, rude & obnoxious student behavior, and the list goes on.
Government employees - certainly the Federal Government - are effectively tenured from Day One. Years ago, as a colonel in the Army, I had, at one point, around 3,000 government civilians working under me. The joke used to be once hired, we had a 25 year mouth to feed - because the only infractions that could lead to firing were timecard fraud, sleeping at their desk or getting caught surfing porn on government IT systems. That's a bit of hyperbole, but we once had a guy in jail awaiting his murder trial receiving a paycheck bi-weekly until his PTO ran out - and even then, we couldn't fire him - or replace the vacant position he occupied. Yes, it IS possible to fire an underperformer - but that is every bit as difficult as it's rumored to be. It can take years of careful documentation, which gets interrupted the moment supervisors change or the employee switches jobs. Then it starts all over again. And then it still has to go through appeals and union grievances - and all the while the employee is filing Unfair Labor Practices (ULPs), EEO and IG complaints against the entire leadership chain.
The Civil Service Protection Act, which was ironically enacted to make it EASIER to fire federal employees for misconduct, effectively makes it impossible to remove federal employees for just about any reason. The idea behind these "protections" was that civil servants should be protected from the vicissitudes of politics, and kept free to render their best professional judgment without fear of reprisal. Sound familiar?
No surprise at all that government jobs are like that (even if they don't call it "tenure"). The sad part is that, over time, we all get so desensitized to the crap government routinely festers upon us.
Government employees - certainly the Federal Government - are effectively tenured from Day One. Years ago, as a colonel in the Army, I had, at one point, around 3,000 government civilians working under me. The joke used to be once hired, we had a 25 year mouth to feed - because the only infractions that could lead to firing were timecard fraud, sleeping at their desk or getting caught surfing porn on government IT systems. That's a bit of hyperbole, but we once had a guy in jail awaiting his murder trial receiving a paycheck bi-weekly until his PTO ran out - and even then, we couldn't fire him - or replace the vacant position he occupied. Yes, it IS possible to fire an underperformer - but that is every bit as difficult as it's rumored to be. It can take years of careful documentation, which gets interrupted the moment supervisors change or the employee switches jobs. Then it starts all over again. And then it still has to go through appeals and union grievances - and all the while the employee is filing Unfair Labor Practices (ULPs), EEO and IG complaints against the entire leadership chain.
The Civil Service Protection Act, which was ironically enacted to make it EASIER to fire federal employees for misconduct, effectively makes it impossible to remove federal employees for just about any reason. The idea behind these "protections" was that civil servants should be protected from the vicissitudes of politics, and kept free to render their best professional judgment without fear of reprisal. Sound familiar?
No surprise at all that government jobs are like that (even if they don't call it "tenure"). The sad part is that, over time, we all get so desensitized to the crap government routinely festers upon us.