Two Tiers of Tenure: Donald Trump's Academy

Donald Trump's Academy: Two Tenure Tracks
Donald Trump's attempts to divide up the nation into two unequal groups coincides with the recent neoliberal move toward two tenure tracks. The lower tier, exclusively for teachers, involves no support for research and much, much lower salaries.

At Penn State, where something like this is coming to pass, the “tenured teachers” make 33-37k. The tenured full professors who want to implement the lower tier won't disclose their salaries. (I've heard they all make over 100k.)

The boomer generation seems to have culminated in the two-tier academy. NTT receive new titles—we are no longer "janitors" but “sanitary engineers”—and we'll have tenure. Tenure is important to boomers, so this is a "solution" for them. But what tenure means in your life when you’re making 33k per year is very different from when you’re full tenured or endowed professor with degrees from ivy universities. For the latter group, it’s everything.

The ways two tiers of tenure will hurt women and people of color has been discussed at length. But the tenured still celebrate the division into two unequal groups.