In general, there is a heavier teaching load at small liberal arts schools like this one. but you usually have far less requirements for tenure in regards to publishing. Yet there is still the expectation of at least some publishing in order to gain tenure (I assume maybe it’s just a book, or maybe articles? But a pre-tenure sabbatical in general part and parcel of that–when I first went back to school, I went to a community college, and one of the english profs had a sabbatical to do just that). But, I see no reason for her not to negotiate on the terms of employment, either way. That is the name of the game, from what I understand it. Maybe they had made an offer to another, more preferred candidate, who came back after initially rejecting their offer? That’s not unusual.
Another aspect to consider is the back and forth between the administration and the department, which neither W or us are privy to. Many schools/universities are attempting to bring departments to heel, and to have more functions normally controlled by the individual departments more under the central administrations control. They could just have shut down any debate between the central university and the individual department, with the college saying no negotiation allowed.
Of course, we have no way of knowing how her job talk went, or how they made known to her the job requirments. They might have made it seem like there was room for negotiation, when there wasn’t.
But many colleges and universities know how desperate some are for that coveted tenure track jobs–they can’t not know how bad things are out there, especially in the humanities–and I’m sure there is some level of what we could call exploitation of that desperation going on here. I’m little surprised she was so forward about negotiations, actually given the real world situation-- maybe she came from an Ivy League school, where they are still coming out with the expectation that a good degree from a top school is going to equal a tenure track job, when even that is not certain any longer.
I do agree with the Higher Ed piece that at least some of the reaction to her argument seems to delve into victim blaming here. What ever the real story here, it seems really fucked up.
And I think this is tangentially related - are we creating a glut of STEM grads, the same way the Cold War helped to create a glut of humanities/area studies grads (or so the story is told, usually by people who think the humanities are useless anyway):
