Gaming for Tenure as an Accounti

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Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor

Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Tenure Tacks for Professionally Qualified (PQ) Faculty as well as Academically Qualified (AQ) Faculty ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#TenurePQ.htm

David Albrecht sent me this supposed humor link that Francine will especially appreciate ---
http://angryaccounting professors.blogspot.com/

I reworded the lyrics slightly.

Where have all the accounting professors gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the accounting professors gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the accounting professors gone?
They became TAR mathematicians every one.
Equilibrium and game theory are now what they learn?
FASB Codification and IFRS are not what they learn?

If you don't have time to read anything else in this long message, please skim down to Table 1 published in the May 2010 edition of Issues in Accounting Education. Also skim down to Linda Kidwell's reply near the bottom of the message.

Tenure is relatively difficult to achieve in the Academy's accounting discipline in a publish or perish context. Major reasons are as follows:

A-Level academic accounting research journals have miniscule acceptance rates (not unique to accounting) coupled with two or more year time lags between submission and acceptance (that is less common in other disciplines and does vary somewhat randomly with journal referees in given accounting journals). Getting a paper accepted for publication in less than two years is somewhat of a risky random process if you're on a tight time track for tenure. See Linda Kidwell's reply at the bottom of this message.
Virtually all A-level accounting research journals are "accountics" journals that require advanced levels of mathematics and statistics for acceptance. This creates problems for many non-tenured accounting professors who are required to teach professional accounting courses (that are more like law courses with tens of thousands of arcane rules and standards needed to be covered for passage of the difficult CPA Examination) but publish research that is tantamount to analytical mathematics, econometrics, or psychometrics. Accounting history research, case studies, and non-accountics applied research are virtually barred from A-level academic accounting research journals. Publication in professional journals just does not count much toward tenure and performance evaluation in accountancy academe.
Most tenured accounting faculty got their tenure before accountics was required for A-Level research journals or before colleges required publication in A-Level journals. As a result non-tenured accounting faculty today find it very difficult to find senior research mentors who are both active in accountics research and willing to take non-tenured faculty under their wings on campus. This makes accountancy much different than science where it is much more common for new faculty to find senior research mentors in the labs.
Research grant opportunities for academic accountants from external sources are almost nonexistent. Whereas scientists are evaluated by the number and size of their research grants, accounting researchers are only judged on their journal publication hits. This places more time pressure on non-tenured faculty and discourages undertaking longer projects that scientists can undertake if they get sufficient funding.

As a result non-tenured accounting faculty are learning how to "game for tenure." There is also a strategy for tenured faculty in some discipline other than accounting to "bridge" to higher paying accounting faculty positions. New PhD graduates in accounting are among the highest paid faculty in a university and often receive more compensation and fringes that are higher than tenured faculty. The reason is that there is an enormous shortage of PhD accounting graduates in North America. The ere are only slightly over 100 accounting PhD new graduates a year to meet demand in the thousands (demand keeps increasing because more and more students are choosing to major in accounting at the undergraduate level). The major A-Level research universities are now paying over $200,000 per year in salary, guaranteed summer research stipends, and research expense stipends for travel and other related research expenses.

Reasons for the extreme shortage of new accounting PhD graduates are given at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

So here are some ways non-tenured accounting professors are gaming for tenure.

Probably the most common way to game the system is co-authoring for purposes of overcoming the A-Level journal publication acceptance delays. Three researchers who are each in charge one submission can thus become a part of three submissions in parallel streams. It is also a bit like when a group of people pool lottery tickets and share winnings. The odds of getting a hit in an A-Level journal increase with pooled submissions. There are of course many other more legitimate reasons for co-authorship, but gaming for tenure by this questionable ploy is increasing popular but difficult to prove. In academic accounting research co-authoring itself has risen from less than 10% in the 1950s to over 90% in recent years.
Rather than submit a really good single research paper, one way to game the system is to split the paper into multiple and overlapping parts for no reason other than to increase the odds of a hit (in one of several journals) and to possibly increase the hit counts (if more than one crumble is accepted).
Another way to game the tenure and performance evaluation systems is to undertake only short-term research projects. Undertaking a long-term research project in accounting academia is deadly.
Because demand for accounting PhD graduates greatly exceeds supply, graduates from top-ranked doctoral programs negotiate very well indeed for purposes of doing research and publishing in A-Level accounting research journals. Some graduates negotiate to only have to teach one course a semester or even one course a year. They sometimes only teach a doctoral seminar that lines up more closely with their own research and avoids being burdened with professional accounting courses like intermediate or advanced accounting or tax accounting. They negotiate for a guaranteed summer research salary for five or more years and additional research expense stipends ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 per year. Those new graduates that did not negotiate well and have to teach nine credits of professional-level accounting courses are, thereby, at a huge competitive disadvantage when seeking tenure. You can game the system by negotiating well as a new accounting professor. Negotiating to teach only one doctoral seminar per year greatly reduces the risk of getting hammered by student evaluations from intermediate or advanced or tax professional-level accounting courses.
PhD programs in accountancy typically take five or six years beyond a masters degree. Many other doctoral degrees can be earned in three to four years. Another way to game the system is to really plan ahead before entering a doctoral program. A CPA who knows and can teach accounting might earn a PhD in Education and eventually become tenured in the School of Education. That tenured professor can then enroll in the AACSB's "Bridge Program" that takes about one year part-time. Successful completion of the Bridge Program then allows this tenured professor to perhaps double or triple his/her salary as a newly-minted tenured accounting professor. Maintaining tenure is not assured if the newly-minted bridge professor changes universities, but a given university most likely allows this person to keep his/her tenure status within the university. And the university's School of Accounting is so desperate for bridged accountants that the bridged accounting professor will be welcomed with open arms and a high salary.
You can read more about the AACSB Bridge Program at http://www.aacsb.edu/bridge/default.asp
The Bridge Program applies to accounting, finance, management, marketing, and other areas of business.
Tenured professors who know very little about accounting and taxation are really not able to teach professional accounting at the undergraduate or masters level. However, since accounting doctoral programs teach almost no accounting, it might be possible for particular types of tenured professors to enter the AACSB Bridge Program in order to teach in "accounting" doctoral programs. The typical professor who makes this bridge must be a mathematician or a social scientist with high levels of knowledge of research and statistics.

The A-Level accounting research journals are, however, becoming more demanding about making their publications more relevant to accountancy. But in this regard, an "accounting" researcher who knows no accounting might team very successfully with professors and students who know accounting very well but lack some mathematics and statistics skills. The fact of the matter is that we do have some professors of "accounting" teaching doctoral students where the students are accountants and their major research professor knows very little accounting.

You also should not judge all your accountics friends the same way you judge yourself in terms of knowledge of accountancy. After he gave his speech asserting that accounting research professors should take a greater interest in accounting, Accounting Hall of Famer Dennis Beresford submitted his speech for publication to Accounting Horizons. Referee A flatly rejected the Denny's submission for the following reasons:

The paper provides specific recommendations for things that accounting academics should be doing to make the accounting profession better. However (unless the author believes that academics' time is a free good) this would presumably take academics' time away from what they are currently doing. While following the author's advice might make the accounting profession better, what is being made worse? In other words, suppose I stop reading current academic research and start reading news about current developments in accounting standards. Who is made better off and who is made worse off by this reallocation of my time? Presumably my students are marginally better off, because I can tell them some new stuff in class about current accounting standards, and this might possibly have some limited benefit on their careers. But haven't I made my colleagues in my department worse off if they depend on me for research advice, and haven't I made my university worse off if its academic reputation suffers because I'm no longer considered a leading scholar? Why does making the accounting profession better take precedence over everything else an academic does with their time?
Referee A's rejection letter, Accounting Horizons, 2005

What riled me the most was the arrogance of Referee A. I read into it that, whereas mathematicians and econometricians are true "scholars," other accounting professors are little better than teachers of bookkeeping and fairy tales. This is the same arrogant attitude held by previous investment bankers trying to take advantage of Warren Buffet as their counterparties in derivatives or other financial transactions.

The AACSB is also dealing with the shortage of accounting doctoral students in other ways. The AACSB loosened accreditation requirements for accounting faculty. It now has two major categories for faculty qualifications called Academically Qualified (AQ) versus Professionally Qualified (PQ) --- http://www.aacsb.edu/accreditation/papers/AQ-PQCriteriaPaperFinal%20Draft09%20_2.pdf

The problem is that PQ faculty not having doctoral degrees may be fully accepted for AACSB accreditation but they are not fully qualified by their universities for the granting of tenure. Universities in recent years find ways to circumvent AAUP restrictions on how long non-tenured faculty may work full time for universities, but the fact of the matter is that long-term non-tenured faculty are second class citizens in the Academy.

*****************

Hi XXXXX,

These are among the toughest requests for advice that I receive. I get these questions now and then from new faculty and faculty who find themselves rejected for tenure. Second I get these questions from faculty who find themselves treading water as tenured associate professors lost at sea.

First, my answer is contingent upon your own credentials and skills.
Accounting professors with doctorates who have great quantitative skills for accountics science will have an easier time getting those all-important hits in top accounting research journals. For them my advice is to make friends with lots of potential co-authors (the journals don't care if an article has ten authors) and carefully read my paper on how to play the game:
Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
(with a reply about tenure publication point systems from Linda Kidwell)

Second, my answer is contingent upon your particular college or university.
As long as you get a few refereed publications (even in obscure journals), some colleges will bend every which way to keep you if you are both a good teacher among your students and a good team player among your colleagues. However, this can be a mixed blessing. I know of some liberal arts universities where the Department of Business gave glowing recommendations for tenure/promotion of a faculty member weak on publications only to have the college-wide P&T Committee object because of a feeling that the same standards for research and publication that apply to chemists and psychologists should also apply to accountants. There are also envy objections if the accounting assistant professor has twice as much salary as a full professor in chemistry and psychology.

Third, my answer is contingent upon the value your university may place upon innovation and teaching evaluations.
Some faculty have discovered how to build worldwide reputations as innovators in edutainment and/or technology. Read about some of the faculty that won the Innovations in Accounting Education Award at
http://aaahq.org/awards/awrd6win.htm
Winning this award can go a long way toward tenure and promotion. However, the odds of winning such an award are small. You might spend a great deal or time and effort being an innovator that is not particularly appreciated by students or colleagues. Sadly most students want to be spoon fed from textbooks as long as they can also have an easy time getting A and B grades in this era of grade inflation:
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GradeInflation
Sadly, most colleges evaluate teaching on the basis of student evaluations. And students often demand high grades for glowing evaluations.

Fourth, beware of being viewed as too soft and easy.
When instructors are trying too hard to please students with grades and gut courses, this effort to win over students and colleagues can backfire. Some professors earn stellar reputations for teaching tough courses with high standards. Be prepared, however, to read damning student evaluations and/or four-letter words about yourself on RateMyProfessor.com.

Fifth, work, work, work
Sadly, some faculty don't get tenured/promoted because they set priorities in life that detract from job performance. I know more than one accounting associate professor who earned a PhD from a top-ten research university, got enough TAR, JAR, and JAE hits to make tenure at an R1 research university, and then has not been heard from since earning tenure. In most instances that associate professor changed priorities in life, including parenthood to a fault, chasing around after a divorce, taking on hobbies like building a real airplane/yacht in a barn, building harps accords, building violins, performing in string quartets, etc. Some just plain burn out and become diseased with depression and alcoholism.

Six, become a quality administrator and or servant of your profession
There's no shame in burning out at research and/or teaching if you have skills and ambitions for other alternatives in a college. There's no honor in becoming a lousy dean if you've been a lousy researcher or teacher. However, if you're a good researcher/teacher who just wants other challenges in life, there are some terrific challenges when becoming a serious administrators. Being a good administrator also takes a different kind of skill set and dedication. There are extensions of this concept in the field of public and professional service. Exhibit A is the quality reputation that Dan Deines (Kansas State University) built over a lifetime of dedication of promoting accountancy among K-12 students and their advisors and parents.

Seven, become a researcher/publisher and consultant in a small niche
Sometimes earning a worldwide reputation in research takes dedication toward research in a small niche. For example, accounting professors in the past have found niches in such things as oil and gas accounting, accounting history, or accounting for interest rate swaps (like me). Few, however, have explored becoming accounting experts in synthetic leasing, XBRL, securitizations , casualty insurance, or in managerial accounting for specific industries like funeral parlors, QVC, or Avon.

Eight, take other roads less traveled
I know quite a few accounting and business faculty who became totally dedicated to NACRA and other case writing associations. Unable or unwilling to build accountics science reputations, they built international reputations for writing both teaching and research cases. My threads on case writing are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Cases
This route sometimes becomes popular for lawyers who do not have PhD-level research training.

Nine, consider the possibility of becoming a special needs student expert
It's rare for an accounting professor to become an expert for special needs students such as students who are hearing impaired, vision impaired, paralyzed, hyperactive, bipolar, etc. I think there's a real niche here. My threads on this topic are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

Ten, remember that respect for scholarship is depth and content
It can be dysfunctional to become a superficial blogger or a maintain a superficial Website. Reputations are not built on publishing, blogging, social networking, or Websites alone. Reputations are built upon the content of publishing, blogging, social networking, or Websites. And reputable content can take a lifetime of blood, sweat, and tears!

My threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
There really is no easy way out in terms of a quality long-term professional reputation. Too many failed professors tried to do too many things superficially and failed to build a quality reputation that stands out when the Great Scorer comes to write against their names. Good guys often finish last.

How many bottom feeder journal articles does it take to get tenure at a diploma mill?
A person called Flag in a comment to the article below.

"A Plague of Journals," by Philip G. Altbach , Inside Higher Ed, January 15, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/plague-journals

Clever people have figured out that there is a growing demand for outlets for scholarly work, that there are too few journals or other channels to accommodate all the articles written, that new technology has created confusion as well as opportunities, and (finally) and somewhat concerning is that there is money to be made in the knowledge communication business. As a result, there has been a proliferation of new publishers offering new journals in every imaginable field. The established for-profit publishers have also been purchasing journals and creating new ones so that they “bundle” them and offer them at high prices to libraries through electronic subscriptions.

Scholars and scientists worldwide find themselves under increasing pressure to publish more, especially in English-language “internationally circulated” journals that are included in globally respected indices such as the Science Citation Index. As a result, journals that are part of these networks have been inundated by submissions and many journals accept as few as 10%.

Universities increasingly demand more publications as conditions for promotion, salary increases, or even job security. As a result, the large majority of submissions must seek alternative publication outlets. After all, being published somewhere is better than not be published at all. Many universities are satisfied with counting numbers of articles without regard to quality or impact, while others, mostly top-ranking, are obsessed with impact—creating increased stress for professors.

A variety of new providers have come into this new marketplace. Some scholarly organizations and universities have created new “open access” electronic journals that have decent peer-reviewing systems and the backing of respected scholars and scientists. Some of these publications have achieved a level of respectability and acceptance, while others are struggling.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
What really sets me off are journals that will publish articles for authors willing to pay by the page for such "journal publications." This is a real moral hazard that is likely to corrupt the refereeing process --- if there is any refereeing of such articles. Anybody has the freedom to publish an academic article at a Website. Authors who pay to be able to cite a "journal" hit are most likely padding their resumes. This can, however, be dysfunctional to their careers if word gets out about the author-pays "journals."

In my opinion paying to have a journal article published is more serious than having a book custom published. When a book is custom published the author's resume does not (or at least should not) imply that other peer scholars published the item. Journal articles usually imply that some outside referees have accepted the article.

Our UnderAchieving Colleges ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Bok

"Englisizing The Paper," by The Unknown Professor, Financial Rounds Blog, January 20, 2011 ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/

I'm in editing mode. Lately, I've been working with a couple of coauthors who are very, very good theorists. Their game theory/math chops are so much better than mine that I try not to discuss it. In addition, one of them is very connected with the top people in the accounting area (he was the other's chair, which is how we met).

They just dropped about a 40 page current version of a paper we've been working on for quite a while. The logic of the paper flows soundly, and the empirics are solid.

Unfortunately, neither of my coauthors has English as a mother tongue. So, I'm in charge of "Englishizing" the paper.

Oh my!

Jensen Comment
Scenario 1
This raises the issue of defining the difference between an "editor" versus a "co-author." Suppose Physician A and Physician B are both Chinese medical researchers who've written a draft of a very seminal and controversial piece of research in Chinese and then ask English Professor C to "Englisize" the paper as a co-author. Should Professor C really share the Nobel Prize in Medicine?

Scenario 2
Suppose Physician A and Physician B are both Chinese medical researchers who've written a draft of a very seminal and controversial piece of research in Chinese and then ask Physician C to "Englisize" the paper as a full co-author. Should Professor C really share the Nobel Prize in Medicine?

Scenario 3
Physicians A, B, and C all graduated in the same graduating class at the Stanford University Medical School. Each of them went their separate ways and are now assistant professors in medical schools in Arizona, New Hampshire, and Washington State. All are under pressure to do research. Physician A contacts B and C and proposes that they each complete the first drafts of the research that they've been working on independently. B and C are then to edit and improve the writing of Physician A's draft as full co-authors. A and C are then to edit and improve the writing of Physician B's draft as full co-authors. And so it goes for the three drafts on the theory that the writing of each draft has been improved and that, if only one is accepted by a very prestigious medical journal, all three will get tenure credits for having a hit in a very prestigious medical research journal. If all three papers are accepted they are really in great shape to be awarded tenure.

Scenario 4
Physician A already has a Nobel Prize in Medicine. Physician B is a newly-minted graduate who extends a published paper written Physician A. But as a new and unknown researcher Physician B fears that her work will have difficulty impressing Editor C of a prestigious medical research journal. Physician B contacts Physician A to join her as a full co-author. Editor C is always very impressed with anything that has be authored or co-authored by Physician A.

Question
Why bother submitting papers to journals that are not highly respected by promotion and tenure committees?

Hi David,

One time a colleague, who was an attorney and not a PhD, asked me a similar question. I advised her to write cases that were both scholarly and field tested on students. Then I said if she could get these published in refereed journals this greatly beat having no publications in refereed journals.

She did write some very good ethics cases and got them published in a refereed law journals and made conference presentations of her cases. She became tenured and is still teaching as a tenured associate professor. Unfortunately, after attaining tenure her case writing productivity declined. Alas, she may eventually retire without ever having attained a full professorship.
.
In addition to publishing accountics research in education, IAE publishes accounting education cases. Some of these cases were often part of my course assignments and were of great value to me.
.
There is a highly respected NACRA case research journal that is rigorously refereed, and the NACRA crowd is very active in conferences where they evaluate each others' cases. If your colleagues don't give credit for refereed publications in IAE and NACRA the problem is their ignorance rather than your ignorance ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Cases
.
Sometimes you have to educate your colleagues and supervisors. The important part of being a scholar is to become known as a valuable frog in the pond of your choosing. The key is that experts in your pond look up to you even if it is a small pond and not one of the great lakes. Do good work as a genuine expert and you will be discovered.

Another piece of advice is that there's still great merit in having double-blind refereed publications on a resume. Web publishing and blog publishing may be your greatest contribution to the outside world, but to get respect as a scholar in the academy there has to be either refereed publication or other comparable evidence of scholarship such as invitations by other universities to make presentations of your scholarship. Generally the two go hand-in-hand. The scholars with long resumes are the most likely scholars to be invited to to speak and conduct CEP programs.

And lastly I cannot stress enough the importance of being looked up to as an expert. One of the real weaknesses of accounting departments as opposed to chemistry, math, and history departments is that those other departments generally have experts in very narrow subsets of their disciplines --- those small ponds.

In college accounting departments we have a huge problem with becoming known as experts in narrow areas of accounting. For example, in a Big Four firm some of the most valued partners are those that are looked up to as genuine experts in narrow areas like insurance accounting, synthetic lease accounting, FIN 48, etc. This type of expertise is not appreciated in college classrooms because the curriculum plan just does not drill down to such narrow areas of expertise.

But professors can be greatly respected for publishing in areas of narrow expertise even though they probably cannot find an outlet for this expertise in a classroom on campus. We just do not offer courses on synthetic leasing. But we can publish cases and empirical research on synthetic leasing to a point where we are admired around the world as synthetic lease experts.

As I mentioned before, one way to challenge a journal editor is to submit a paper in such a narrow area of expertise that the editor cannot find a single college professor to referee the paper. This has happened to me in accounting for derivative financial instruments where the editor had to go to Big Four firms to find experts to referee my paper.

It's sad that Big Four firms have better accounting experts than the academy. Our top accounting researchers are experts on mathematical models and data mining but their expertise is not respected by genuine accounting experts in the Big Four because our professors are not genuine accounting experts. I don't think this is as much of a problem in medical schools, law schools, and engineering schools. But in accounting schools our professors just don't swim around in the small ponds.

More than all the refereed publications that I have in accountics I take pride in being known as a FAS 133 expert. It allows me to stand tall in my profession.

Bob Jensen

I recently sent out the message below to international accountancy professors on the AECM listserv.

Requiring four "A-Level" accountics journal publications for tenure puts a small college well ahead of the leading research universities, virtually none of whom require four such hits at the A-Level (see Table 1 below).

Accountics is the mathematical science of values.
Charles Sprague [1887] as quoted by McMillan [1998, p. 1]
You can read about how "accountics" was dormant between 1887 and 1958. A perfect storm revived accountics to where it quickly came to dominate the leading academic accounting research journals, doctoral programs, and publication requirements for promotion, performance evaluation, and tenure after 1958 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm (Accounting Historians Journal)

Question that I posed on the AECM Listserv of international accounting educators and researchers:
Do you really, really want to become a non-tenured accounting professor?

Others on the AECM might be interested in your answers to the two questions stated below.

But if you prefer, please send your answers to me privately. I will respect the confidential nature of your reply unless you give me permission to share the name of your college or university in terms of these tenure criteria for accounting programs --- rjensen@trinity.edu

A College President Changes the Tenure Rules of the Road
Tenure Decisions: Does your college have a minimum quota for publication in the Top Ten Academic research journals?

There are various published rankings of academic accounting research journals, most of which are "accountics" journals that require accepted articles to be rooted in mathematics and statistics. Some rankings and references to rankings are provided at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#JournalRankings

David Wood and his BYU colleagues also rank accounting research programs based upon publication records of those programs in leading accounting research journals --- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1337755
This study makes novel contributions to ranking accounting research programs constructed from publication counts in top journals ("AOS, Auditing, BRIA, CAR, JAE, JAR, JATA, JIS, JMAR, RAST, and TAR").
Other research publications in such journals as the Accounting Historians Journal, case research journals, Critical Perspectives in Accounting, Journal of Accountancy, Management Accounting, Issues in Accounting Education, are excluded in the BYU study and hence did not impact of the BYU rankings of top accounting research programs in the academy.

A College President Changes the Tenure Rules of the Road
In the above context I received the following (slightly edited) disturbing message from a good friend at a college that has a very small accounting education program (less than 25 masters program graduates in accounting annually). The college is not in the Top 50 business schools as ranked by US News or Business Week or the WSJ. Nor does the program have a doctoral program and is not even mentioned as having a an accounting research program ---
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1337755

The message reads as follows (slightly edited):

Bob,

Our College's President just contacted our non-tenured accounting faculty. He gave them a short list of “Accountics” journals that they have to publish in order to get tenure. The list consists of the usual (A-Level) suspects – JAR, TAR, JAE, AOS, JATA, CAR, Auditing – A Journal of Practice and Theory, and a handful more. He categorically told them that they need to have at least 4 articles in those journals to be successful in getting tenure.

Just thought you should know!

I hope you and Erika are doing well. I always look forward to you Tidbits and photos that accompany them. Of course, I also follow you on the AECM listserve.

Best Regards
XXXXX

Jensen Comment
I would not classify AOS as an accountics journal, although its future is a bit uncertain following the recent death of its founder and long-time editor Anthony Hopwood. I would classify it more as a societal/philosophical journal for accountancy research as very broadly defined. However, the other "usual suspects" are A"A-Level" accountics journals that virtually require sophisticated mathematics and statistics applications in accounting research for publication acceptance. On average these journals reject 80%-90% of the submissions.

Be that as it may, a follow up conversation with Professor XXXXX reveals that this "four top accountics journal requirement" is an abrupt change in tenure criteria at the college in question. Publication has been required up to now, but there was no minimum number like four and publications that counted could all be in journals like accounting history journals, case research journals, applied research journals like Management Accounting/Journal of Accountancy, and education research journals like Issues in Accounting Education.

Question 1
I'm interested in first of all finding out if your college has a minimum number, for tenure, of "accounting research" publications even though it might not require that these be the "Top 10" accountics research journals plus AOS?

It seems to be that a fixed minimum number is absurd. It encourages an accounting researcher to split a really good research paper artificially into parts for no purpose other than to increase the publication count. It also discourages major research studies in favor of quickies. It also seems to me that even the "Top 10" accounting research universities would be better served with quality rather than quantity research work. For example, suppose Eric Lie was a non-tenured research professor at the University of Iowa. Eric wrote an award-winning research paper published in Management Science (2005) that resulted in the 2007 American Accounting Association Contribution to the Accounting Literature Award. It also landed him among the 100 Most Influential People of the World Award by Time Magazine. It would seem that this one research paper on options backdating is far more significant than any four accountics research papers published in the same year (2005). I doubt that any other accounting, finance, or business administration professor in history has received this award from Time Magazine.

The policy also ignores how non-tenured faculty can game the system by finding 12 or more co-authors who separately take charge of one of the 12 studies. Then if four of the 12 studies make it into "Top 10" accountics research journals, all 12 partners have better chances of obtaining tenure in their respective universities. This is gaming the system if the purpose of the partnering is only to increase the chances of getting at least four of the "co-authored" papers into top accountics journals. This has been popular among co-workers pooling lottery tickets, but it has dubious ethics for research publication.

It would be funny if one of the 12 "co-authors" was a family Chihuahua, Labrador or Golden Retriever.

Question 2
I am interested secondly in finding out if your college allows, for tenure, an unspecified number of "accounting research" publications other than the "Top 10" accountics research journal publications plus AOS? Or could a non-tenured accounting professor get tenure with only a "significant number" of research publications in such journals as the Accounting Historians Journal, case research journals, Critical Perspectives in Accounting, Journal of Accountancy, Management Accounting, Issues in Accounting Education, etc.?

Others on the AECM might be interested in your answers to the above two questions.

Thanks in advance

PS
In general I oppose using the AECM for formal survey studies, because this type of thing can get out of hand. However, this is a highly informal inquiry that should be of interest to virtually all subscribers to the AECM. I encourage subscribers to reply directly to the AECM.

June 2, 2010 reply from James R. Martin/University of South Florida [jmartin@MAAW.INFO]

Bob, For another paper with lots of advice for Ph.D. students and new faculty see Beyer, B., D. Herrmann, G. K. Meek and E. T. Rapley. 2010. What it means to be an accounting professor: A concise career guide for doctoral students in accounting. Issues In Accounting Education (May): 227-244.

Jensen Comment
Here are some key quotations from the article

"What It Means to be an Accounting Professor:: A Concise Career Guide for Doctoral Students in Accounting," by Brooke Beyer, Don Herrmann, Gary K. Meek, and Eric T. Rapley, Issues in Accounting Education, May 2010 ---
http://aaapubs.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=pdf&id=IAEXXX000025000002000227000001&idtype=cvips&prog=normal

ABSTRACT:
The purpose of this paper is to provide a concise career guide for current and potential doctoral students in accounting and, in the process, help them gain a greater awareness of what it means to be an accounting professor. The guide can also be used by accounting faculty in doctoral programs as a starting point in mentoring their doctoral students. We begin with foundational guidance to help doctoral students better understand the “big picture” surrounding the academic accounting environment. We then provide specific research guidance and publishing guidance to help improve the probability of publication success. Actions are suggested that doctoral students and new faculty can take to help jump-start their academic careers. We finish with guidance regarding some important acronyms of special interest to doctoral students in accounting.

TABLE 1

Teaching and Research Expectations of Faculty

Adopted from Butler and Crack (2005)
Butler, A. W., and T. F. Crack. 2005. The academic job market in finance: A rookie’s guide. Financial Decisions 17 2: 1–17.

RESEARCH GUIDANCE

Research is the currency of academics. It is research, not teaching, that drives the rewards for faculty at most universities Hermanson 2008. This is the case not only for universities with doctoral accounting programs, but also for many universities focusing solely on undergraduate or master’s degrees in accounting. Hermanson 2008 provides several reasons why this is the case including the scarcity of research talent in comparison to teaching and that research is peer reviewed, providing a better measure of quality. Regardless of the reasons, doctoral students need to be aware of the importance of research and place special emphasis in this area throughout their careers. In the following section, we provide a summary of research advice commonly provided to doctoral students through the mentoring process.

. . .

GMAT
GMAT scores are likely the single most important admission criteria used by doctoral programs in selecting doctoral candidates for admission. While selection committees carefully consider other evidence including the applicant’s statement, work experience, schools where the undergraduate and master’s degrees were received, grade point average, and reference letters, the GMAT score provides a consistent benchmark that many programs use as a starting point in their decision process. Over half of the U.S. doctoral programs in accounting have a stated minimum GMAT score of 650 or more. A score in the range of 700 or more (top 10 percent) is desirable to receive strong consideration at many programs. The average GMAT score of the ADS Scholars selected to begin their doctoral program in 2009 was 718 and all of the candidates selected had a minimum GMAT score of 650. Furthermore, some programs require a minimum quantitative score of 45 or more (top 25 percent). Without strong quantitative skills, students can struggle in graduate-level statistics and econometrics courses. While the GMAT score is an important minimum benchmark in making initial admissions decisions, it is less important as an indicator of overall student success in a doctoral program. Doctoral program directors can provide numerous examples of students with very high GMAT scores who failed to complete the program. Likewise, some students with average GMAT scores have gone on to be highly successful accounting researchers. Similar to SAT/ACT scores for admission to college, the GMAT score is important for admission into a doctoral accounting program, but becomes progressively less important over one’s academic career.

Jensen Comment

Opposition to Validity Questioning of Accountics Research ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of accountancy doctoral programs in North America ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

June 2, 2010 reply from Linda A Kidwell, University of Wyoming [lkidwell@UWYO.EDU]

Back to your original questions, Bob, our department has no set minimum number of hits in particular journals, but rather a system of weighting journals. For example, the top tier journals (the usual suspects) are worth more than sectional and other high quality journals, which in turn are worth more than other journals and presentations. The list and weightings were developed in a collaborative process using various sources for rankings as well as our department mission as guides. To be eligible for tenure, a candidate must have accrued a certain number of points, so higher quality requires less quantity, though we have to remind untenured faculty that hanging all their hopes on top tier articles that may take 2 years to get accepted, if at all, is not likely to do it alone if they have no lower tier articles to fill out their vitae. They also can't earn it on low-quality alone: there must be at least some high quality content. It's an imperfect system, but I think it strikes a good balance between quality and quantity, doesn't set unrealistic expectations, and allows those who don't do accountics research ample opportunity for their work to be respected. Finally, it also helps at the college T&P level, where we are the only non-doctoral department, and other departments need some help seeing the role of practitioner articles in an accounting vita.

Accounting Program Rankings in Academe

Updated BYU Study (especially David Woods): Universities Ranked According to Accounting Research ---
http://www.byuaccounting.net/rankings/univrank/rankings.php

The rankings presented via the links below are based on the research paper Accounting Program Research Rankings By Topic and Methodology, forthcoming in Issues In Accounting Education . These rankings are based on classifications of peer reviewed articles in 11 accounting journals since 1990. To see the set of rankings that are of interest to you, click on the appropriate title.

Each cell contains the ranking and the (number of graduates) participating in that ranking. The colors correspond to a heat map (see legend at bottom of table) showing the research areas in which a program excels. Move your mouse over the cell to see the names of the graduates that participated in that ranking

Jensen Comment
I'm impressed by the level of detail,

I repeat my cautions about rankings that I mentioned previously about the earlier study. Researchers sometimes change affiliations two, three, or even more times over the course of their careers. Joel Demski is now at Florida. Should Florida get credit for research published by Joel when he was a tenured professor at Stanford and at Yale before moving to Florida?

There is also a lot of subjectivity in the choice of research journals and methods. Even though the last cell in the table is entitled "Other Topic, Other Material," there seems to me to be a bias against historical research and philosophical research and a bias for accountics research. This of course always stirs me up ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

In future updates I would like to see more on accounting history and applied accounting research. For example, I would like to see more coverage of the Journal of Accountancy. An example article that gets overlooked research on why the lattice model for valuing employee stock options has key advantages over the Black-Scholes Model:

"How to “Excel” at Options Valuation," by Charles P. Baril, Luis Betancourt, and John W. Briggs, Journal of Accountancy, December 2005 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/dec2005/baril.htm

The Journal of Accountancy and many other applied research/professional journals are not included in this BYU study. Hence professors who publish research studies in those excluded journals are not given credit for their research, and their home universities are not given credit for their research.

Having said all this, the BYU study is the best effort to date in terms of accounting research rankings of international universities, accounting researchers, and doctoral student research.

Bravo to David Woods and his colleagues at BYU!

link:

Updated BYU Study (especially David Woods): Universities Ranked According to Accounting Research

"The Absence of Dissent," by Joni J. Young, Accounting and the Public Interest 9 (1), 1 (2009); doi: 10.2308/api.2009.9.1.1 ---
Click Here

ABSTRACT:
The persistent malaise in accounting research continues to resist remedy. Hopwood (2007) argues that revitalizing academic accounting cannot be accomplished by simply working more diligently within current paradigms. Based on an analysis of articles published in Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, I show that this paradigm block is not confined to financial accounting research but extends beyond the work appearing in the so-called premier U.S. journals. Based on this demonstration I argue that accounting academics must tolerate (and even encourage) dissent for accounting to enjoy a vital research academy. ©2009 American Accounting Association

574 Shields Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

· With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier

· With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams

· With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of Accountancy Ignores TAR

· With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research into Undergraduate Accounting Courses

Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
(with a reply about tenure publication point systems from Linda Kidwell)

"So you want to get a Ph.D.?" by David Wood, BYU ---
http://www.byuaccounting.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=So_you_want_to_get_a_Ph.D.%3F

Do You Want to Teach? ---
http://financialexecutives.blogspot.com/2009/05/do-you-want-to-teach.html

Jensen Comment
Here are some added positives and negatives to consider, especially if you are currently a practicing accountant considering becoming a professor.

Accountancy Doctoral Program Information from Jim Hasselback ---
http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoctInfo.html

Why must all accounting doctoral programs be social science (particularly econometrics) "accountics" doctoral programs?
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

"The Accounting Doctoral Shortage: Time for a New Model,"
by Neal Mero, Jan R. Williams and George W. Krull, Jr. .
Issues in Accounting Education 24 (4)
http://aaapubs.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=IAEXXX000024000004000427000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=Yes&ref=no

ABSTRACT:
The crisis in supply versus demand for doctorally qualified faculty members in accounting is well documented (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business [AACSB] 2003a, 2003b; Plumlee et al. 2005; Leslie 2008). Little progress has been made in addressing this serious challenge facing the accounting academic community and the accounting profession. Faculty time, institutional incentives, the doctoral model itself, and research diversity are noted as major challenges to making progress on this issue. The authors propose six recommendations, including a new, extramurally funded research program aimed at supporting doctoral students that functions similar to research programs supported by such organizations as the National Science Foundation and other science-based funding sources. The goal is to create capacity, improve structures for doctoral programs, and provide incentives to enhance doctoral enrollments. This should lead to an increased supply of graduates while also enhancing and supporting broad-based research outcomes across the accounting landscape, including auditing and tax. ©2009 American Accounting Association

Bob Jensen's threads on accountancy doctoral programs are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

Publish Poop or Perish
"We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research," by Mark Bauerlein, Mohamed Gad-el-Hak, Wayne Grody, Bill McKelvey, and Stanley W. Trimble, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/We-Must-Stop-the-Avalanche-of/65890/

Everybody agrees that scientific research is indispensable to the nation's health, prosperity, and security. In the many discussions of the value of research, however, one rarely hears any mention of how much publication of the results is best. Indeed, for all the regrets one hears in these hard times of research suffering from financing problems, we shouldn't forget the fact that the last few decades have seen astounding growth in the sheer output of research findings and conclusions. Just consider the raw increase in the number of journals. Using Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, Michael Mabe shows that the number of "refereed academic/scholarly" publications grows at a rate of 3.26 percent per year (i.e., doubles about every 20 years). The main cause: the growth in the number of researchers.

Many people regard this upsurge as a sign of health. They emphasize the remarkable discoveries and breakthroughs of scientific research over the years; they note that in the Times Higher Education's ranking of research universities around the world, campuses in the United States fill six of the top 10 spots. More published output means more discovery, more knowledge, ever-improving enterprise.

If only that were true.

While brilliant and progressive research continues apace here and there, the amount of redundant, inconsequential, and outright poor research has swelled in recent decades, filling countless pages in journals and monographs. Consider this tally from Science two decades ago: Only 45 percent of the articles published in the 4,500 top scientific journals were cited within the first five years after publication. In recent years, the figure seems to have dropped further. In a 2009 article in Online Information Review, Péter Jacsó found that 40.6 percent of the articles published in the top science and social-science journals (the figures do not include the humanities) were cited in the period 2002 to 2006.

As a result, instead of contributing to knowledge in various disciplines, the increasing number of low-cited publications only adds to the bulk of words and numbers to be reviewed. Even if read, many articles that are not cited by anyone would seem to contain little useful information. The avalanche of ignored research has a profoundly damaging effect on the enterprise as a whole. Not only does the uncited work itself require years of field and library or laboratory research. It also requires colleagues to read it and provide feedback, as well as reviewers to evaluate it formally for publication. Then, once it is published, it joins the multitudes of other, related publications that researchers must read and evaluate for relevance to their own work. Reviewer time and energy requirements multiply by the year. The impact strikes at the heart of academe.

Among the primary effects:

Too much publication raises the refereeing load on leading practitioners—often beyond their capacity to cope. Recognized figures are besieged by journal and press editors who need authoritative judgments to take to their editorial boards. Foundations and government agencies need more and more people to serve on panels to review grant applications whose cumulative page counts keep rising. Departments need distinguished figures in a field to evaluate candidates for promotion whose research files have likewise swelled.

The productivity climate raises the demand on younger researchers. Once one graduate student in the sciences publishes three first-author papers before filing a dissertation, the bar rises for all the other graduate students.

The pace of publication accelerates, encouraging projects that don't require extensive, time-consuming inquiry and evidence gathering. For example, instead of efficiently combining multiple results into one paper, professors often put all their students' names on multiple papers, each of which contains part of the findings of just one of the students. One famous physicist has some 450 articles using such a strategy.

In addition, as more and more journals are initiated, especially the many new "international" journals created to serve the rapidly increasing number of English-language articles produced by academics in China, India, and Eastern Europe, libraries struggle to pay the notoriously high subscription costs. The financial strain has reached a critical point. From 1978 to 2001, libraries at the University of California at Los Angeles, for example, saw their subscription costs alone climb by 1,300 percent.

The amount of material one must read to conduct a reasonable review of a topic keeps growing. Younger scholars can't ignore any of it—they never know when a reviewer or an interviewer might have written something disregarded—and so they waste precious months reviewing a pool of articles that may lead nowhere.

Finally, the output of hard copy, not only print journals but also articles in electronic format downloaded and printed, requires enormous amounts of paper, energy, and space to produce, transport, handle, and store—an environmentally irresponsible practice.

Let us go on.

Experts asked to evaluate manuscripts, results, and promotion files give them less-careful scrutiny or pass the burden along to other, less-competent peers. We all know busy professors who ask Ph.D. students to do their reviewing for them. Questionable work finds its way more easily through the review process and enters into the domain of knowledge. Because of the accelerated pace, the impression spreads that anything more than a few years old is obsolete. Older literature isn't properly appreciated, or is needlessly rehashed in a newer, publishable version. Aspiring researchers are turned into publish-or-perish entrepreneurs, often becoming more or less cynical about the higher ideals of the pursuit of knowledge. They fashion pathways to speedier publication, cutting corners on methodology and turning to politicking and fawning strategies for acceptance.

Such outcomes run squarely against the goals of scientific inquiry. The surest guarantee of integrity, peer review, falls under a debilitating crush of findings, for peer review can handle only so much material without breaking down. More isn't better. At some point, quality gives way to quantity.

Academic publication has passed that point in most, if not all, disciplines—in some fields by a long shot. For example, Physica A publishes some 3,000 pages each year. Why? Senior physics professors have well-financed labs with five to 10 Ph.D.-student researchers. Since the latter increasingly need more publications to compete for academic jobs, the number of published pages keeps climbing. While publication rates are going up throughout academe, with unfortunate consequences, the productivity mandate hits especially hard in the sciences.

Only if the system of rewards is changed will the avalanche stop. We need policy makers and grant makers to focus not on money for current levels of publication, but rather on finding ways to increase high-quality work and curtail publication of low-quality work. If only some forward-looking university administrators initiated changes in hiring and promotion criteria and ordered their libraries to stop paying for low-cited journals, they would perform a national service. We need to get rid of administrators who reward faculty members on printed pages and downloads alone, deans and provosts "who can't read but can count," as the saying goes. Most of all, we need to understand that there is such a thing as overpublication, and that pushing thousands of researchers to issue mediocre, forgettable arguments and findings is a terrible misuse of human, as well as fiscal, capital.

Several fixes come to mind:

First, limit the number of papers to the best three, four, or five that a job or promotion candidate can submit. That would encourage more comprehensive and focused publishing.

Second, make more use of citation and journal "impact factors," from Thomson ISI. The scores measure the citation visibility of established journals and of researchers who publish in them. By that index, Nature and Science score about 30. Most major disciplinary journals, though, score 1 to 2, the vast majority score below 1, and some are hardly visible at all. If we add those scores to a researcher's publication record, the publications on a CV might look considerably different than a mere list does.

Third, change the length of papers published in print: Limit manuscripts to five to six journal-length pages, as Nature and Science do, and put a longer version up on a journal's Web site. The two versions would work as a package. That approach could be enhanced if university and other research libraries formed buying consortia, which would pressure publishers of journals more quickly and aggressively to pursue this third route. Some are already beginning to do so, but a nationally coordinated effort is needed.

Continued in article

Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm

The top ranked accounting programs do not set a four-hit minimum number of A-Level publications for tenure. In fact the rankings below indicate that some things are more important to program quality, especially in the eyes of firms that hire graduates, than research and publication records of the faculty.

What I found interesting is how different these rankings are from the A-Level journal hit accounting program rankings at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1337755

"While the World Implodes, Let’s Bicker About Accounting Program Rankings," by Caleb Newquist, Going Concern, May 6, 2010 ---
http://goingconcern.com/2010/05/while-the-world-implodes-lets-bicker-about-accounting-program-rankings/

Despite your 401k taking a deuce and the entire continent of Europe about to sink into the Atlantic, the Bloomberg Businessweek Business School undergraduate speciality rankings are out and the accounting rankings are, shall we say, interesting. Maybe no one is that worried about it but if sports play any part in your like/dislike of a particular school, then there should be a few words:

1 University of Notre Dame (Mendoza)
2 Brigham Young University (Marriott)
3 Emory University (Goizueta)
4 University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
5 Wake Forest University
6 Lehigh University
7 Boston College (Carroll)
8 University of California – Berkeley (Haas)
9 University of San Diego
10 Southern Methodist University (Cox)

11 Babson College
12 University of Washington (Foster)
13 University of Richmond (Robins)
14 Villanova University
15 Case Western Reserve University (Weatherhead)
16 University of Texas – Austin (McCombs)
17 University of Virginia (McIntire)
18 Cornell University
19 College of William & Mary (Mason)
20 New York University (Stern)
21 University of Southern California (Marshall)
22 Tulane University (Freeman)
23 Fordham University
24 Georgia Institute of Technology
25 Loyola University – Chicago
26 University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign
27 Ohio University
27 University of Denver (Daniels)
29 University of Texas – Dallas
30 University of South Carolina (Moore)
31 University of Connecticut
32 Boston University
33 Santa Clara University
34 University of Maryland (Smith)
35 Indiana University (Kelley)
36 Syracuse University (Whitman)
37 Washington University – St. Louis (Olin)
38 Binghamton University
39 University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
40 Texas Christian University (Neeley)
41 University of Miami
42 University of Missouri – Columbia (Trulaske)
43 University of Michigan (Ross)
44 North Carolina State University
45 University of Wisconsin – Madison
46 Texas A&M University (Mays)
47 The College of New Jersey
48 University of Minnesota (Carlson)
49 Miami University (Farmer)
50 University of Georgia (Terry)
51 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
52 University of Delaware (Lerner)
53 Ohio Northern University (Dicke)
54 Seattle University (Albers)
55 Northern Illinois University
56 Michigan State University (Broad)
57 Georgetown University (McDonough)
58 California Polytechnic State University (Orfalea)
59 Loyola College in Maryland (Sellinger)
60 University at Buffalo
61 Bentley University
62 DePaul University
63 University of Iowa (Tippie)
64 Drexel University (LeBow)
65 Northeastern University
66 Marquette University
67 St. Joseph’s University (Haub)
68 University of Pittsburgh
69 University of Utah (Eccles)
70 University of Oregon (Lundquist)
71 Seton Hall University (Stillman)
72 Bowling Green State University
73 Kansas State University
74 Colorado State University
75 Louisiana State University (Ourso)
76 Baylor University (Hankamer)
77 University of Oklahoma (Price)
78 University of Colorado – Boulder (Leeds)
79 University of Massachusetts – Amherst (Isenberg)
80 James Madison University
81 George Washington University
82 University of Tennessee – Chattanooga
83 University of Houston (Bauer)
84 Xavier University (Williams)
85 Florida State University
86 John Carroll University (Boler)
87 University of Hawaii (Shidler)
88 Arizona State University (Carey)
89 Florida International University
90 University of Louisville
91 Bryant University
92 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Lally)
93 Purdue University (Krannert)
94 Illinois State University
95 University of Arizona (Eller)
96 Texas Tech University (Rawls)
97 Hofstra University (Zarb)
98 Ohio State University (Fisher)
99 Clemson University
100 University of Florida (Warrington)
101 University of Akron
102 University of Arkansas – Fayetteville (Walton)
103 Butler University
104 University of Nebraska – Lincoln
105 University of Illinois – Chicago
106 University of Central Florida
107 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Pamplin)
108 Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
109 Temple University (Fox)
110 Pennsylvania State University (Smeal)
111 Clarkson University

Jensen Comment
Although virtually all of the above universities have AACSB-accredited business programs, many do not have the specialty AACSB-accredited accounting programs --- https://www.aacsb.net/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?Site=AACSB&WebKey=4BA8CA9A-7CE1-4E7A-9863-2F3D02F27D23
I've always had doubts whether AACSB accounting program accreditation benefits exceed the costs.

What I found interesting is how different these rankings are from the A-Level journal hit accounting program rankings at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1337755

"'U.S. News' May Shift Rankings Methodology," Inside Higher Ed, June 7, 2010 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/07/qt#229379

U.S. News & World Report is considering several changes in the methodology for its college rankings. Robert Morse, who directs the rankings, discussed the possible changes and invited comment on them a blog post. . He said that the magazine may combine a ranking by high school counselors with the peer ranking currently done by college presidents -- one of the most controversial parts of the rankings. He also wrote that the magazine may add yield -- the percentage of accepted applicants who enroll -- to its formula, and may give more weight to "predicted graduation rate," which gives credit to colleges that exceed their expected rates.

Jensen Comment
Find a College
College Atlas --- http://www.collegeatlas.org/
Among other things the above site provides acceptance rate percentages
Online Distance Education Training and Education --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud

Bob Jensen's threads on ranking controversies are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings

Tips about teaching, technology, and productivity

"You Can't Be Trusted If You're Trusted with Too Much," by Jason B. Jones, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 2, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/You-Cant-Be-Trusted-If-Youre/24463/

The title of this post emerged at home a couple of weeks ago: the seven-year-old [YouTube] barked it at his mother as she tried to juggle, simultaneously, helping him with a convoluted craft/project and improving a policy that had been held up by the senate. He complained that she was taking too long answering an e-mail; she responded that he should trust that she was coming back; and he flipped the script: "Mom, you can't be trusted if you're trusted with too much."

There's a tricky moment in any career: When you're starting out, you want to be appreciated for your abilities, and are often frustrated that you're not being asked to do certain things that you think are within your skill set. Over time, you start to earn more respect from your colleagues, and are given more responsibilities . . . until there comes a time when you wake up in a panic every day about what you need to accomplish vs. what can plausibly be done in the time that you have. (As my wife said to my mother a few weeks ago: "I think there was a moment, back when he was 4, when we got a little overconfident about what we could plausibly do.")

I'm the last person in the world to dispense advice about this--I have a shameful list of "stuff I should've finished more quickly"--but I will risk three observations:

An e-mail that says, "hey--I haven't forgotten about X. Here's where things stand, and here's what I'm waiting on. Is that ok?" is useful, especially for service/shared governance tasks. Keeps people in the loop. (Obviously, you wouldn't want to overdo this, either.)

George wrote two posts about using your calendar to stay on top of things: "Have a life, with help from your calendar" and "Hit your deadlines, with help from your calendar". Although they're pitched to the start of the year, the summer is an excellent time to make sure your calendar accurately reflects the actual commitments you've made.

Donald E. Hall's The Academic Self: An Owner's Manual has a wealth of practical advice about how to translate academic commitments--teaching, research, and service--into step-by-step projects that can be captured on a calendar.

Nobody likes to say "no," especially to genuinely cool things. But it's generally better to say no in advance, rather than to say no by defaulting on things you care about.

How do you make decisions about choosing projects?

"Lessons for New Professors," by Elizabeth Parfitt, Inside Higher Ed, May 28, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2010/05/28/parfitt

Bob Jensen's Somewhat Dated Advice for New Faculty ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm

Higher Education Controversies ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

Accounting News --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

Accounting Theory --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm

574 Shields Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier

With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams

With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of Accountancy Ignores TAR

With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research into Undergraduate Accounting Courses

"So you want to get a Ph.D.?" by David Wood, BYU ---
http://www.byuaccounting.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=So_you_want_to_get_a_Ph.D.%3F

Do You Want to Teach? ---
http://financialexecutives.blogspot.com/2009/05/do-you-want-to-teach.html

Jensen Comment
Here are some added positives and negatives to consider, especially if you are currently a practicing accountant considering becoming a professor.

Accountancy Doctoral Program Information from Jim Hasselback ---
http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoctInfo.html

Why must all accounting doctoral programs be social science (particularly econometrics) "accountics" doctoral programs?
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

Bob Jensen's threads on accountancy doctoral programs are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

"Burning Out, and Fading Away," by Jack Stripling, Inside Higher Ed, June 10, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/10/aaup

College faculty aren’t any more burned out than the rest of the U.S. workforce on average, but the struggles of the untenured on the tenure track are the most pronounced, according to a survey presented at an American Association of University Professors conference here Wednesday.

In an analysis of professional burnout among professors, a Texas Woman’s University Ph.D. candidate found tenure track professors had more significant symptoms of workplace frustration than their tenured and non-tenure track faculty counterparts.

Janie Crosmer, who conducted the survey of more than 400 full-time faculty across the U.S. in December 2008, said she was unsurprised that the high stresses of pursuing academe’s most coveted status led to burnout. As she discussed those stresses during a presentation Wednesday, audience members nodded in agreement, and one faculty member among them described the pursuit of tenure as “a living hell.”

Crosmer, who completed her doctorate and now works as a strategic account executive at OptumHealth, relied upon an often-used measure of burnout levels in her study. Developed by Christina Maslach, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, the Maslach Burnout Inventory Educators Survey assesses three aspects of burnout on a multi-point scale. The categories include:

• Emotional Exhaustion: Feelings of being emotionally overextended or just worn out with work. (Average Scores: 14-23).

• Depersonalization: An unfeeling and impersonal response toward recipients of one’s service, care, treatment or instruction. (Average Scores 3-8).

• Personal Accomplishment : Feelings of competence and successful achievement in one’s work. (Average Scores 36-42).

While professors across the tenure spectrum scored within the average range of “emotional exhaustion,” tenure track faculty had the highest score at 22.3, edging toward the “high degree of burnout” designation. In contrast, those not on the tenure track had the lowest scores at 16.4, and tenured faculty were in the middle at 20.9.

Surveyed faculty also fell within the scale's average range of burnout when assessed for “depersonalization,” a category marked by heightened cynicism and a tendency to abandon tasks. Notably, however, tenure track faculty had the most heightened levels of depersonalization as well, coming in on the high end of the scale's overall average at 6.8. As with the "emotional exhaustion" category, non-tenure track faculty scored the lowest -- 5.2 -- and tenured professors were in the middle at 6.6.

As for the “personal accomplishment” category, Crosmer’s survey found no statistically significant difference between faculty across the tenure spectrum. Her survey did find, however, that older faculty had the highest personal accomplishment scores, suggesting professors become more satisfied with their achievements as they age.

Those surveyed cited a variety of factors they saw as contributing to burnout. Many mentioned budget cuts and a lack of support from administrators, for instance. They also had choice words for students, whom one typical respondent described as “entitled and lazy.”

“They speak to their instructors in ways that previous generations of learners would never dare,” one professor wrote.

While the 411 respondents made for a significant and geographically diverse sample, Crosmer concedes the as-yet-unpublished study relies upon self-reporting and doesn’t represent the full tapestry of higher education. About 65 percent of those surveyed were males, and 90 percent were white. Respondents were 49 percent tenured, 25 percent non-tenured and 24 percent tenure track. They also tended to be at doctoral universities – 42 percent – and mostly worked in the health sciences – 27 percent.

To pull together her sample, Crosmer used listservs and blogs, finding that respondents often passed the survey along to colleagues.

Women surveyed tended to score higher on the emotional exhaustion scale. While both genders scored within the average range, women averaged 20.9 on the scale, compared with men at 18.5. Anything above 24 on the scale would represent a "high" degree of burnout, but both genders surveyed fell within the average.

Crosmer said she was struck by the candor and, at times, negativity manifested in faculty comments. Professors complained about massive red tape, inflexible mandates for holding office hours, low morale, health concerns and insufficient travel funds. And while Crosmer would still like to land a faculty position in the future, she was disheartened by what she heard.

“By reading that, you were [thinking] do I really want to teach ever? Some of the comments were, oh my goodness.”

As with just about any industry, professors also said they felt they should earn more money. One respondent opined, “We are the most highly educated people in the country and among the worst paid.”

Everybody agrees that scientific research is indispensable to the nation's health, prosperity, and security. In the many discussions of the value of research, however, one rarely hears any mention of how much publication of the results is best. Indeed, for all the regrets one hears in these hard times of research suffering from financing problems, we shouldn't forget the fact that the last few decades have seen astounding growth in the sheer output of research findings and conclusions. Just consider the raw increase in the number of journals. Using Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, Michael Mabe shows that the number of "refereed academic/scholarly" publications grows at a rate of 3.26 percent per year (i.e., doubles about every 20 years). The main cause: the growth in the number of researchers.

Many people regard this upsurge as a sign of health. They emphasize the remarkable discoveries and breakthroughs of scientific research over the years; they note that in the Times Higher Education's ranking of research universities around the world, campuses in the United States fill six of the top 10 spots. More published output means more discovery, more knowledge, ever-improving enterprise.

If only that were true.

While brilliant and progressive research continues apace here and there, the amount of redundant, inconsequential, and outright poor research has swelled in recent decades, filling countless pages in journals and monographs. Consider this tally from Science two decades ago: Only 45 percent of the articles published in the 4,500 top scientific journals were cited within the first five years after publication. In recent years, the figure seems to have dropped further. In a 2009 article in Online Information Review, Péter Jacsó found that 40.6 percent of the articles published in the top science and social-science journals (the figures do not include the humanities) were cited in the period 2002 to 2006.

As a result, instead of contributing to knowledge in various disciplines, the increasing number of low-cited publications only adds to the bulk of words and numbers to be reviewed. Even if read, many articles that are not cited by anyone would seem to contain little useful information. The avalanche of ignored research has a profoundly damaging effect on the enterprise as a whole. Not only does the uncited work itself require years of field and library or laboratory research. It also requires colleagues to read it and provide feedback, as well as reviewers to evaluate it formally for publication. Then, once it is published, it joins the multitudes of other, related publications that researchers must read and evaluate for relevance to their own work. Reviewer time and energy requirements multiply by the year. The impact strikes at the heart of academe.

Among the primary effects:

Too much publication raises the refereeing load on leading practitioners—often beyond their capacity to cope. Recognized figures are besieged by journal and press editors who need authoritative judgments to take to their editorial boards. Foundations and government agencies need more and more people to serve on panels to review grant applications whose cumulative page counts keep rising. Departments need distinguished figures in a field to evaluate candidates for promotion whose research files have likewise swelled.

The productivity climate raises the demand on younger researchers. Once one graduate student in the sciences publishes three first-author papers before filing a dissertation, the bar rises for all the other graduate students.

The pace of publication accelerates, encouraging projects that don't require extensive, time-consuming inquiry and evidence gathering. For example, instead of efficiently combining multiple results into one paper, professors often put all their students' names on multiple papers, each of which contains part of the findings of just one of the students. One famous physicist has some 450 articles using such a strategy.

In addition, as more and more journals are initiated, especially the many new "international" journals created to serve the rapidly increasing number of English-language articles produced by academics in China, India, and Eastern Europe, libraries struggle to pay the notoriously high subscription costs. The financial strain has reached a critical point. From 1978 to 2001, libraries at the University of California at Los Angeles, for example, saw their subscription costs alone climb by 1,300 percent.

The amount of material one must read to conduct a reasonable review of a topic keeps growing. Younger scholars can't ignore any of it—they never know when a reviewer or an interviewer might have written something disregarded—and so they waste precious months reviewing a pool of articles that may lead nowhere.

Finally, the output of hard copy, not only print journals but also articles in electronic format downloaded and printed, requires enormous amounts of paper, energy, and space to produce, transport, handle, and store—an environmentally irresponsible practice.

Let us go on.

Experts asked to evaluate manuscripts, results, and promotion files give them less-careful scrutiny or pass the burden along to other, less-competent peers. We all know busy professors who ask Ph.D. students to do their reviewing for them. Questionable work finds its way more easily through the review process and enters into the domain of knowledge. Because of the accelerated pace, the impression spreads that anything more than a few years old is obsolete. Older literature isn't properly appreciated, or is needlessly rehashed in a newer, publishable version. Aspiring researchers are turned into publish-or-perish entrepreneurs, often becoming more or less cynical about the higher ideals of the pursuit of knowledge. They fashion pathways to speedier publication, cutting corners on methodology and turning to politicking and fawning strategies for acceptance.

Such outcomes run squarely against the goals of scientific inquiry. The surest guarantee of integrity, peer review, falls under a debilitating crush of findings, for peer review can handle only so much material without breaking down. More isn't better. At some point, quality gives way to quantity.

Academic publication has passed that point in most, if not all, disciplines—in some fields by a long shot. For example, Physica A publishes some 3,000 pages each year. Why? Senior physics professors have well-financed labs with five to 10 Ph.D.-student researchers. Since the latter increasingly need more publications to compete for academic jobs, the number of published pages keeps climbing. While publication rates are going up throughout academe, with unfortunate consequences, the productivity mandate hits especially hard in the sciences.

Only if the system of rewards is changed will the avalanche stop. We need policy makers and grant makers to focus not on money for current levels of publication, but rather on finding ways to increase high-quality work and curtail publication of low-quality work. If only some forward-looking university administrators initiated changes in hiring and promotion criteria and ordered their libraries to stop paying for low-cited journals, they would perform a national service. We need to get rid of administrators who reward faculty members on printed pages and downloads alone, deans and provosts "who can't read but can count," as the saying goes. Most of all, we need to understand that there is such a thing as overpublication, and that pushing thousands of researchers to issue mediocre, forgettable arguments and findings is a terrible misuse of human, as well as fiscal, capital.

Several fixes come to mind:

First, limit the number of papers to the best three, four, or five that a job or promotion candidate can submit. That would encourage more comprehensive and focused publishing.

Second, make more use of citation and journal "impact factors," from Thomson ISI. The scores measure the citation visibility of established journals and of researchers who publish in them. By that index, Nature and Science score about 30. Most major disciplinary journals, though, score 1 to 2, the vast majority score below 1, and some are hardly visible at all. If we add those scores to a researcher's publication record, the publications on a CV might look considerably different than a mere list does.

Third, change the length of papers published in print: Limit manuscripts to five to six journal-length pages, as Nature and Science do, and put a longer version up on a journal's Web site. The two versions would work as a package. That approach could be enhanced if university and other research libraries formed buying consortia, which would pressure publishers of journals more quickly and aggressively to pursue this third route. Some are already beginning to do so, but a nationally coordinated effort is needed.

Continued in article

June 17, 2010 reply from Alexander Robin A [alexande.robi@UWLAX.EDU]

This all, and a number of other threads, I find quite depressing. I entered academia under the false notion that academics were in the field because they liked it and they did research because it interested them. Being stubbornly idealistic it took me some years to realize that, at least in business schools, published paper were the product that most faculty are interested in and I encountered a number of very successful (in terms defined for tenure and promotion) actually cared little for the advancement of scholarship and viewed the publishing game as just that - a game where the goal was tenure and promotion.

My background may have contributed to my illusion. I spent quite a few years as a student at UW - Madison's math department where the faculty were very interested in their work and animated discussion on math and other subjects took place in the math lounge and nearby taverns. Now UW's math department was huge (80 or so faculty and over 200 graduate students) and at the time was rated in the top 10 in the nation. Entering business schools as doctoral student and then faculty was a culture shock. The general lack of interest in the "deep" questions and extreme interest in publishing was an anathema to me and I did not do particularly well in that environment. But I am a slow learner and it took me many years before I finally just quit.

The problem with counting publications and factoring in student evaluations is the same with any measure: the measure becomes more important than the more fundamental goal of knowledge and imparting learning. I find that most still don't get the connection with this and the frustration that most of us had at students who were more interested in their grade than in what they were learning. The students' preoccupation with grades is similar with faculty preoccupation with number of published papers. As long as the measure is treated with more importance than that which they attempt to measure I believe that the results will be the same: mediocre research and mediocre learning on the part of students.

There is no easy solution to this conundrum that I can see. Some way will have to be found to really encourage learning on the part of the students and meaningful academic work on the part of faculty. Extrinsic motivation (grades, number of published papers) will never be effective in my opinion. We need to tap into people's intrinsic curiosity and desire to learn. I believe it's there but academia very effectively crushes it in many cases. I was lucky. I was floundering as an undergraduate until a wonderful soul inspired me to really delve into mathematics and then I was able to appreciate its beauty and was internally motivated to study it. The grades followed as a secondary outcome as I went from a C to an A average. Had I continued to worry about grades primarily, I'm sure that would not have happened.

Robin Alexander

Tenure Tacks for Professionally Qualified (PQ) Faculty as well as Academically Qualified (AQ) Faculty

December 23, 2010 message from Bob Jensen to Patricia Walters

Hi Pat,

I think your question should be reworded as follows:

Rhetorical question: How many new doctoral program graduates would opt for a clinical appointment if (as in medical schools) the clinical faculty could get tenure alongside the research faculty? .

Clinical faculty presumably would have heavier teaching loads and in some ways more difficult loads in that they have to stay as up to date as practicing accountants on standards, interpretations, tax laws, and business applications of accountancy. As far as teaching is concerned they may have to be more generalists in covering intermediate, advanced, auditing, systems, and masters level professional accountancy courses. .

Research faculty would have to make original contributions to knowledge and joust with research referees and journal editors. They could become more narrowly focused on research specialties, methodologies, and data mining. .

Of course there are a few areas where clinical faculty could become more narrowly specialized such as in ERP and XBRL and forensic accounting specialties. .

How would clinical faculty be judged for tenure beyond teaching excellence and outstanding service?
Clinical faculty might be required to become active in case writing associations such as NACRA and be required to write Harvard-style cases and teaching notes upon which they would be judged on the quality of the cases and even publication of the cases. Hence, publish or parish may not completely disappear for clinical faculty.

Clinical faculty might be required to publish in some top professional journals such as* Issues in Accounting Edu*cation and *Accounting Horizons*and the *Harvard Business Review*.

As an example of a case that I think would make a great contribution toward tenure for a clinical faculty member I recommend one of my all time favorite cases published in IAE:

"Questrom vs. Federated Department Stores, Inc.: A Question of Equity Value," May 2001 edition of* Issues in Accounting Educati*on, by University of Alabama faculty members *Gary Taylor, William Sampson, and Benton Gup*, pp. 223-256. .

Perhaps clinical faculty would even have to take annual professional examinations as one of the conditions for tenure granting.

It's important that clinical faculty do not have an easier track for tenure.
The clinical track should be a rigorous track based on teaching excellence, scholarly publications, and evidence of professional competency much like clinical medical faculty are judged upon their superb skills in medical practice.

It may even be easier to conduct research on the brain than to become an outstanding and tenured brain surgeon in a leading medical school

In one of my think tank years I lived in Staford housing on campus. Across the street I became close with a clinical hand surgeon in the Stanford Medical School. His duties included teaching and performing experimental surgeries installing metal joints in hands. Surgeons came from far and wide just to watch him perform surgeries.

I once asked him why he took such a sacrifice in income to be a medical school professor? He said it was to avoid the hassle of practice including such things as having to deal with malpractice insurance and a larger patient caseload. In medical school he could cherry pick the most interesting surgery cases. He said he also got more sleep as a medical school surgeon than as a surgeon in private practice.

Beside me lived a tenured research professor in the Stanford Medical School who was not even an MD. He was a PhD engineer with a specialty in the kidney and fluid dynamics. He was tenured on the basis of his research and publication record. I remember he and his wife especially well. They had a huge doberman that was gentle as a lamb when my daughter watched their baby in their house. But I didn't dare step inside the house when my daughter was baby sitting.

Respectfully,
Bob Jensen

**************

Hi Tom,

You mentioned Denny Beresford standing tall in a crowd. Denny also stands tall in another department for the last 13-14 years of his career. Although he holds a named professorship at the University of Georgia he's probably viewed more as a clinical professor than a research professor by his colleagues. He's also one of our pioneers in distance education who's not burned out when he teaches online to students in the PwC online MBA Program at the University of Georgia. .

As a clinical professor Denny stands tall as my role model for a clinical professor who actively publishes articles in practitioner journals such as the *CPA Journal* and elsewhere where he has published some excellent articles. And he's one of the more popular speakers in the academy. Hall of Fame Citation --- Click Here http://fisher.osu.edu/departments/accounting-and-mis/the-accounting-hall-of-fame/membership-in-hall/dennis-robert-beresford/ .

Thus if we are to grant tenure to clinical professors it would not be unreasonable to still require that they publish even if their articles are scholarly-professional rather than research contributions. .

Denny is well beyond traditional retirement age with substantial savings. He remains in harness (rather being pastured like me) largely out of the love of teaching and the love of still making a difference in our craft. .

For those clinical professors who are younger, like Patricia Walters, I would like to stress that trying to get employers to grant tenure to PQ full-time professors should be a goal. There are many advantages to tenure. In times of financial crisis, tenured professors are the last employees standing.

Contract employees serve at the whim of an administrator. If the new Dean or new Department Chair does not particularly like a contract employee it's c'est la vie. .

Also when it comes time to make deals for early retirement tenured professors are given much better offers than most contract employees --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Retire .

Of course there is one huge drawback of being on tenure track. Tenure track faculty face an up-or-out crisis point after six or seven years. Contract employees not on tenure track face contract renewals but these are not quite the same as the tenure decision hurdle. .

Perhaps PQ faculty should be given a choice as to whether they want to take a tenure track.

Respectfully,
Bob Jensen

Bob Jensen's threads on tenure appear in various places at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

"It's Time for Tenure to Lose Tenure," by James C. Wetherbe, Harvard Business Review Blog, March 13, 2013 --- Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/its_time_for_tenure_to_lose_te.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date

Jensen Comment
There are quite a few serious movements under foot to eliminate tenure ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#MLA

I'm not so concerned about kissing tenure goodbye as a dysfunctional relic of the past. However, there are some arguments that I accept for tenure to carry on in fine universities.

Tenure is not entirely dysfunctional. Without some incentives to turn over faculty we will have departments, schools, and even entire universities that become even more atrophied with a long-term set of faculty that only gets a new blood transfusion in a blue moon. Those with younger tenured faculty become stagnant for many, many years.

Some universities with tenure systems that have been reluctant to deny tenure are faced with such atrophy. For example, Brown University is considered to be too locked into tenured faculty relative to its Ivy League cohorts
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#MLA

The one advantage of a tenure system is that I most admire is that it forces universities after 7-10 years (depending upon their 6-9 year annual evaluation policies) to seriously consider whether the tenure candidate is really worthy of carrying on in a particular university for a very, very long time. The weakest tenured faculty will be the ones who probably will stay on the longest --- we call them lifetime associate professors. Without being forced to make hard decisions after 6-9 years, universities without tenure systems will be inclined to let young Bob just hang on because he's meeting his classes and getting good teaching evaluations for his popular, albeit easy courses where the median grade is an A grade to keep his students happy.

I think this applies to all academic disciplines!

"Digital Humanists: If You Want Tenure, Do Double the Work," by Sydni Dunn, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 5, 2014 ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/249-digital-humanists-if-you-want-tenure-do-double-the-work?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

As interactive databases and open-access online journals fill academic dossiers, one question continues to be discussed: What happens when the scholars who build them come up for tenure?
It’s clear that timeworn tenure incentives—those that reward monographs published by prestigious university presses, say, or a series of individually written journal articles—aren’t a good fit for digital work.

So scholarly groups and universities with an interest in digital humanities are stepping up efforts to establish alternatives. But consensus is still a long way off. At many institutions, enthusiasm about the trending field is outpacing progress in rethinking the evaluation process.

This leaves digital humanists in a difficult position: convinced that their scholarly work is worth doing but unclear on what it will get them, careerwise. Some scholars who do digital work have found so-called alt-ac, alternative academic, careers, working at universities but off the traditional tenure track. But for those who want to stay on that classic track, a digital-only portfolio is a gamble. To play it safe, they are putting in overtime to satisfy the traditional requirements of an evaluation process that hasn’t caught up to their digital work.

In fact, many digital humanists who have successfully navigated the promotion process agree that the most reliable way to impress a tenure committee is to mix traditional work with the technological.

“We want to push the boundaries, but it’s hard to disrupt the expectations,” says Matthew K. Gold, an associate professor of English and digital humanities at the City University of New York’s College of Technology and Graduate Center. “So, unfortunately, going this route of creating digital projects still requires twice as much work.”

First, some good news: Earning tenure and promotion for digital scholarship is no longer a left-field idea, says Victoria E. Szabo, an assistant research professor of art, art history, and visual studies and program director of information science and information studies at Duke University. A growing number of digital humanists are moving up in the academy.

At the annual convention of the Modern Language Association, this month in Chicago, Szabo, a member of the group’s Committee on Information Technology, assembled a panel that can attest to that. A discussion titled “Evaluating Digital Scholarship: Candidate Success Stories” was to convene Gold, Cheryl E. Ball, Kari M. Kraus, Adeline Koh, and Alex Gil—all scholars who have secured tenure or promotion on the basis, at least partially, of their digital scholarship.

The MLA, for its part, is trying to create more success stories. It has joined the American Historical Association and an array of academic commenters, like Geoffrey Rockwell and Bethany Nowviskie, in offering guidance on how to assess digital scholarship.

The recommendations advise making expectations clear to candidates; asking faculty members familiar with digital work to participate in the review; accepting the work in its original, electronic form and not only, for example, as printed screen shots; and staying informed about technological innovations that help people with disabilities to conduct research, among other principles.

But, as the advocates of digital work will tell you, those broad guidelines are not hard-and-fast rules.

“The pace of technological change makes it impossible for any one set of guidelines to account completely for the ways digital media and the digital humanities are influencing literacies, literatures, and the teaching of modern languages,” the MLA guidelines warn. “A general principle nonetheless holds: Institutions that recruit or review scholars working in digital media or digital humanities must give full regard to their work when evaluating them for reappointment, tenure, and promotion.”

Meanwhile, some universities trying to build out their digital-humanities programs, such as Emory University and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, are leading their own efforts to clearly define what’s at stake with tenure and promotion.

According to a policy adopted in November, Emory’s College Humanities Council will evaluate digital humanities by reviewing digital projects in their electronic forms, working with tenure candidates to understand the extent and nature of their projects, and ascertaining the relationship among the “form, design, and medium” of the projects.

“We’re at a very different place than we were in 2009,” says Brian Croxall, a digital-humanities strategist and lecturer of English at Emory.

When departments and professors have the same objectives, communicating about digital scholarship can seem pretty easy. Kari M. Kraus, an associate professor in the College of Information Studies and the department of English at the University of Maryland, is a case in point.

Kraus, who began in her tenure-track post in 2007 and was promoted in the spring of 2013, was not required—or even encouraged—to have a published book, she says. Although she listed both traditional and nontraditional scholarship in her dossier, she felt she was able to expand her scholarly repertoire “by not being tied to the book model.”

But Kraus, whose focus is new media, digital preservation, game studies, transmedia storytelling, and speculative design, may be an exception that proves the rule. Her tenure home was in Maryland’s information-studies school, so most of the readers deciding her academic future were familiar with digital work.

Her department’s tenure requirements also varied greatly from those of the English department, which expects more text-driven application materials, she says.

Kraus’s experience is a demonstration: It is up to individual university departments to decide how digital work should be weighed, and reward systems vary on the basis of the nature of the institution.

That remains true, Croxall says, even now that most academics are willing to understand and support digital work.

“For people in the digital humanities, it’s no longer a question of, ‘Will my institution count it?’” he says. “It can get counted. It just might involve a bit more work on your part than what you would like.”

Adeline Koh, an assistant professor of literature and director of digital humanities at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, began her tenure-track job in 2010 and received tenure and a promotion in 2013. (Her title will be upgraded for the next academic year.) For both tenure and promotion, she says, the experience was welcoming and supportive.

But it wasn’t all about her digital work, which includes projects like Trading Races, a historical role-playing game designed to teach race consciousness. The job description for her literature professorship didn’t include a digital-humanities component, she says, so she listed her projects as a supplement to her traditional publications and discussed them in her interview. The panel focused more on her printed material, she says, but her digital work was also recognized.
- See more at: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/249-digital-humanists-if-you-want-tenure-do-double-the-work?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en#sthash.nH8SMvhF.dpuf

As interactive databases and open-access online journals fill academic dossiers, one question continues to be discussed: What happens when the scholars who build them come up for tenure?
It’s clear that timeworn tenure incentives—those that reward monographs published by prestigious university presses, say, or a series of individually written journal articles—aren’t a good fit for digital work.

So scholarly groups and universities with an interest in digital humanities are stepping up efforts to establish alternatives. But consensus is still a long way off. At many institutions, enthusiasm about the trending field is outpacing progress in rethinking the evaluation process.

This leaves digital humanists in a difficult position: convinced that their scholarly work is worth doing but unclear on what it will get them, careerwise. Some scholars who do digital work have found so-called alt-ac, alternative academic, careers, working at universities but off the traditional tenure track. But for those who want to stay on that classic track, a digital-only portfolio is a gamble. To play it safe, they are putting in overtime to satisfy the traditional requirements of an evaluation process that hasn’t caught up to their digital work.

In fact, many digital humanists who have successfully navigated the promotion process agree that the most reliable way to impress a tenure committee is to mix traditional work with the technological.

“We want to push the boundaries, but it’s hard to disrupt the expectations,” says Matthew K. Gold, an associate professor of English and digital humanities at the City University of New York’s College of Technology and Graduate Center. “So, unfortunately, going this route of creating digital projects still requires twice as much work.”

First, some good news: Earning tenure and promotion for digital scholarship is no longer a left-field idea, says Victoria E. Szabo, an assistant research professor of art, art history, and visual studies and program director of information science and information studies at Duke University. A growing number of digital humanists are moving up in the academy.

At the annual convention of the Modern Language Association, this month in Chicago, Szabo, a member of the group’s Committee on Information Technology, assembled a panel that can attest to that. A discussion titled “Evaluating Digital Scholarship: Candidate Success Stories” was to convene Gold, Cheryl E. Ball, Kari M. Kraus, Adeline Koh, and Alex Gil—all scholars who have secured tenure or promotion on the basis, at least partially, of their digital scholarship.

The MLA, for its part, is trying to create more success stories. It has joined the American Historical Association and an array of academic commenters, like Geoffrey Rockwell and Bethany Nowviskie, in offering guidance on how to assess digital scholarship.

The recommendations advise making expectations clear to candidates; asking faculty members familiar with digital work to participate in the review; accepting the work in its original, electronic form and not only, for example, as printed screen shots; and staying informed about technological innovations that help people with disabilities to conduct research, among other principles.

But, as the advocates of digital work will tell you, those broad guidelines are not hard-and-fast rules.

“The pace of technological change makes it impossible for any one set of guidelines to account completely for the ways digital media and the digital humanities are influencing literacies, literatures, and the teaching of modern languages,” the MLA guidelines warn. “A general principle nonetheless holds: Institutions that recruit or review scholars working in digital media or digital humanities must give full regard to their work when evaluating them for reappointment, tenure, and promotion.”

Meanwhile, some universities trying to build out their digital-humanities programs, such as Emory University and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, are leading their own efforts to clearly define what’s at stake with tenure and promotion.

According to a policy adopted in November, Emory’s College Humanities Council will evaluate digital humanities by reviewing digital projects in their electronic forms, working with tenure candidates to understand the extent and nature of their projects, and ascertaining the relationship among the “form, design, and medium” of the projects.

“We’re at a very different place than we were in 2009,” says Brian Croxall, a digital-humanities strategist and lecturer of English at Emory.

When departments and professors have the same objectives, communicating about digital scholarship can seem pretty easy. Kari M. Kraus, an associate professor in the College of Information Studies and the department of English at the University of Maryland, is a case in point.

Kraus, who began in her tenure-track post in 2007 and was promoted in the spring of 2013, was not required—or even encouraged—to have a published book, she says. Although she listed both traditional and nontraditional scholarship in her dossier, she felt she was able to expand her scholarly repertoire “by not being tied to the book model.”

But Kraus, whose focus is new media, digital preservation, game studies, transmedia storytelling, and speculative design, may be an exception that proves the rule. Her tenure home was in Maryland’s information-studies school, so most of the readers deciding her academic future were familiar with digital work.

Her department’s tenure requirements also varied greatly from those of the English department, which expects more text-driven application materials, she says.

Kraus’s experience is a demonstration: It is up to individual university departments to decide how digital work should be weighed, and reward systems vary on the basis of the nature of the institution.

That remains true, Croxall says, even now that most academics are willing to understand and support digital work.

“For people in the digital humanities, it’s no longer a question of, ‘Will my institution count it?’” he says. “It can get counted. It just might involve a bit more work on your part than what you would like.”

Adeline Koh, an assistant professor of literature and director of digital humanities at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, began her tenure-track job in 2010 and received tenure and a promotion in 2013. (Her title will be upgraded for the next academic year.) For both tenure and promotion, she says, the experience was welcoming and supportive.

But it wasn’t all about her digital work, which includes projects like Trading Races, a historical role-playing game designed to teach race consciousness. The job description for her literature professorship didn’t include a digital-humanities component, she says, so she listed her projects as a supplement to her traditional publications and discussed them in her interview. The panel focused more on her printed material, she says, but her digital work was also recognized.
- See more at: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/249-digital-humanists-if-you-want-tenure-do-double-the-work?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en#sthash.nH8SMvhF.dpuf

As interactive databases and open-access online journals fill academic dossiers, one question continues to be discussed: What happens when the scholars who build them come up for tenure?

It’s clear that timeworn tenure incentives—those that reward monographs published by prestigious university presses, say, or a series of individually written journal articles—aren’t a good fit for digital work.

So scholarly groups and universities with an interest in digital humanities are stepping up efforts to establish alternatives. But consensus is still a long way off. At many institutions, enthusiasm about the trending field is outpacing progress in rethinking the evaluation process.

This leaves digital humanists in a difficult position: convinced that their scholarly work is worth doing but unclear on what it will get them, careerwise. Some scholars who do digital work have found so-called alt-ac, alternative academic, careers, working at universities but off the traditional tenure track. But for those who want to stay on that classic track, a digital-only portfolio is a gamble. To play it safe, they are putting in overtime to satisfy the traditional requirements of an evaluation process that hasn’t caught up to their digital work.

In fact, many digital humanists who have successfully navigated the promotion process agree that the most reliable way to impress a tenure committee is to mix traditional work with the technological.

“We want to push the boundaries, but it’s hard to disrupt the expectations,” says Matthew K. Gold, an associate professor of English and digital humanities at the City University of New York’s College of Technology and Graduate Center. “So, unfortunately, going this route of creating digital projects still requires twice as much work.”

First, some good news: Earning tenure and promotion for digital scholarship is no longer a left-field idea, says Victoria E. Szabo, an assistant research professor of art, art history, and visual studies and program director of information science and information studies at Duke University. A growing number of digital humanists are moving up in the academy.

At the annual convention of the Modern Language Association, this month in Chicago, Szabo, a member of the group’s Committee on Information Technology, assembled a panel that can attest to that. A discussion titled “Evaluating Digital Scholarship: Candidate Success Stories” was to convene Gold, Cheryl E. Ball, Kari M. Kraus, Adeline Koh, and Alex Gil—all scholars who have secured tenure or promotion on the basis, at least partially, of their digital scholarship.

The MLA, for its part, is trying to create more success stories. It has joined the American Historical Association and an array of academic commenters, like Geoffrey Rockwell and Bethany Nowviskie, in offering guidance on how to assess digital scholarship.

The recommendations advise making expectations clear to candidates; asking faculty members familiar with digital work to participate in the review; accepting the work in its original, electronic form and not only, for example, as printed screen shots; and staying informed about technological innovations that help people with disabilities to conduct research, among other principles.

But, as the advocates of digital work will tell you, those broad guidelines are not hard-and-fast rules.

“The pace of technological change makes it impossible for any one set of guidelines to account completely for the ways digital media and the digital humanities are influencing literacies, literatures, and the teaching of modern languages,” the MLA guidelines warn. “A general principle nonetheless holds: Institutions that recruit or review scholars working in digital media or digital humanities must give full regard to their work when evaluating them for reappointment, tenure, and promotion.”

Meanwhile, some universities trying to build out their digital-humanities programs, such as Emory University and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, are leading their own efforts to clearly define what’s at stake with tenure and promotion.

According to a policy adopted in November, Emory’s College Humanities Council will evaluate digital humanities by reviewing digital projects in their electronic forms, working with tenure candidates to understand the extent and nature of their projects, and ascertaining the relationship among the “form, design, and medium” of the projects.

“We’re at a very different place than we were in 2009,” says Brian Croxall, a digital-humanities strategist and lecturer of English at Emory.

When departments and professors have the same objectives, communicating about digital scholarship can seem pretty easy. Kari M. Kraus, an associate professor in the College of Information Studies and the department of English at the University of Maryland, is a case in point.

Kraus, who began in her tenure-track post in 2007 and was promoted in the spring of 2013, was not required—or even encouraged—to have a published book, she says. Although she listed both traditional and nontraditional scholarship in her dossier, she felt she was able to expand her scholarly repertoire “by not being tied to the book model.”

But Kraus, whose focus is new media, digital preservation, game studies, transmedia storytelling, and speculative design, may be an exception that proves the rule. Her tenure home was in Maryland’s information-studies school, so most of the readers deciding her academic future were familiar with digital work.

Her department’s tenure requirements also varied greatly from those of the English department, which expects more text-driven application materials, she says.

Kraus’s experience is a demonstration: It is up to individual university departments to decide how digital work should be weighed, and reward systems vary on the basis of the nature of the institution.

That remains true, Croxall says, even now that most academics are willing to understand and support digital work.

“For people in the digital humanities, it’s no longer a question of, ‘Will my institution count it?’” he says. “It can get counted. It just might involve a bit more work on your part than what you would like.”

Adeline Koh, an assistant professor of literature and director of digital humanities at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, began her tenure-track job in 2010 and received tenure and a promotion in 2013. (Her title will be upgraded for the next academic year.) For both tenure and promotion, she says, the experience was welcoming and supportive.

But it wasn’t all about her digital work, which includes projects like Trading Races, a historical role-playing game designed to teach race consciousness. The job description for her literature professorship didn’t include a digital-humanities component, she says, so she listed her projects as a supplement to her traditional publications and discussed them in her interview. The panel focused more on her printed material, she says, but her digital work was also recognized.
- See more at: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/249-digital-humanists-if-you-want-tenure-do-double-the-work?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en#sthash.nH8SMvhF.dpuf

Bob Jensen's threads on the dark sides of digital scholarship ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm

Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
(with a reply about tenure publication point systems from Linda Kidwell)

"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," by John P. A. Ioannidis, PLoS Medicine, August 30, 2005 ---
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Thanks for the heads up John P. Wendell

Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm

What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong