Walter Russell Mead points to a little covered story which could be described as the first domino to fall.

Florida Public Uni Dumps Tenure

Florida Polytechnic University will be the state’s first public university to operate without a unionized faculty. EAGnews reports that FPU is ditching the tenure system altogether in favor of fixed-term contracts that will be renewed based on performance:

Ghazi Darkazalli, the school’s vice president of academic affairs, said the goal is to focus faculty on what’s most important, instead of “trivial publication and research” typically pursued by those on the tenure track.

“We want to be a leading university, and we wanted to attract faculty who think out of the box, and who are ambitious and creative,” Darkazalli told Inside Higher Ed. “We don’t want them to be worrying within the first five or six years whether they’re going to be tenured or not.”

We see many advantages to these kinds of contracts. In addition to eliminating the stress and “publish or perish” madhouse that comes with pursuing a tenured position, this system promises to keep bad teachers and academic hacks in the classroom for only set amount of time instead of a lifetime. Perhaps the biggest advantage for students will be the opportunity to learn from professionals who know about the world outside of academia.

A fixed-term contract system has a better chance of attracting people who have spent much of their careers outside the classroom but who want to teach for a few years. There’s no guarantee this will make for better educators, but people who have actually spent time working outside of universities are generally better equipped than career academics who from kindergarten through old age have never spent more than a year or two outside of a school.

Naturally, this system is a nightmare for unions.