This was overdue, but definitely a good announcement.
For people who think this is absurdly slow, I would point out that undergraduate enrollment in the department has grown 5-10x in the last four years. In 2011, I was in a four person class with a professor and a TA, and some core classes had <20 students. Now those same classes have well over 100 students. Top tier universities just can't react and find talented faculty that quickly.
Top tier universities just can't react and find talented faculty that quickly.
In a sense I think this is right—they can't, right now—but in another sense I think slow reaction times are a choice: they can react much faster but choose, for cultural and bureaucratic reasons, not to.
I'd also like to see universities move away from tenure-based hiring and towards long-term-contract-based hiring that effectively rewards strong instructors. Doing so may among other things alleviate some of the current slowness in university action.
For people who think this is absurdly slow, I would point out that undergraduate enrollment in the department has grown 5-10x in the last four years. In 2011, I was in a four person class with a professor and a TA, and some core classes had <20 students. Now those same classes have well over 100 students. Top tier universities just can't react and find talented faculty that quickly.