> You get yearly reviews, and if you score a "0" (zero), you can be fired, even from tenure.
I am not aware of such a thing, and if it were offered to me I would say "That's not really tenure.", but I believe you that some schools do it. Similarly, real [1] tenure does not usually include administrative requirements because those requirements are, in my experience, not mandated by your employment contract. They are mandated by social pressure to be a good university citizen.
> even a tenured professor doesn't exactly live the easy life.
I agree that the typical tenured professor is a hard working busy professional; I just mean to say that in principle tenure could be used to merely teach (holding up the formal obligations of your contract), and I have certainly known people who have chosen that path at one point or another in their lives.
[1] I realize it may seem I am defining-away your point, but I take the definition of tenure to be "You cannot be fired as long as you continue to fulfill the formal requirements of your employment contract, and those formal requirements cannot meaningfully restrict your personal research agenda (academic freedom)."
I'm not sure when you were a professor, but things have changed a lot in the just the past four years. My sister is a professor at a California public university and unless you have a Nobel Prize (or are prominent in some other manner), everyone is being scrutinized. Tenure no longer means a job for life. It means they need to have cause to push you out (no one actually gets fired) -- whereas w/o tenure they needn't have any cause.
Apparently a common tactic is to increase your teaching load so high that no reasonable human can do it. These people either go to a different university or leave academia disgruntled.
Oh, I agree that for some, tenure means they can have an easy life for the rest of their career.
Another problem I see, however, is that tenure can be redefined and is changing depending on subjects. There are subjects where, realistically, your only chance is to either take that one job, whether it offers real tenure or not. The universities of course know that as well and are thus in a position where they can put significantly more into your employment contract than a tenured position would normally entail. If for example the above mentioned grading system would work, then it would get rid of the possibility of "just teaching", however, as can be seen in another reply of mine below to another poster, the grading system is fundamentally flawed.
As an aside: UArk has the above mentioned system of "tenure" in place for all professors
I am not aware of such a thing, and if it were offered to me I would say "That's not really tenure.", but I believe you that some schools do it. Similarly, real [1] tenure does not usually include administrative requirements because those requirements are, in my experience, not mandated by your employment contract. They are mandated by social pressure to be a good university citizen.
> even a tenured professor doesn't exactly live the easy life.
I agree that the typical tenured professor is a hard working busy professional; I just mean to say that in principle tenure could be used to merely teach (holding up the formal obligations of your contract), and I have certainly known people who have chosen that path at one point or another in their lives.
[1] I realize it may seem I am defining-away your point, but I take the definition of tenure to be "You cannot be fired as long as you continue to fulfill the formal requirements of your employment contract, and those formal requirements cannot meaningfully restrict your personal research agenda (academic freedom)."