the million dollar question

Steinn -- You are right to be cynical about the process, but I think it is important not to get too cynical: I have seen quite a few tenure cases from all sides of the process, and believe that the great majority of cases are dealt with thoughtfully and very seriously.

Your rules of thumb aren't far off, but I'd suggest that more than any particular target numbers for dollars in grant support or papers published, departments and deans are looking for reliable and continuous progress. Lots of little papers aren't necessary, but a couple of big ones with multi-year, unexplained gaps between them can make people nervous. A single big grant isn't, in most cases, going to get you tenure. Getting a moderate NSF or NIH grant and then getting it renewed successfully is far better. And money is really essential in the sciences at an R1 university, where funding graduate students and research activity is part of the core institutional mission.

The places I've been care a lot about teaching, but you are right that it rarely enters tenure files as a particular positive. Bad teaching, especially bad teaching without any effort (and success) in improving teaching, will sink a file. Mediocre teaching can get someone through, as long as there is some positive contribution (e.g., grad student mentoring) and strong research. "Service" is important, but that doesn't usually mean committees -- it means clear commitment and contribution to the general welfare of the department (at tenure) and campus (at later promotion).

Finally, the uniqueness of the stress at the tenure hurdle shouldn't be overemphasized. Expectations don't suddenly disappear after tenure, and in some ways the pressure goes up instead of down, even if that pressure is being exerted by self and peers rather than the dean. The biggest funding stresses I've seen are at the Associate level, when people are coming to grips with the fact that the pressure they felt as Assistants isn't going away after tenure, and at the senior level, where loss of funding looks a lot like involuntary retirement.

In my home department of over 20 faculty, I don't believe there are any who are currently unfunded, and the number of unfunded science faculty (not math) on my campus is small (certainly well under 20%, probably under 10% especially if those over 60 years old are excluded).

There are a lot of wonderful things about being a faculty member, but a post-tenure life of freedom from critical review by funding agencies, editors, colleagues, the dean and yourself is not one of them.

I am only cynical in public to maintain my hard-earned cynical blogger image...

I agree that the goals are not as sharp as I said - although counterintuitively that can actually make the process worse, in that if there were up front hard and fast targets then at least people would work towards them and know what to aim for.
But, this would not be good at the departmental and college level where they need the disgression to either tenure people short of the nominal goals, or let go people who did meet the nominal goals.
For whatever reasons, and a lot of those reasons are good. But not all.

What does make me cynical is not that the goals are flexible, but that they can be capriciously moved. And I blame the lawyers here...
eg having consistent modest funding is in fact a sensible approach, BUT, if that is in fact the case, the review will criticize the lack of a single BIG grant. Conversly, if you do get a single BIG grant, the criticims will be that you need diverse funding so you don't get hit by sudden change in priority and lose your one big grant.
That drives junior faculty to distraction.

The other aspect, definitely legally originated, is the "unexplained gap".
A lot of people have them, eventually, and if there is one at the wrong time, it is very damaging to the case. But, to the extent I know and can comment, the process does not permit "explanation".
I understand that, because if you did, then everyone would have excuses, but this leaves explanations in many cases relying on informal anecdotal data. Or complete ignorance, since a lot of senior faculty at a lot of places do not know, or want to know, any such things.

I am actually in favour of tenure, and I think the process is over all interestingly reasonable. The people involved certainly take it seriously.
But it is still flawed in interesting ways, and griping about it is occasionally amusing.

The fact that the "unexplained gap" is a red flag is an indication that the process is completely clueless about how a lot of people really work.

The whole thing is an arbitrary crapshoot.

If the funding pressure only increases after tenure, then hell with it, I should get out while the getting is good.

-Rob

Steinn, I think I need to translate some of these phrases for the public:

"Most places encourage interdisciplinarity" - It's good if you can get money meant for another field.

"but punish it in practise" - Unless you're stealing from another on-campus department.

"Service... is admired" Outreach grants aren't big enough to count for much.

"Outreach grants aren't big enough to count for much."

Ummmm... I just submitted one for $600k and another one for $500k. So this non-tenure track person has a chance to break the $1M barrier this year if by some chance they both get funded.

I wonder though what a Dean would make of a tenure track person winning a $600k outreach grant -- I bet it wouldn't count nearly as much as a $600k NSF grant.

Man, here I am preparing my dossier, and all of this talk makes me want to estivate. I have had steady funding, but not a lot; steady papers, but not a lot; average teaching scores; and I have to write a lot of software as part of my position. Still time to submit a few papers, still some pending proposals, but the uncertainty is driving me nuts. Why, oh why, did I evolve legs?

Large outreach grants are a relatively new thing - big education grants used to be available but were an all or nothing, while outreach was at the few % level; that they now exist in impressively large chunks is good.
But, senior faculty and admins have a lag time in absorbing such information. Some are better than others (like our Anon Dean who has an frighteningly impressive situational awareness).

What is true is that the pressure for funding does not let up after tenure.
It is also true that part of the intended function of the system is to filter out people who would "let themselves go" after tenure - the Dept Heads and Deans want their mid-rank and senior faculty to continue pulling in funding at an accelerated pace, not slack off and take it easy. After all they cost more when they are promoted.

But, there is huge internal pressure to continue getting funding - because the funding you get that gets you tenure sets up a linked structure that hinges on YOU bringing in funding to keep it going. There are grad students and postdocs to feed, computers to run and labs to equip. And they always want more...
Please, sir, can I have some more.

I didn't mean to imply that a gap in research publications is fatal -- most of us have them in our CVs. The trouble is a several year gap where nobody can figure out what the tenure candidate was up to. Building big new instrument: OK, as long as it eventually works and leads to science. Polishing personal web site and missing the NIH deadline: not OK. My experience is that departments usually work to explain gaps in CVs, and often succeed.

Outreach grants are a good thing, but are mostly seen as an alternative to other kinds of service (i.e., institution building), not as an alternative to research. More credit if it is clear the proposal was written by the candidate, since grantsmanship is good and success in outreach proposals is probably highly correlated with success in other proposals, but outreach grants are often collaborative and sometimes have figurehead PIs or rotating PIs, so at a big university you better explain your role in the grantwriting as well as the outreach project itself.

Lab Lemming's cynicism about interdisciplinarity hits on something important. That concept gets thrown around in a shorthand way as if it were an intrinsic good. In fact, interdisciplinarity has value to the system only if interdisciplinary approaches help you attack new research problems (and raise new funds) or if interdisciplinary educational programs make your students more employable (or influential). On a tenure timescale, the only potential payoff is in research and funding, and the general trouble the system has evaluating collaborative work can be a problem.

As for the relentlessness of academic pressure, it has to be put into context. A new faculty member in the sciences is more like the leader of a new start-up than an employee in a mature firm, with the university in the role of the venture capitalists (start-up, space), the granting agencies as the customers to be wooed, and the dependent students and staff as the employees to be paid. Smart PhDs could find lots of lower-pressure, better-compensated jobs -- heck, our PhD level technical support staff make more money than the faculty over most of their careers. But the chance to make one's own choices, build one's own research program, and work with smart students and colleagues makes it worthwhile for many, even if it means living with long days and high risks. And if you think the tenure track is tough and risky (and thankless), try opening a restaurant.

Anon dean says: "heck, our PhD level technical support staff make more money than the faculty over most of their careers."

Dude, are you serious? I earn less than the frigging postdocs. I don't suppose you guys need someone to build and run a laser-ICPMS lab for you...

Lab Lemming -- yeah, I'm mostly serious, though it may be more a negative statement about how low many of our faculty salaries are than a positive one about technical support salaries. And I'm a little too loose comparing 9 month faculty salaries with 11 or 12 month staff salaries, though that isn't an unfair thing to do in a poor funding climate. And there is a lot of dispersion in tech staff salaries, depending on skills and the market, and variability in how stable the jobs are.

Thanks Anon Dean for pointing out what some of the benefits there are so us postdocs don't completely lose faith.

By the same token, not too many people have sat me down and explained what to expect if or when I get a tenure track job--if more mentors took some time to talk about this stuff with the postdocs, there'd be a lot less disillusionment when us green, wet behind the ears folk get long term jobs.

Listen to the Anon Dean s/he is sage and wise

As to the other point - beer works, or long walks in the park with wee munchkins running wild