February 8, 2026
Office hours or off-hours?
Tenure Is a Total Scam
Tenure: “Dream Job for Life” or Taxpayer-Funded Nap
TLDR: A tenured professor called tenure a taxpayer-funded “scam,” igniting a comment war over whether academics coast or grind. Some say K‑12 tenure is the real problem; others describe academia as a risky lottery with harsh workloads and slim odds, making this debate about fairness, funding, and what society should reward.
A tenured professor dropped a grenade into academia by calling tenure a “dream job for life” that’s really a scam paid for by taxpayers—cue comment-section fireworks. The thread split fast: some cheered “finally, someone said it,” while others insisted professors are workaholics drowning in “publish or perish” pressure. One spicy jab came from a tenured prof who quipped that “GMU is a scam, the rest of us work hard,” turning the debate personal and oh-so-clickable.
Another camp brought receipts and math. One commenter framed the PhD-to-tenure journey as a career lottery: years on a tiny stipend for a 20% shot at a middle-class salary at 40. If tenure enables coasting, they argued, the system effectively gets five people to work for quarter pay so one can “retire in place.” Meanwhile, veterans of multiple universities pushed back: they’d never seen a tenured prof “do nothing,” claiming most have to teach, hustle grants, and research—or risk being shown the door.
The plot twist? Several readers said the real “scam” is K‑12 tenure, not universities, which ignited a schoolyard brawl over where protections make sense. Memes flew—“Tenure Hunger Games,” “publish and prosper,” and “nap or perish.” Love it or hate it, everyone agreed: the path to tenure is long, political, and brutally arbitrary—and that’s why the comments are on fire.
Key Points
- •The article outlines a five-step path to tenure: undergraduate excellence, funded Ph.D., publishing-focused doctoral work, securing a tenure-track job, and earning tenure via department approval.
- •Doctoral success is defined by publications and a dissertation often built from earlier published work rather than grades.
- •Securing a tenure-track job is portrayed as highly competitive and arbitrary, with outcomes not always aligned with merit.
- •The tenure review typically occurs over about six years and hinges on publishing and approval by tenured faculty.
- •The author claims tenure standards vary by rank: stringent at top-20 institutions and more permissive—sometimes nepotistic—below rank 50, with dissertation-based publications often sufficient at lower-ranked schools.