Promotion and Tenure, some probabilities

Empirically,

  1. Marginal tenure cases lead to marginal careers, or disappointing ones. Probability is above 95%, maybe 98%. They take much longer than other cases to be promoted to full, if they are so promoted at all.
  2. Rarely does a tenure turndown then have a distinguished scholarly career. Surely there is a stigma to being turned down, but that seems not to be be the issue. Perhaps 1-2% of turndowns have distinguished subsequent careers. 
  3. Slow progress from associate to full is only rarely accompanied with the production of a major work when they come up for promotion. Probability is 5% at most.
  4. In general, we make many more mistaken positive decisions than mistaken negative ones, the ratio being perhaps 10:1.

The basic principle is that being a faculty member of a university that is on the rise is a rare opportunity. Mistaken appointments and promotions preclude our appointing more talented scholars. And there is a agglomeration effect, more excellence leads to further excellence, while weakness demoralizes the unit. And, weak scholars need to find ponds where there strengths are valued.

5. Perhaps no more than 10%  of dossiers are strong, and 1% are  compellingly strong.  Likely 1/2 are quite good or good, 1/3 are marginal (1 in 5, 20%, at least, is marginal).

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