[readingnews]

I worked at 5 universities, two of them in the top 50, and I do not know of one tenured professor that "does nothing" and "publishes next to nothing". Some of them teach very little, and that may have been for the best, but all tenured professors I was aware of needed to do research, bring in money (or you were, yes that's right, fired), and teach.

Granted, I worked in STEM fields. Maybe this author does not realize what it is like in the physical sciences or engineering?

[enum]

This isn't true right? You really can bring in zero dollars in grants and phone it in in the classroom. (Now, literally on Zoom!) I don't think it helps to pretend that everyone keeps pushing hard post tenure.

But, I think most people do. The system is deliberately designed to push an assistant professor so hard, that when they get a permanent contract, they're conditioned to keep pushing. It typically succeeds.

[whakim]

Yes; you can phone it in post-tenure. But just because it is possible doesn't mean (in my experience) it is common; and I don't think it's helpful (as TFA claims) to equate this possibility with "a total scam." To get tenure anywhere doesn't just require a huge amount of work as an Assistant Professor; it also requires a huge amount of work as a PhD student and potentially multiple rounds of post-doc'ing or other non-tenure-line work. In my experience, tenured professors have spent nearly two decades distorting their work-life balance beyond all recognition to the point that grinding insanely hard in pursuit of publications just feels normal.