Denial of Tenure is Not the End of the World

The professorial and pre-professorial blogosphere rambles on a good bit about the tenure process. It is one of the greatest anxieties of the career– after one has acquired the first appointment as an assistant professor. Universities and colleges use fear of being denied tenure to motivate high levels of performance in the first six years of the career and most fresh-faced Assistant Professors respond. Receiving a tenure denial seems like a complete and utter failure. It is not.