As I understand it, ‘tenure’ as we’ve come to understand it, is being reduced or eliminated at many colleges and universities. Does your wife’s college still grant tenure?
The intricacies and political wranglings of obtaining tenure today seem to offset its original purpose of leaving professors free of outside pressures. Now the pressure seems to come from colleagues (in many disciplines) for conformity to the ‘culture’ of the department. The ‘academic freedom’ that tenure was supposed to ensure can’t be enjoyed from the get-go It certainly explains the dominance of liberal professors on campus if they will only confer tenure on like-thinkers.
So, it may be that as your daughter progresses, she will have a vast portfolio of published writings and years of successful research and teaching, but STILL not get tenure simply because the college/university that she’s affiliated with won’t be offering it. And that may be a good thing.
Two small changes to tenure systems have been widely reported in recent years.
Some universities have made more use of non-tenure-track instructors, especially for introductory freshmen/sophomore level classes. These instructor positions are largely dead-end jobs, with little opportunity for advancement, but at most universities, the vast majority of instructional positions are still tenure-track faculty members.
Second, many universities now have some form of post-tenure review available in theory. So if a tenured faculty member is truly non-productive in every aspect of their work, such a review can be used as a threat to pressure that faculty member to improve or retire. However, these review processes which theoretically allow a tenured faculty member to fired usually take 2-3 years of detailed evaluations, with the strong presumption in favor of the faculty member at every step of the way. Post-tenure review is seldom, if ever, invoked as more than a threat.