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<p>Jack63, I think nobody here is arguing that the academic freedom it bestows isn’t worthwhile, by itself. The real question is, whether that freedom is worth the problems that it engenders, particularly regarding the unmotivated attitude that it fosters among tenured faculty. Frankly, I believe the most corrosive attitude that tenure generates among the graduate students who see tenured faculty who don’t haven’t published academic papers for years (sometimes decades) and then wonder why they have endure the pain to publish academic papers. The situation inevitably fosters an attitude of cynicism that the academic publication process is a cynical game in which the goal is to simply obtain tenure, after which you can then stop publishing, which then begs the question of what exactly is the true value of trying to publish in the first place - is this all just a game? If the tenured faculty don’t really care about publishing, then why should the students (or junior faculty)?</p>