<p>At an engineering research university (top 30), my understanding is that the criteria to earn tenure it breaks down as following…</p>
<p>1/4-1/3 on teaching evaluations
The rest is based on research. They key metrics for research are…
-The most important thing is lots of published peer-reviewed journal papers…10-15 in well respected journals. The process of doing the research, writing, submitting to the journal, rewriting the requested revisions, etc. for a single journal paper usually takes 3 years. A masters degree usually is 2 years.
-1-5 students earn PhDs under your guidance
-You’ve brought in lots of grant money >$500,000 - $1,000,000
-You are respected in your field. (e.g. people know about your research from conferences you or you students attend and your publications). External letters of recommendation are critical for profs getting tenure.</p>
<p>That will do it. You need highly trained grad students to write papers. One professor can’t write 10-15 quality journal papers in 6 years. You have to work with well trained grad students that you supervise. To get and keep grants you need results. Again you need well trained grad students that stay for 4 or 5 years to get results…so yes it has to do with “training” grad students, and how much time you get from them once trained.</p>
<p>FYI: I prefer to think of grad students as “apprentices” or “faculty in training” rather than “employees”. I company doesn’t necessarily care what an employee learns, but a university absolutely does care what a PhD student learns. A PhD student doesn’t work 9-5 and should not be expected to be constantly supervised…an employee is basically constantly supervised during a set time every day.</p>