[…] At the same time, the relative weight given to teaching, research, and service in an overall tenure evaluation, and even the definition of success in each area, is a private matter to be determined by individual universities and their faculty. In vain do people search for some kind of precise measurement—the kind of thing the modern world craves.[8] Anyone who has gone through the tenure process (as your author has, multiple times) knows that Franz Kafka was an optimist. Schools are reluctant to be too specific in advance, lest they rob themselves of the freedom to decide individual cases without fear of litigation. Even when individual departments try to give specific advice, that advice comes with the large asterisk that no one can predict how the upper levels of administration, where the final decision rests, will ultimately decide a case. In the end, the only thing to be sure of is that you should probably be doing more than you are.[9] […]