"Pyramid Scheme" is a fairly apt phrase for academic careers. However, it's not true that reviews are mostly done by tenured faculty. I never ranked above post-

"Pyramid Scheme" is a fairly apt phrase for academic careers. However, it's not true that reviews are mostly done by tenured faculty. I never ranked above post-doc and I reviewed several papers. I think the real reason for the incredible inertia in the academic world has more to do with the level of competition for jobs. When moving from one stage of your academic career to the next regularly puts you into competition with a couple hundred others for a single position, you look for every advantage. The practical effect of this is that one can easily spend a decade or two of life after college putting in 60-80 weeks as a standard. When you have to be that focused, it's hard to put energy and time into changing the system.