I doubt that removing tenure would result in the hiring of new professors. One recent trend has been to hire adjuncts as much as possible and to only slowly hi

I doubt that removing tenure would result in the hiring of new professors. One recent trend has been to hire adjuncts as much as possible and to only slowly hire tenured faculty. Let's suppose that you have a professor (say a theorist) who works on a few ideas--but deep ones--she can take her time and focus on them instead of worrying about losing her job because she hasn't produced recently (funding is another story). Similarly, if she does something controversial--then again, her job is safe. The incentive for most academics (say science/engineering) to maintain a strong reputation is personal. I do research because: 1) I want to know the answer to a question 2) I'm selfish and I want to know the answer first ;> This leads me to putting in 100 hr weeks (sometimes you have to grind it out--other times, you have to step back and work less to be more creative) at times and being rather productive. Do you really think that fear of termination would result in the same output? Do you think that the average institution could pay researchers to put in the hours that they do--weekends, holidays, evenings, etc.?