Pre-tenure, it all boils down to just being above average on 3 numbers: * how many journal articles have you published * how much grant money are you bringing

Pre-tenure, it all boils down to just being above average on 3 numbers: * how many journal articles have you published * how much grant money are you bringing in * what is the average rating you get from students Interestingly, there does not appear to be much validity behind those numbers. Higher student ratings, for example, actually negatively correlate with student learning: http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/scarrell/profqual2.pdf http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/scarrell/profqual2.pdf http://listserv.aera.net/scripts/wa.exe?A2=AERA-L;6767f510.1105 http://listserv.aera.net/scripts/wa.exe?A2=AERA-L;6767f510.1... And the 'impact' of journal articles has been criticized more ways than I can count: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor#Criticisms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor#Criticisms I've seen blog posts with more impact than average journal articles. Lastly research grant money - I don't know the research on the impact of grant money - but in many fields, when you have an original, new idea, you usually get a smaller grant, maybe even just a seed grant at first (just like how little money startups usually get), or you do it on your own in grad school. The large grants are for large scale collaborations and scaling up of well-trodden ideas. 55% of the grant money doesn't even go to the research project - it goes to the university's administrative overhead.