1. Absolutely not. Some people enjoy teaching/research and interacting with students. The "life of the mind". It's true that even people who really enjoy that life are unlikely to take a $100K+ paycut for the lifestyle, but people willing to take that paycut in exchange for security do exist. See also: people who leave SFBA FAANG jobs to take "stable but boring" engineering positions in the south/midwest. Just because you're not on the corporate ladder climbing route doesn't mean you're incompetent.
2. Some people are extremely risk-averse and therefore value stability higher than the typical candidate. Often to a fault. Arguably sometimes not to a fault, though. Do you know how to perfectly price perpetuities or annuities and compare the long-term value of that investment to something more volatile? Because that's basically what this "tenure vs. industry" calculation amounts to. And it's not trivial -- undergrads and even masters students struggle with the math. Point is, most people don't know enough about finance to make rational economic decisions, or even if they do, choose values for parameters in the calculation based on personal anxieties because there's no perfect access to future ground truth. Do all the math and learn what you already knew -- the values of a few parameters determine what you should do. But those parameters are unknown and ultimately instantiated by your particular animal spirits.
3. But most importantly, consider the counter-factual. So what? What's the alternative? Pay better? You're a department chair at a tuition-dependent institution. Your budget is your budget. Paying better isn't an option. The best you can do is offer tenure and do your best to recruit the right type of candidate. But without tenure on the table you'll never recruit a competent candidate. Seriously, what competent person would take a less secure job for $100+K lower salary? So it's "try or die" in some sense.
If these alternatives aren't broadly available to every competent candidate -- so basically everything outside of CS and maybe a few other fields -- the dynamics change and you can ad junctify. And universities do ad junctify in those cases. See: the humanities.
2. Some people are extremely risk-averse and therefore value stability higher than the typical candidate. Often to a fault. Arguably sometimes not to a fault, though. Do you know how to perfectly price perpetuities or annuities and compare the long-term value of that investment to something more volatile? Because that's basically what this "tenure vs. industry" calculation amounts to. And it's not trivial -- undergrads and even masters students struggle with the math. Point is, most people don't know enough about finance to make rational economic decisions, or even if they do, choose values for parameters in the calculation based on personal anxieties because there's no perfect access to future ground truth. Do all the math and learn what you already knew -- the values of a few parameters determine what you should do. But those parameters are unknown and ultimately instantiated by your particular animal spirits.
3. But most importantly, consider the counter-factual. So what? What's the alternative? Pay better? You're a department chair at a tuition-dependent institution. Your budget is your budget. Paying better isn't an option. The best you can do is offer tenure and do your best to recruit the right type of candidate. But without tenure on the table you'll never recruit a competent candidate. Seriously, what competent person would take a less secure job for $100+K lower salary? So it's "try or die" in some sense.
If these alternatives aren't broadly available to every competent candidate -- so basically everything outside of CS and maybe a few other fields -- the dynamics change and you can ad junctify. And universities do ad junctify in those cases. See: the humanities.