Woe is me, etc.

Granted, the CoHE didn't commission the study, but if the decidedly disgruntled comments are any indication, this article on glum associate professors fits the bill for one of its favorite topics: Aggravations of the Academic 1%.  "I have security of employment, so now I'm unhappy" ranks right up there with "I've been offered too many tenure-track jobs" and "I'm teaching at a R1" as subjects worthy of the world's most miniscule violins.  Or, for a change of pace, ukeleles.  (I'm surprised that the College Misery folks haven't made any snarky comments about snowflakes--or blizzards, even.) 

But...OK.  The article does accurately pinpoint how unstructured post-tenure life is: there's no timeframe for moving from associate to full professor, which can leave academics feeling as though they've been left hanging in the proverbial wind.  More to the point, graduate students and tenure-track faculty underestimate how much service work can suddenly rush into gaps once conveniently open for scholarship.  (When I received tenure, one of the very first things my chair said to me was "Congratulations! And now I have some committees I need you to be on.")  Many universities protect t-t faculty from excessive service obligations, which means that the slack rope suddenly goes tight when the magic "T" word happens.  Moreover, university-level service is often required for promotion to full professor, and such service has a habit of being more onerous than the departmental variety.  So, yes, this can be a real issue when it comes to scheduling, not to mention stress levels.

There's also the fear factor.  Will I ever get another promotion, or will I be trapped in-between forever? Can I advance in my career and have anything resembling a family life? (Many female academics of my acquaintance wound up delaying children until after they had tenure...which then means balancing the children with the additional demands of being tenured.) Or, more materialistically (and pragmatically), am I ever going to get another significant salary bump? And, as the article points out, it's very difficult to leave an academic position once you've been tenured and promoted; there are junior faculty positions, and there are a scattering of senior positions, but very rarely anything between.  I idly scan the MLA listings every year out of curiosity, and the number of positions for which I qualify (not for which I want to apply, but for which I qualify) generally ranges from zero to one.  For faculty marooned in deeply embattled or otherwise dysfunctional departments/universities, the sense of entrapment is real.