[borroka]

How is this not true? Apart from specific disciplines with a permeable barrier between university and industry (for example, computer science, finance), the median age at which a tenured position is obtained should be between 30 and 35 years old (and I believe the variance of the distribution of ages to be small). It is very rare to get a tenured position at 40, and the chances are much slimmer for older people.

I think that most people who haven't spent time doing a PhD, doing post-docs, etc. have very misguided ideas about how the academic world works, and their notion of "professorship" comes mainly from movies.

Especially at R1 universities, researchers are hired primarily (90%+) for their research; teaching is very secondary. The "genius discovery" is the improbable outcome of their research; the most likely outcome is a substantial scholarship in some field, which is built up over time, initially individually (PhD, postdocs) and then collaboratively.