Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

tenured graduate student
     
         One who has been in graduate school for 10 years (the
        usual maximum is 5 or 6): a "ten-yeared" student (get it?).
        Actually, this term may be used of any grad student beginning
        in his seventh year.  Students don't really get tenure, of
        course, the way professors do, but a tenth-year graduate
        student has probably been around the university longer than
        any untenured professor.
     
        [{Jargon File}]
     
        (1996-09-27)