This table summarizes how I’ve been describing UK & US English differences about academic titles in my recent conversations about this with both Americans and Brits. I wonder if anyone reading this disagrees with my summary, beyond the fact that these are only approximate correlates, since the UK doesn’t have the tenure system that is so closely (but not completely) tied to the American distinction between Assistant and Associate. And there are other subtleties I’m glossing over, like the messiness of what “lecturer” means in the US, as well as things like the apparent distinction (at least at Oxford) between a post-doctoral researcher and a post-doctoral fellow, which is why I’ve just put “post-doc” here. Anyway, if you do disagree with this I’d be curious to know if it’s because of what part of the UK you’re in/from or if it depends on the university you’re at, or what.
Of course, there’s always Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_rank, which just goes to show you how overly simplistic my table is!
I’ve also noticed, as a US student in England, that using “Professor” as a term of address in, say, an email, especially to a lecturer or reader, is considered a lot more formal. At least, that’s the impression I got. It seems that it doesn’t exist here as a kind of general term for “college teacher,” which I am under the impression it does in the states. Of course, I haven’t so much researched it as gotten one or two awkward replies back from lecturers I emailed, so take my intuition with a couple grains of salt.
Thanks for your comment! And you’re right, it’s not only too formal, it’s actually technically incorrect, because of these differences…
Ooh, well. I agree with all except ‘Professor’; I’m not too sure about the distinction between ‘assistant’ and ‘associate’ in the US, but in the UK a ‘Prof’ is typically somebody who does less teaching, more research (as is a Reader), but also it’s quite an honour to get up to that ranking, as it’s the highest you can go as a researcher/teacher without taking on a managerial role. Most lecturers won’t become professors, whereas in the states that’s the typical goal as it’s when you get tenure, right? But in the UK, a lecturer and a senior lecturer are both permanent positions (‘senior’ usually dictating the amount of experience and responsibility you have – I’m not sure if that correlates directly with ‘associate’ as opposed to ‘assistant’ Prof in the US), a Reader is somebody who mostly researches because of their track record, and, as I say, a prof is quite a grander thing. The fact that it involves an inauguration perhaps illustrates its significance over in these parts. I’ve had US people call me ‘prof’, but that’s inaccurate as, whilst it’s technically my job title in the US system, it’s not a formal title I’ve earned (unlike ‘dr’).
Hope that helps, rather than confuses!
I hope others will also reply to your comment (thanks for it!), but Full Professor in the US is indeed a big deal (though maybe not as big a deal as here, I dunno). Getting tenure typically correlates with a promotion from Assistant to Associate. Americans use the term ‘prof’ for all levels because it’s part of the term for each level, but it doesn’t mean that they think everyone’s a Full Prof. For some people, the label ‘professor’ is even considered more humble than ‘dr’ because of the preference to use ‘dr’ only with medical doctors!
I agree with the previous post. ‘Professor’ in the UK does not properly correspond with ‘Full Professor’ in the US…the latter is more common, and (at least my impression) almost an inevitability if you stay in the career long enough and do all the right stuff, not so in the UK, where it is reserved (in most unis) as a special honour. But it does vary from university to university. Also, lecturer does not correspond with assistant professor. i guess in the uk an assistant prof would be roughly equivalent to a lecturer who hasn’t got a permanent contract or not yet passed the probationary period. in some places (e.g. oxford) there is no distinction between lecturers and senior lecturers – everyone is a lecturer.
Basically, there is no uniform use of the terms in the UK… sorry!!
Ah I see – that explains a few things!! It’s definitely confusing that the terms are so similar but yet relate to quite different things!
didn’t mean to imply that full prof is not a big deal… My impression is that there is a more uniform career progression in the US, so that it is more typical that someone will reach full prof there than being made professor here. Professors used to be pretty rare things here (more or less limited to the Chair of a Faculty), but is has changed quite a bit, partly from pressure of parity of recognition with US colleagues. But because practice varies a lot in the uk, my guess is there are people who stay lecturer all their career in the UK, but would be full prof in the US.
I see, thanks, that explains some things I’ve been wondering about (like why professors here are always “Professor of” such-and-such). It seems, then, that the UK could use a special term for “a lecturer who hasn’t got a permanent contract or not yet passed the probationary period”. How about Newbie Lecturer? Haha! (Of course I only say that in a soon-to-be-self deprecating way!)
At Ahmadu Bello University, in Nigeria but (I think) following a mostly British system, they had Lecturer 1 and Lecturer 2, in a fairly automatic progression, a bit of a jump to Senior Lecturer, and then, few people got to Reader and eventually Professor. In fifteen years there, more than half of the time, I was at Senior Lecturer, and, if I had stayed, I think I had a reasonable chance at Reader.
It is indeed very complicated, and highly variable from one country to the next, from institution to the next, and even within a single institution.
In the US everyone from the Asst. to Full Prof. rank is called “Professor” as a general title — though nowadays, first names are becoming increasingly common, instead. (When I was a student at the U of Oregon over 25 years ago, *everyone* used first names only — it was considered very abnormal for anyone to be called “Professor Smith”. Over the past fiver years or so this practice has become common at my NAU, though still not as ingrained as it was at Oregon.)
In the different British system countries that I am familiar with, however, the only people who you would call “Professor” are the full “Professors”. I think this reflect the more class-status tradition in the UK versus the US.
How easy it is to become a Full Professor in the US varies a lot among schools. In some schools, like mine, it is seen as the *only* way to give people pay raises after many years of work because our state legislature is so stingy (controlled by the Tea Party). For that reason, it has becomes comparatively easy to get promoted on teaching with minimal research — though this still varies from one college to the next even within the university. Universities who are trying to compete for ranking on a global scale, however, have fare more stricter criteria — like an average of 2 or more refereed publications a year — just to advance from Asst. to Assoc. Professor. (I review a lot of promotion applications.) So generalizing even about the US on this is tricky.
BTW – I think your table is accurate. as I said above, there is tremendous variation between schools/universities and colleges/faculties within schools, but in general it works.
Looking at the Wikipedia link you provided, I think the like the title of “Extraordinary Professor” (South Africa) the best! That is what I would want on my headstone. (Ha! — not really!)
Thanks, Dad! Haha, that title is indeed pretty, um, extraordinary. Looks like they have it in the Netherlands, too. Maybe it’s an Afrikaans thing?
I’ve often had to explain the gross difference between the UK system and the US system (assuming for a minute that each place has just one!) – mostly to Americans. I think your table is pretty accurate, except that it doesn’t make clear that, where there are ‘Readers’ and ‘(Senior) Lecturers’, a Reader is senior to a Senior Lecturer.
I can definitely relate to the embarrassment shown to / experienced by your first commenter when they called UK Lecturers ‘Professor’. Easy to do! Also, I think Elinor’s comments are spot-on: there are people called ‘Lecturer’ in the UK who don’t get a different title because there isn’t one at their institution, but who would possibly be Full Profs in the US. In fact, I remember in 1996 (my final year at Oxford) when there was a sudden influx of Professors; all of them deserved the honour, of course, but there _was_ still the rumour that it had been done for parity of recognition with their US colleagues …
I’ve found that a useful explanatory metric (which I made up, so feel free to shoot it down!) is that, in the US, ‘professor’ is a job-title, like ‘engineer’ and ‘maintenance worker’, though it can also become a salutation; in the UK, it’s just a salutation. The job-title that Professors would use for themselves is probably still ‘(university) lecturer’ (I know this is true for at least one of them)!
A professor in France who recently wrote a reference for me is a ‘Professor of the Universities, Exceptional Class’!
Coming late to this, but my understanding was that Reader (UK) is more equivalent to full Prof in the US (a promotion generally requiring a second book), and that Professor in the UK is more like a very senior, endowed chair-type professor in the US. I think (at least at research universities) that proportionately fewer people in the UK achieve “professor” rank than those in the US who make Full Prof.
“I think (at least at research universities) that proportionately fewer people in the UK achieve “professor” rank than those in the US who make Full Prof.”
Aren’t all UK universities institutions that do research? I thought it was part of the definition.
A highly recommended parallel discussion: http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2008/04/academic-titles-and-address.html