All professors are equal, but some are more equal than others

[nmg]

There's nothing quite so likely to give me indigestion at lunchtime than reading about the latest antics of certain vice chancellors in the Times Higher. Today's edition has a beaut of a story: David VandeLinde, the VC of Warwick University (and formerly VC of Bath University, which is where I know of him from) is introducing US-style academic titles at Warwick.

All 850 academic staff at Warwick University will from next year be able to call themselves "professor" following a decision to adopt the US system of academic titles.

Warwick is the first UK university to break away from hundreds of years of academic tradition, renaming lecturers "assistant professors", senior lecturers and readers "associate professors" while still calling professors "professors".

The radical move will horrify those who believe the "professor" title should be reserved for an academic elite. But David VandeLinde, Warwick's vice-chancellor, predicted that other UK universities would follow suit.

He said: "It gives us instantly internationally recognisable titles and provides us with a unique offer to our academic teaching staff in which all can share in the title of professor. It will inevitably be copied, but Warwick will be remembered as having the foresight to lead that change."

[...] Warwick will be the first university to adopt US titles for all academic staff. The system will be used for new appointees and adopted by existing staff by the start of the 2007-08 academic year.

I'm assuming that, in due course, former professors will be keen to distinguish themselves from their lesser colleagues by describing themselves as "full professors", as seems to be the vogue in the US. This certainly seems much simpler than our existing system.

During his time at Bath, VandeLinde was keen to introduce a number of US innovations, including sports scholarships. When he moved to Warwick, he quickly won the support of staff there, as can be seen in this quote from the THES in November 2000:

Professor VandeLinde said: "Warwick is now well established within the UK's 'Ivy League', and I look forward to the opportunity and challenge... to lead Warwick in becoming recognised as a world-class research university."

Personally, I found myself slightly mystified by this statement, because I was under the impression that Warwick was already recognised as a world-class research university...

Comments

[marklesuk.livejournal.com]

mmm well it'll make it easier to work out who to respect at Warwick the ones who ignore it completely. when I was a student in my second there were three physics guys in the house who were always deferential about their dept staff - all dr this prof that. we had none of that in the law dept. cue a fantastic slightly drunken argument one weekend when my law studying friend and I were too tipsy to be subtle about our taking the piss. it was only then that we realised that they honestly thought the law dept didn't have any drs or profs. to prove that they did we got the one text book we had to hand written by one of our profs to find he had four law degrees and was described as the leading authority in the area. oh and he was chair of the law school. this then led to the rest of the evenings argument about whether us referring to him as Bealey rather than prof beale was rude. I'll tell you what though we had more respect for him than they had for any of their lecturers for all their use of titles!

[makyo.livejournal.com]

About five years through my (part-time, mathematics) PhD, I finally got around to asking my supervisor ``What exactly should I call you? Professor Rourke? Sir? Colin?'' and he replied, somewhat bemused, ``Oh, Colin of course - it's all first-names round here, you know...''

It very slightly unnerves me that one particular first-year undergraduate student of mine persistently calls me `Dr Jackson' whenever he emails or talks to me, despite me introducing myself as `Nick' and signing all my email messages `nicholas'. But then it's only in the past few years that I've managed to break the ``all grown-ups should be addressed formally'' conditioning that my parents instilled in me from a very early age.

Should I ever find myself in the position to do so, I intend to describe myself as a `lecturer' - none of this `approximate professor' nonsense.

[pinguthegreek.livejournal.com]

You see, this is exactly it, it's not about titles, it's about the person holding the title.

I think, in the main, you have to find a way of keeping your feet on the ground if you get a title. Academic or any other kind of title.