I've been pondering this issue today (as if I have nothing better to do!).

About 2 years ago, Warwick University changed its academic hierarchy to the US model i.e., a Lecturer is now an Assistant Professor, a Senior Lecturer or Reader is now an Associate Professor, and a Professor remains a Full/Chaired Professor. This system is followed by many countries.

What does everyone think of this? Would you prefer to be Assistant Professor Joe Bloggs, rather than Dr Joe Bloggs the Lecturer?

Is the title 'Lecturer' a little modest for someone who has spent 7-10 years in higher education, and is predominantly a 'researcher' not a teacher?

As an American, and used to the American system.....seems to work ok! What's in a name? To me Professor is someone who teaches in a university........full stop. I know it has a different meaning altogether in the UK system....but why not use the Professor title the American way?! It denotes the job being done.....and to some extent, only from my own point of view, how critical is a title....?!

No, the title Professor should be reserved for the highest level of acadmics. The Lecturer > Senior Lecturer > Reader > Professor system we have in the UK works just fine. When everyone becomes a professor it becomes a joke with the highest level of academics having to call themselves 'full' Professors which just sounds daft!

Keep it the way it is. We shouldn't devalue the Professor title by handing it out to anyone and everyone who carrys out teaching or research at a university!

But the American system distinguishes between kinds of professors, as the first post on this topic says....you have Professor, Associate or Assistant Professor, etc, which is not that different from the UK system that has Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, Readers, Professors, except the UK has more levels perhaps.

What's in a name? Its all in the context its in. I am still used to the American system, so I by default call everyone at my university who is a lecturer or above ( not counting PhD students who do part time teaching, students are students) a professor---to me its just a generic term. I need to remember in the UK it has different meanings.

While not the point of this topic, a related issue that has come up for discussion on this forum is what PhD students call themselves, ie, PhD researchers, trainee researchers, or PhD students.

My response to this outside the forums is...let's see, you are doing work at a university towards the award of a degree. Sounds like a student to me!

I should add it's not just the US that adopt the title 'professor' for entry-level or lower academic ranks..it's not about Americanisation. The title of assistant/associate professor is also given to lower ranked academics in Canada, Hong Kong and many continental European countries.

The lecturer/senior lecturer/reader/professor model is very much a British invention, and only used in a few other Commonwealth countries.

I accept the point about such a model devaluing the Professor status, but one would only be an associate/assistant professor as pointed out, the 'Professor' status is still only granted to those with chairs. But this argument can be applied at the other end of the pecking order too, where lecturer status is often devalued because lecturership status can also be found in FE colleges (but with much less educational training and no research).

Warwick & London Business School have adopted the US model for titles. I'm not entirely sure why they have changed their systems, possibly because they have a lot of international students and they like to be taught by 'profs'.

The Professor title is already being devalued in this country as senior corporate folk are granted visiting professorship titles...and thus are known as 'Professors' despite having no PhD, research record or chair. They do the odd lecture in return for the title.

I'm not fussed about the title, but I can see the title is critical in an international setting. It puts British academics on par with their international counterparts who don't understand the British system.

I don't have anything against the assistant / associate / full professor system as such, and as you say in the many countries where it is established it works fine. The problem lies trying to 'import' it to the UK, like Warwick Univeristy is. It becomes a joke when everyone in teaching or research at that univeristy is called professor (or at least has the word professor in their job title), while at other universities only senior academics with years of top research behind them have the title. The potential for confusion (especially with people not too familiar with academia) is massive, and can only harm the UK HE sector in the long run.

I totally agree that the professor title is also being devalued by universities giving it to people brought in as visiting professors. The former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr having the title at the Univerity of Salford seems particulaly silly to me! This is definatley about univerities getting 'celebrities' on board to get more students through the doors and has little to do with genuine scholarship or research.

I agree that there is nothing wrong as such with the American system, however I do think to a certain extent that it does devalue the title of Professor. To Joe Bloggs in the street Dr so and so is just 'professor'. I also agree that the trend of giving celebrities an honorary professorship is just ridiculous. In the UK Professor is the highest accolade that people work for many years to attain - lets keep it that way - I'll be perfectly happy to be Dr and a lecturer :-)

But in reality, how critical is the job title likely to be in an international setting? I would hope that at this level of academia, most people would be able to understand the vagaries of different educational systems without variations in job title damaging either educational or employment prospects. It doesn't seem much to expect for anyone from a different academic system to 'translate' a British job title into the equivalent from their own country, or indeed vice versa, particularly if it's accompanied by a PhD, decent publications, experience etc. To change our whole system would be confusing, as XJR said, so what would the actual benefits really be, other than introducing international consistency (which I don't think is a good enough reason in itself).

I'd like a greater distinction at the lecturer end of the scale though, as there seem to be too many permutations of education, experience, research etc that are hidden in the current system. There's something that niggles me about 2 different people being employed as Senior Lecturers, where one has a PhD, lots of teaching experience and is also engaged in ongoing research, while another is employed on the same basis but does not have a PhD and does absolutely no research, being purely teaching orientated. I feel that the level of engagement in research should be reflected in the job title really. It doesn't mean that one needs to be deemed a better or higher status position than the other, but the differences should just be recognised in ways other than a extra notch up on the salary scale.

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Interesting up date on this issue from THES:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=404586&c=2

(Oxford is consulting on whether they should award three different professor ranks or offer all permanent dons the title of Professor).

I agree with you Rubyw, with respect to distinguishing between 'the researcher' and 'the teacher'. I know some universities have started doing this by giving a 'teaching fellow' title rather than 'lecturer' status, but I have noticed the salaries are generally no different. Unfortunately, they haven't extended this practice to the so-called 'visiting professors' who have absolutely no research backgrounds (e.g. Kevin Spacey).

...but I do think a title or name may result in a difference on an international setting. I was recently talking to postdoc who thought a visiting 'assistant professor' from the US was considerably higher up the academic ladder than a lecturer who had been in academia for five years. Simply, being unaware of the US system, she assumed any 'professor' was senior to a lecturer/reader over in the UK. I've also seen similar confusions arise when attending conferences in continental Europe, where students thought a 20something 'assistant-professor' was more senior than 'senior lecturers' from some eastern European countries, and they treated them accordingly.

I'm sure these are exceptions at our level, but I wonder if these nuances in academic rankings are known to UG or Masters students, and if not, does it affect their choice of university and country of study? Some people at Oxford must think so as they think it may be harming their international 'branding'.